Dev Team Request: A Top 5 List of Bugs and Pain Points You Would Like Addressed

dermot41 · February 24

Top Bugs/Issues
Bug 1 Downtime too frequent
Bug 2
Bug 3
Bug 4
Bug 5
Top Pain Points
Pain Point 1 No Minimap
Pain Point 2 Having to use twitter to get 'timely 'status updates
Pain Point 3 Crazy mechanics which stop a player soloing dungeons
Pain Point 4 Quest markers not very intuitive
Pain Point 5 Downtime too frequent

langewapper · February 24

Pain Point 1 : all sets who could counter ballgroups are nerfed to the ground
Pain Point 2 : transmute crystal bigger stacks

said no one ever · February 24

So i haveto add one pain point is that when i'm in overland contentt and near a water source, like say north point for example, and i run down the dock and head out to that small island i want to jump from the dock onto that sand bar that you can walk out to that island on but as i get to the edge of the dock and press jump i instead lock onto a fishing spot or some other thing is there at the point i wish to jump from in some other place but i cant jump because theres a resource node there or some other silly thing that keeps me from jumping. that annoys after a few times yah.

Artim_X · February 24

Top Bugs/Issues

1. Stuck in combat bug.

Top Pain Points

1. Cyrodiil population cap is too low.
2. Housing furnishing slots are too low.
3. Rush of Agony being left as a rule breaker makes for an unfun PvP environment. It needs to have a more apparent indicator of it being triggered and needs to play by the same rules as other sets/skills.
4. Battle Spirit is not utilized enough to balance PvP.
5. Zones needs to have more accessible buildings. My heart breaks whenever a door has one of those fancy inaccessible to player locks on it. I want to explore!

LousyTourist2 · February 24

Pain point 1
Treasure Maps don't stack & we have to move away and back from Survey and Treasure Map locations if we have duplicates.

Pain point 2
Too many sets, too many effects on those sets

Point 3
The game is not friendly to color blind players. Maybe some texturing or etc in accessibility?

Pain point 4
Uneven game difficulty. Overland and delves mostly too easy solo, dungeons often require teams, and then there's trials, requiring even bigger teams. Not a sustainable mode to increase player participation.

Guiqu · February 25

Top Pain Points:

1. There is no way to complete all the dungeons in single player mode. I'm not interested in playing with people. ALL the dungeons are easy, I want to play without prying eyes. I want to play solo as much as possible. Players spoil the atmosphere of the plot, it would be cool to disconnect from the server with the players.
2. History. You understand the plot of the game perfectly, I really like how you tenderly handle the plot of TES, but..... SNOW ELVES Please give me more. Why are there so few? Why?...I want to know more about them. I really like the way some books/NPCs talk about Saarthal. It's like they're really hinting that the Nords are even worse than I thought. So many details, BUT SO FEW. Please, I'm so looking forward to learning more about them. Imagine the faces of people who love snow elves from TES3

PLEASE GIVE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN.... I think about them every day, they are my favorite race, my favorite characters. I draw snow elves and I'm so offended that the developers like them less than I do. I bought TESO to read lore games. I'm not too interested in the gameplay. I just want to know about my snow children.... I'm sure they didn't do anything wrong: they lived with orcs, lived with other humans, and lived with Dwemer. I know less about them than I do about dwemer - IT'S NOT RIGHT!! They are beautiful, so pure, so kind. These were their lands, not the Nords'... There's nothing good in their story except Snow Treaders. Thank you for something kind... I will never forget this fact. The snow elves were fighting the snow

I'm sure Skyrim was really a snow kingdom under the snow elves.... I do not know how else to beg you. It's funny, but I bought TESO with add-ons so that I could eat those pieces of content about snow elves with my own eyes. I really love them very much.
3. Maormer. They're interesting too!! I would like to know about the structure of their society and state. Otherwise, they were made according to the plot "evil because evil". What for? They dance in the dungeons and eat.... I don't want to kill them.

4. It really annoys me that I can't get past ordinary mobs when I just want to get through. I don't want to fight them. It's unbearably annoying. And then they run after me, and when you finally agree to fight, he turns around and runs away.
5. The character editor is too narrow. Your elves look like humans with ears, but the elves have a different skull and a different nose, but I can't edit it properly.

Ye_Olde_Crowe · February 25

Pain Points:
Not enough customization options for Companions
Not enough housing slots
Not enough small homes
Needs separate slots for eyes
Not enough hair colours

WolfieVZ · February 25

Just have 1 for the list, remove the ridiculous 30fps menu cap from next gen consoles, I literally can't play your game anymore.

@ZOS_Kevin you have ignored the thread full of people who are having adverse effects from capping the menu framerate for 10 months now.

I'd say that is a huge pain point that needs fixed.

Dax_Draconis · February 26

Pain Points

- PvP balance needlessly destroying builds used for PvE. Please separate the two game modes.

- PvE balance needs to become a priority. All classes should be equally capable and desired to play in all roles in PvE end game instead of only a select few.

- Stop destroying gear sets for no other reason than to change the meta. Not everybody enjoys the constant gear grind.

- Armorer needs to have its own gear storage separate from bank and inventory. We are paying for it after all.

- Companions should unlock once for the account rather than per character.

- Outfit slots should be account wide.

thinkaboutit · February 26

Painpoint: need tutorial to introduce trials/groupfinder to newer players much like how dungeons are introduced.. maybe a quest?

MreeBiPolar · February 26

Pain point: heavy armor giving non-combat stealth penalties. Mind, while it makes sense flavor-wise, after all the changes like hybridization, the ONLY purpose it serves is annoyance of having to change gear from your character's general build when you do non-dungeon/combat activities. The penalty given is so bad that even ONE heavy piece more than offsets even specialized stealth sets like Darloc Brae, making stealing impossible if you are anywhere near NPCs.

At the very least, make that penalty not apply when stationary.

mdjessup4906 · February 26

Some of mine that I haven't seen listed yet.

Top Pain Points

Pain Point 1
Get rid of custom key bind limits. I use both keyboard and game controller to play on pc. Nearly every single keybind i use is custom. Plus I use almost a hundred different addons to make this game playable for me. Current 100 keybind limit sounds like alot but it gets eaten up fast and there's zero reason for a limit to exist, all that stuff is stored locally.

Pain Point 2
Make enemy outlines/highlights, and different mechanics effects like interrupt sparks, etc customizable by color, brightness, etc. Lost count of how many times I've heard people can't see red interrupt sparks even when I point them out in game video. Let people adjust ALL those types of effects so people can actually see them. It Should be a basic Accessibility thing. And not that broken ass "accessibility" setting you guys put in that everyone has to turn off for the game to actually work.

Pain Point 3
Be better about providing subtitles for all dialog including environmental dialog. I can hear, but mild auditory processing issues means I still need to use subtitles to understand dialog. Makes me sad when I hear some misc. npc convo , but can't make out the words and neither chat dialog or subtitles show what it was.

Pain Point 4
MORE STORAGE SPACE PLEASE!!!! For both eso+ AND unsubscribed. Seriously, just letting me buy 4 more (or more. More is always better) large house chests would make me happy. I play every group role and would like to get into pvp more seriously. And you know what that means? Gear. So much gear. For every niche group comp, boss fight, experimental build, and all the potions and food to go with it. On top of the more "casual" stuff like storing sellables for the guild trader, maps, surveys, the millions of little fragment things for collectibles that I can't "eat" yet but have yet to find the rest of. And just forget about housing. Way too much hassle to shuffle everything around with my existing inventory. MOAR SPACE!

Pain Point 5
Let us buy mages guild skill line after we get it on one character, like the psijic and scrying lines. Of course, making it (and all those other ones)unlockabe account wide while still being able to do the respective quests for RP reasons would be ideal...

Bonus Pain Point 6:
PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF LORE NERDS EVERYWHERE, AWARD SKILL POINT ON FIRST DUNGEON COMPLETION INSTEAD OF ON QUEST COMPLETION, SO WE CAN GO BACK AND HEAR IT AT OUR LEISURE INSTEAD OF HAVING TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THE STORY AND COMPLETING OUR BUILDS IN A NON-TEDIOUS WAY. aka overland skyshard farming. I HATE overland skyshard farming. It is so mindnumbingly boring. I like dungeons. Please let me have my dungeon skill points while speed running WITHOUT having to give up the story on that character. Pleeeease?

Alternatively, make the dungeon quests repeatable so even if i have to speedrun the quest the first time i can just go back and listen to it again if I want. This would also help all those poor new players who miss out on the quest because they foolishly joined a pug dungeon run thinking they'd actually get to hear the story.

Artem_gig · February 27

1. Enemies who run before you, and then immediately run away after the attack. Why don't they fall behind as soon as you leave the area where they can fight? Or at least allow me to deal damage to those who run away.
2. Weaving. Not only does it look bad, it also turns the fight into a piano game. I would like light attacks to be quite distinctive, cause good damage and not be required in weaving.
3. 2 skill panels. Unfortunately, the 2nd skill panel does not serve as a switching of the fighting style, in the game you cannot take a sword to the first panel and a bow to the second, so that each of these panels would be independent in dealing damage. But alas, the game gives us a second skill bar to use for buffs, debuffs, and pillboxes. in this case, we are at most 4 seconds on the second panel, and 20 on the main one. In fact, it's just 10 skills on one panel, not 5 skills for one fighting style and 5 skills for another. I would like to be able to use any of the panels, depending on the situation, without losing damage or effectiveness.
4. The bow does not have a heavy attack. I mean, the bow shoots automatically. But I would like to be able to shoot in the classic style, as it was originally. Adding such a setting to the settings would be a good solution.
5. Server crashes and constant error when reconnecting.

TTMighty · February 28

1. Lead not dropping in the Archive

Prior to update 43 I finished all the leads for the Apocrypha Jewelry Crafting Station and dug all of them up. I then got all of them again, except the lead for the potbelly stove lead. After Update 43 I have gone though enough Archive to get ALL of the new armor sets as well as ALL of the new style pages. And the potbelly stove lead STILL HAS NOT DROPPED again. This CANNOT be RNG, this has to be a bug. There is no way someone could do this many Archive runs and not have that lead drop.

Ryori729 · February 28

I am on XBox so some things here might be specific to the platform.

Bugs:

Likely the biggest for me is Block randomly not working. Sometimes could be a performance thing and I'm trigger block after the attack actually happened on the server.

In combat: Not stuck in combat, but just in combat when I am not. It is the randomness of it . I've been at a vent, for example, and I'm in combat as everyone else rides away. Or I am in a group and some of us are in combat and some are not. Or they are on the other side of the map and a wolf chases them so those still in town can't use the wayshrine.

Pain Points

Inventory: I feel like this is half my game time. Likely much less but it feels like a daily struggle. Here are some side things that I feel add to the pain.
* Guild banks - why don't they have a stack option.
* Event tickets capped at 12 - not inventory in the typical sense, but I have to always check the count and if I forget then you run back to use them. If we earn them, we should be able to keep them.
* Transmute crystals : I have lots of geodes in the inventory. Again, we earned them, let us just keep them.
* Mail - if I can't grab one of the items, I can't grab any of them. This is mainly and issue with maps
* Maps - make them stackable or at the least non-unique. Even if I put it in the bank, sometimes I can't pick up the map.
* Unknown items - bank, Guild store - filter by items I don't know.

Performance: It is frustrating to try the harder content only to get lag or disconnected. And then not be able to get back in game for 10 minutes. There are times I think my display is a good 3-4 seconds behind. Overland generally isn't as bad. There are a couple of WBs that spawn adds and have a number of graphical attacks that seem to be an issue. I will lump the Desync in with this - like when you defeat a mob that jumped you have to get away from them and come back to see where the body actually is. But PvP still can be very jerky (the game, not the players) and at times the Archive can be a pain as well. I have fought against invisible mobs for a few seconds up to about 10 I think was the worst. Could attack and heal, but just couldn't see them.

silky_soft · March 1

Do something about low ping NA users abusing the use of autohotkey

Twohothardware · March 2

The biggest pain point in Elder Scrolls Online remains the lack of Crossplay. Players are divided between three platforms and then further divided again by region. That has resulted in a lack of players to keep activities and zones populated, especially on console.

Every popular multiplayer game releasing today is Crossplay enabled. Crossplay would improve Battlegrounds, Cyrodiil, Trials, trading, and every social space in ESO.

Shourrs · March 2

Here are my twopence. Disclaimer: I don't play as much as I used to (also because of this lists), so I won't list any smaller issues and focus on the big ones. It is my opinion. I do respect others and am very happy for everyone enjoying the game more than I do. Really, I mean it. Except for PVP-trolls. They should ... (I leave this to your imagination).

Bugs
1 Recurring Login problems worse in combination with disconnects worse in combination with deserter penalty.
This is by far the worst pain and probably bug.

2 Stuck in combat
3 Group finder not working when full group, sometimes part of the group accepted, other has to follow by porting to others. But to say something positive: the new one is way better than the old one was.

Pains
1 Hybridization, or normalization as I like to call it. Chars feel too similar. You play your daggers and can choose a (probably maelstrom) weapon for the backbar to fire glyphs and that's it. You can play differently, but you lose some percentage of your damage. Good luck finding end-content groups with a bow-bosmer. (It's possible, don't give up).

2 Low class identity. This is getting better. You have one build for most classes that breaks out of normalized patterns - DoT-DK, Ice-Warden, One-Bar-Lightning-Sorc. Going for stronger class than weapon skills counters the hybridization. Still it doesn't feel right to play my Aracnist with DW and I worked hard to get a feeling for my DK. I really would like to see more viable play styles. I also miss class quests. Why Khajit spit fire? I mean, lorebooks are fine, but there could be more depth and story for such an important part of any char.

3 Missing race balance and race identity (outside of RP) with the result that everyone is playing one of three races in endgame (there are few exceptions, but mostly it is Altmer, Dunmer, Khajiit). Give races active skills or take some of the order/fraction/tribe (Vindedusk, Lion Guard, Morag-Tong, ...) to give race choice some more weight. It could also be mixed with weapons/class to give a third, race based morph to emphasis on strengths. Vinedusk + Warden = ranger; Vinedusk + Nightblade = assassin. There can be tons of options.

4 PVP, and its missing mid-game. You either are below 50 or you are playing against pros. Realistic? Yes. enjoyable? No. (You are asking about my opinion, others seem to find it satisfying to troll around killing noobs). Add some broken builds (bomber, unkillable tanks, ball groups, demolisher, ...) and bugs that seem to be worse in PVP (cf. bug list) and I finish cancelling my subscription for some months (happend several times and during this event again) and thinking of quitting for good.

5 Big Bling Badaboom. Animations keep getting bigger, louder, more colorful and - for me - more and more ridiculous. Can you allow me to deactivate cosmetic animations for other players? I don't want things to explode in front of me just because someone mounted up. I deactivated sounds for almost all content and quit questing if these small ***ed show offs pass by too often. Therefore I am not buying any early access stuff (anymore) and wait until most of the players finished playing new content. My gain (your loss): prices are lower by then.

6 Housing slots. I don't by big houses anymore as I know that I never be able to fill them in such details as I liked to. A solution would be to split houses into several areas with separate loading screens. Every area would have its own catalogue. Servers can load one by one. Side effect: You can sell addons to houses - a key to the basement or tower, help by removing debris to a cave behind a waterfall, a bridge that magically spans to a new island in the sky of Coldharbor, ...
Problem solved for houses with several areas. For big, open spaces - I have no idea. My Khajiit temple (Moon Sugar Meadow) will have to remain as it is with low detailing. The ship-cave would be fantastic if I could furnish ship AND cave. I can't do both so I do neither. At least as long as the limit remains.

Sorry for the strong opinion: you focus on the wrong things. Card games, scribing, dual mounts, pursuits, events, skill masks and crown store items (which I understand at least from an economic point of view) instead of either killing bugs, or improving existing core-content (thank you for the new textures and the new world map btw), or creating new one. I did expect something special for the 10th anniversary but finished playing less than in former years and skipping events as the content (even the new quest line) was boring (to me). The whole event-pursuit-daily quest-"content" feels more like work than like a game. Maybe that is what frustrates most. I can live with all of the above if I'd see the game improving. I don't.

yourhpgod · March 3

Feedback on Tank Nerfs and PvP Balance in ESO

Pain Point 1: Over-Nerfing of Tanks
The recent adjustments to health-based scaling and tank gear have significantly weakened tanks, making them less viable in both PvE and PvP scenarios. This has disrupted the balance of gameplay, forcing players to abandon tank roles in favor of DPS or healer builds.

Pain Point 2: Imbalance in Large-Scale PvP
In large-scale PvP (involving 20 to 100 players), tanks are no longer able to fulfill their intended role of drawing attention, disrupting enemy strategies, and protecting smaller groups. The prevalence of area-of-effect abilities and self-sustaining DPS builds has marginalized tanks, reducing their effectiveness and overall impact on the battlefield.

Pain Point 3: Overreliance on Streamer Feedback
Balance decisions appear to be heavily influenced by feedback from streamers and competitive players, who may not represent the broader player base or fully understand the nuances of PvP dynamics. This has led to changes that do not align with the needs or experiences of the wider community, particularly long-term PvP enthusiasts.

Pain Point 4: Lack of PvP Updates and Declining Engagement
The absence of meaningful updates to PvP content, combined with the ongoing nerfs to tanks, has led to a decline in player engagement and viewership on platforms like Twitch. This signals a need for a shift in direction to reinvigorate the PvP community and ensure the longevity of this aspect of the game.

Personofsecrets · March 3

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom , I'd like to thank you very much for stopping by the ToT discussion a little while back. It took me some time to collect my thoughts on the feedback that I want to give, but it is below. Additionally, thank you to the team for looking at all of the comments here.

Bug/Issue 1 - Tales of Tribute Seeding

Spoiler

There is a seeding issue in Tales of Tribute that causes cards to appear in the tavern as multiple copies. This likely has to do with a flawed RNG system that is biased towards picking tavern cards of the same “classes” at the code level rather than picking those tavern cards in a more random way. This assists in creating games which are unfair as one player may be getting more combos than they would otherwise have if the RNG seeding worked better. Additionally, an example of what I mean by “classes” helps illustrate this issue.

We can imagine, for example, that all Toll of Silver are part of the same class because each one in the deck is the same card. It’s also the case that it’s starter morph, Toll of Flesh, is part of that class. And, again, we can imagine that connection since Flesh morphs into Silver. It’s also the case that some cards which are just similar seem to be in the same class. Pilfer and Plunder are part of the same class, but Squawking Oratory seems to be in that same class too. Brigand and Knave are part of the same class, but Knight seems to be as well.

This is a general issue with the games randomness since the seeding not being correctly reset between random events does seem to be a game wide issue that affects all kinds of things from Imperial City trophy rooms to Crown Crates (which is really bad since us players spend money on them). On top of that general issue is the gameplay issue that is caused, for whatever reason, where players are able to take advantage of the poor RNG system. In all honesty, I’ll use some stronger language here and I hope that you all don’t mind, this problem causes abhorrent unnatural gameplay imbalances and especially when looking at cards that are exceptionally good when purchased in multiples such as Agents.

Bug/Issue 2 - Tales of Tribute Griefing

Spoiler

There are players who abuse the turn timer mechanic in Tales of Tribute in order to harass others or gain an unfair advantage. A normal game lasts around 10 minutes, but someone abusing the turn timer, by deliberately waiting the full 1.5 minutes for their turn to end even if they have no further plays available, can cause a game to be extended to 30 minutes or even longer. I’ve had 40-minute games due to this issue. Some players do this to lash out – I know so because they have told me as much. Furthermore, there are reports, mostly from players on EU, that there are a number of players who abuse the turn timer in the ranked mode for what seems like gaining wins by their opponents being encouraged to quit against them lest they sit around for a half hour. Players shouldn’t be able to hold others captive via game mechanics.

Bug/Issue 3 - Broken Loot Drops

Spoiler

There continues to be issues where items aren't in the loot table despite patch notes claiming the release of those items. This is bad for obvious reasons, but also impacts psychology regarding items that aren’t bugged though difficult to acquire since people begin to suspect that what they are going for is actually bugged. There are several examples, but most prominently, this issue seems to happen with the monster shoulder style pages that are available from the DLC dungeon blind boxes. The Blind Born shoulder style page not dropping from the appropriate 1 key coffer at the Undaunted is one specific example of this issue, but other shoulder pages have been affected too. The Blind Born page was never fixed, despite the abundant feedback in the associated forum thread and it isn't acceptable to expect players to just contact customer support to get their keys back. And that fix comes with its own moral hazard because players could spend keys, claim ignorance, and then get the keys restored by support. A number of people tagged employees on the forums and I don't remember there being any response. The issue with Blind Born wasn’t fixed before the style page left the Undaunted vendor.

Bug/Issue 4 - Gameplay Visual Issue

Spoiler

I seem to have some kind of issue where I don’t see important game mechanics at the same time that other players may see them. This issue is particularly important when looking at mechanics that must be done in a quick way such as an interrupt. In high end content, I feel like I have to buffer actions such as interrupts or specific character movements for positioning not because it’s good to stay ahead of the game and be prepared, but because if I don’t start doing things a little too early, then I will miss the window to perform what needs to be done. This impacted me during Mind Mender progression as I wasn’t able to taunt the 3 copies of the split boss in burn phase fast enough after their separation. Again, what is coming across on my screen seems to have already happened for other players, I can’t figure this issue out, and it holds me back. I wish that there was some way to test this issue further in game. It could be my hardware specs are to blame, but I’d like some investigation if possible.

Bug/Issue 5 - Rubber-Banding and Disconnects

Spoiler

Generally, I’m pretty happy with how the game performs, but one sore spot is when trying to participate in any serious level of Cyrodiil combat. As soon as there are a couple of ball groups, I can no longer reliably track enemies without them seeming to rubber-band from spot to spot rather than move fluidly and I can no longer reliably use my global cool downs efficiently in such scenarios as I don’t get fast enough feedback on game actions like gap closing and bar swapping. My use case is detailed by the pictures below. On a related note, zones busy with many players seem to cause my game to crash when teleporting to those zones. The crash will happen repeatedly when going to said zone until it doesn’t.

Pain Point 1 - High End Raiding

Spoiler

It’s been exceptionally difficult for me to find high-end trial groups to play with. I had to finish the Lucent Citadel sticker book via group finder alone. While I’m certainly not the best player in the world and I believe that I have a hardware / internet barrier that prevents me from achieving a higher level of play, I’m also not that bad at the game. I’ve done a number of trial trifectas, have made millions from carry runs, and yet I still struggle in the most abysmal way to find groups to do the content that I’m interested in with.

Pain Point 2 - Tales of Tribute Morph System

Spoiler

When playing Tales of Tribute in a serious and competitive way, the morph system is not functioning as I believe to be intended. What the morph system does is upgrade a card, permanently, in the Tribute deck. In a number of cases, “upgrading” the card can have painful in game side effects because it may give a strategic advantage to an opponent and make one wish that they never morphed the card in question. I’ve lost a large number of games because I morphed Runes of the Draoife into Druid King Vestments. I was too uninformed at the time of morphing the card to really understand that by morphing the card I was permanently setting myself up to just lose some games for no reason other than the opponent getting to buy that morphed card on turn one where the unmorphed card would usually not be problematic.

Again, I’ll use some stronger language here and I hope that is okay. This dynamic is awful. Players should never be punished by “upgrading” their decks. And yet that is what happens in a number of morphing contexts. Players should get a choice of what morphs, if any, to use. Picking cards for a deck is a hallmark of card gaming that should be honored. Lastly, there are achievements tied to morphing cards. So some content isn’t able to completed if one would prefer to not morph their cards for strategic reasons.

I feel pretty strongly about this issue and expect it to be remedied.

Pain Point 3 - Tales of Tribute Balance

Spoiler

A number of card balance choices within Tales of Tribute are quite bad. There are a number of cards that do too much at too early of a point in games and create near-deterministic winning lines of play all on their own. There are also several Patrons that can be abused via using them incessantly. Players should win based on the merits of their ability rather than the merits of game pieces. What’s worse is that though design seems open to a number of changes for Tales of Tribute, they no longer seem open to working on balance issues for game pieces that have been long time problems and that includes balance for cards that are just egregious in what they do. I insist that design sees how good balance is good for all players.

An example may help illustrate the issue with one card, but there are a number of cards

that ought to be adjusted. Pounce and Profit / Grand Larceny are such problematic cards. Someone like the first player to purchase Pounce or Grand on their first or second turn and then gaining a game winning advantage by being able to purchase 8 or 9 cost cards such as Marketplace or the Hagravens on their third or fourth turn goes to show just how over-tuned those particular cards are. Games should not be essentially decided so early and when such an occurrence happens, bad balance is the culprit.

Again, because I think it is worth repeating, Players should win based on the merits of their ability rather than the merits of game pieces.

Pain Point 4 - PvP Balance and the Dragon Knight

Spoiler

Class and set balance is poor in PVP. It doesn’t really make sense to me why several classes get such a strong kit and easy combos to setup while other classes are neglected. Take Sorcerer for example. Why does it have so many tools in its kit? Why does streak function in a way to get away or setup up cheesy combo kills? Whatever happened to the cost increase on this skill? People just spam that skill now anyhow. And why is it seen as a valid form of gameplay to just constantly shield? That is an observation with more general PVP strategy as well. Why is it a valid form of gameplay to build for defense (or just have your defense handed to you if your class has an overloaded kit) and then be able to leverage one or two proc set bonuses, like Balorgh or Accuity, to still run over entire teams of people who didnt' built for cheese? There should be real tradeoffs in PVP and instead some classes just don’t have to make tradeoffs. Some set bonuses let players build as greedily as they want.

I remember when the reflective wings skill was seen as so problematic by development that it was nerfed to the ground. What did it really do though? It was a strong tool that solved a problem. Look at the tools that exist now. They are nowhere near as situational or costly as wings. Just stand in ritual circle and get constant free healing. Remember when Dragon Knights had cheesy resource generation from spamming ash cloud? Yea, it got nerfed into the ground. So when are you taking care of dark deal being the same kind of kit problem solver?

I can see how some cheesy builds create fun moments from time to time, but doesn’t dark convergence with colossus get old after a while? And where is the skill in that? Speaking of Necromancer. It’s really frustrating how Dragon Knight seems frozen in time as a mid-rate class with basically no unique tools in it’s kit, especially after skill scribing, while other strong classes are buffed and replace Dragon Knight.

This all is a problem with multiple layers, but it’s pretty obvious that there should be some balance adjustments to the classes and sets that have cheesy play. Any time Dragon Knight gets something, like sustainable Magma Shell, it is nerfed. There are some Sorcerer builds that might as well be in their own Permanent Magma Shell with zero build tradeoffs by use of just a couple of skills. So either balance even handedly or just give all classes wacky fun house stuff. What’s stopping you?

Lastly, can Stonefist please not have a channel? I don't see how any other class is punished as Dragon Knigh is just for playing. It feels really silly that there is this one skill that "causes death" sometimes. The game isn't so precise and lacking of latency that one should just expect the channel to work as a cool and fun skill tester. The channel stinks.

Pain Point 5 - Infinite Archive Structure

Spoiler

Lastly, I’ll mention briefly that Infinite Archive isn’t that fun or engaging. The early rounds are not challenging and it takes too much consecutive computer time to get to the later stages. Additionally, even when playing in the later stages, the types of gameplay that can slog through round after round are too restrictive. The rare reward of getting a good vision, and that is its own problem because all visions should be good, inherently comes with the punishment of not being able to use it for that long if I feel like standing up from my computer for a little while. This is one point where I will advocate for the casualization of the game mode since I don’t think that most people have the time to sit down and really enjoy getting to challenging later stages anyhow. And what’s up with the trash waves? Why didn’t you just do boss rush? That would have been much cooler. And why is the Ruinarch marauder so much strong than the other ones? If you wanted a cap to how far players could get, then you should have made it the finite archive instead of putting gatekeepers that upend the normal gameplay and require special builds to survive. Those would be special builds that are incredibly slow paced and boring to go through the Archive with, but better be adhered to just in case a Marauder comes to ruin a round.

MreeBiPolar · March 4

Bug AND pain point: regular deaths of passengers on multi-rider mounts on even the slightest bumps.

Pain point: No hints for the Blackwood collectible antiquity leads (Blackwood Tapestry).

MreeBiPolar · March 4

Pain point: Trophy achievements. Both their drop rates and lack of clarity. E.g., three trophies I am missing are (supposedly) from pretty common mobs, specifically, bears, alits and

Spoiler

zombies

. I am pretty sure the number of those I have killed is in hundreds of thousands if not millions by now.

... And it's completely unclear, if any of them count, or only specific versions/those in specific locations. E.g., do "great bears" count for that drop, or only just "bears"?

Shourrs · March 4

I forgot:
7) Deserter penalty. Just had a group with one afk, one Spwan/LA-player. Fought 2 against 4. Left BG. 30 Minutes penalty.

8) Support. Reporting player who are calling me a "*** dog". Response: "After a thorough review of this report, it was determined that no violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct occurred." Well. I can pass the compliment received to the support team and won't bother them again.

Maybe it is time to move on.

Edit: It is **** automatically here, but ingame it is fine? Nice one.

ZOS_RichLambert · March 4

Hey everyone - just wanted to drop in and let you know we've been lurking. Lots of great feedback and callouts over the last month! Thank you so much for taking the time to post.

We've been comparing all of this feedback to our internal lists. There's lots and lots of overlap which is great, (i.e. - stuck in combat, floaty combat, queue problems, patcher breaking, "phantom group bug"... etc) but there are also a few callouts that we weren't aware of and have added them to the list.

Over the next few updates, we're going to try and get as many of these top issues as possible fixed. The highest priority issues we're working on right now are:

Stuck in Combat - we've made some great strides over the last 3 months on this. We're testing some pretty big changes now. It's not ready for prime time, but progress is being made!
Combat look and feel - this is something that's been on our list for awhile now and there is a dedicated team looking at everything from animations, to VFX to sounds. Lots of work still to be done, but the team is rolling.
General inventory pressure - there's lots to say here - we have a lot of things planned, but until we're more confident on when they might land, all I can provide are some hints. Yes we know you all have a lot of furnishings. Yes we know you have a lot of treasure maps, surveys, master writs... etc. .

Thanks again and please keep noting issues!
-rich

Moonspawn · March 4

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] Combat look and feel - this is something that's been on our list for awhile now and there is a dedicated team looking at everything from animations, to VFX to sounds. Lots of work still to be done, but the team is rolling.
-rich

The sound effects of the game are amazing, but the same cannot be said for our characters constant grunting, moaning, yelling and screaming their heads off with every light attack. I propose that we are given the option to turn it off. As I see it, there are two ways of doing this:

- ''Player Voice'' slider added to the audio settings. Please include here the voices of other players too.
OR
- ''No Voice'' option added to the character creation.

Poss · March 4

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Over the next few updates, we're going to try and get as many of these top issues as possible fixed. The highest priority issues we're working on right now are:
Stuck in Combat - we've made some great strides over the last 3 months on this. We're testing some pretty big changes now. It's not ready for prime time, but progress is being made!

Early April Fools? 🤔

LordSkruff · March 4

Seems I was late to the party, but should you take the time to hear my thoughts I would much appreciate it

I read all of the other statements,

I am something of a Endgame PvP tryhard I’ve done it all and seen it all for many years now…

Now as for Issues I will only try to list issues that are profitable for you and will try to convince you on each point.

((((1. IC Porting out of combat to Cyrodiil mid combat. / safezone abuse

In the IC region its most prevalent due to the fear of losing telvars however its doable in any campaign.

I am a PvPer that hunts other PvPers when I log into IC I stream for friends almost always,

I have had days of several engagements per hour where enemy players consistently port out of combat to avoid dying to me.

When I first played in IC it’s daunting, Scary you was afraid that at any moment someone might take all your hard earned work, AND PART of that fear was returning to the base unscathed…

Almost every single player in IC does not leave IC the intended way, they leave by teleporting themselves to cyrodiil, this is not okay especially with no animation to leave you exposed to aggressors such is seen in THE REST OF THE GAME, and other competitive PvP games that even allow such a feature

This completely undermines one of the main the point of IC I have worked hard to play the game better than my opponent on a variety of classes over 20000+ hours yet time and time again I leave IC with only scraps meanwhile the lower skilled players who more inclined to abuse this are able to make the telvar….

Please zenimax fix this. As for safe zones if you aren’t already aware yes there are areas of IC easily accessible where you can achieve the same buffs as if you was in the spawn, typically around the inner / outer borders of districts. Please investigate BOTH of these issues to allow HARDCORE PvPers to be REWARDED for being loyal to you and not feel cheated I know almost all of them on PC EU just make IC worth fighting over…

((((2. General PvP balance

One again I have done it all and played / actively play each area of PvP at a somewhat competitive level

(((2.1Group Buff Set Stacking
Let’s say I play in a highly specialized 4 man or 6 man group and attack a 12 man ball group

There is nobody better at this than those around me

They are despite our superior strategy and optimization still PRETTY DAMN HARD TO KILL even for us…

Not everyone has a giga setup with highly skilled friends to attack ballgroups which is why it’s so damn painful to most average players…

Resolution… concept

Adding more players shouldn’t be a straight outright buff to your performance

Optimizing for a 12 man should be more like a NECESSITY to not die miserably against a smaller more co - ordinated force

Natural behaviour is that weaker players bind together and stronger players split apart

Example transmutation reduces in value by 0.9x modifier for each player affected by this set
Now make ALL SETS HAVE SOME UNIQUE DRAWBACK WHILE IN PvP ZONES

Nobody in PvP should dispute this. Nobody likes to have the bigger side have the best chances of winning all the time and your server performance agrees 👍

Burst is Considerably more potent than pressure

Reasons?
Cleanse CP
Mara’s Balm
Commonly used Cleanse abilities
Ontop of that.
Dots are weak in PvP. Low DPS output burst classes are simply better in a far wider variety of scenarios.

Burst is strong in PvP. But not all classes have burst nor do we want to play all classes with burst.

Make the dot rotations more complicated again increase the damage and reduce the duration to combat the cleanse

25s for cleanse CP
24s for venomous claw to do good damage. Do you see the problem with this?

Make dots 16s and buff the dps by enough to make up the difference in PvE with less spammable casts. Thanks

Also…. I had a crazy idea maybe you like it.. to make dot builds have a solidified place in PvP

Every single dot give it some value. What will this value do?

Reduce healing recieved BY ALLIES by a % not by himself in a 1v1 scenario

Let’s say I play a DK and instead of playing with some crazy AoE oneshot build I play a modest dot build.

If I apply 3 dots to him each dot has some value

Such as

Venomous claw
10% healing recieved
Stacking with
Noxious 7% healing recieved
Volatile 5% healing recieved

This is because they are AOE they have weaker values

This can combine to around a 23% heal recieved debuff AND ENEMIES ONLY TAKE the highest instance of this debuff so we don’t get players with vigor ticks of 100 similar to how breach is applied etc

Thank you for taking your time to read this and if you wish to discuss this further or ask questions contact me in game or on discord

@LordSkruff PC EU
@SKRUFF#5560

Edit - If my words alone don’t convince you ask your trusted community ZoS

Your streamers your dedicated PvPers they will all agree. If not I will convince them on the error of their judgement

And if your developers disagree I would propose to invite them to a phone call to address this directly, or I would accept a fair salary and leave my Job to address PvP myself and make the community proud.

ZOS_Kevin · March 4

Poss wrote: »

show previous quotes

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Over the next few updates, we're going to try and get as many of these top issues as possible fixed. The highest priority issues we're working on right now are:
Stuck in Combat - we've made some great strides over the last 3 months on this. We're testing some pretty big changes now. It's not ready for prime time, but progress is being made!

Early April Fools? 🤔

Nope! All fact, no fiction here!

Anyammis · March 4

Top Bugs/Issues
Bug 1: Booted from Server+Lockout bug-I'm pretty sure this comes from packet loss/erratic ping. My hardmode/trifecta trial group consistently get "dropped from the server for spamming" or various error messages (307, 103, etc) on 1-4 players every other run. Sometimes this can jeapordize our score/achievements and there's nothing much we can do about it. If a support crashes it's probably a wipe. Some trials are worse than others and it's usually worse when an active event is going on.
Bug 2: Vampire Visual Bugs-Personal gripe here but for a decade whenever an elf becomes a vampire their eyes are replaced with human eyes. Please please please I know this is small but it's so frustrating for elven vampires. Also, I don't think the whitewashing of redgaurd vampires has ever been fixed. Can we get vampire base game appearance adjustments so dark skinned characters and khajiit/argonians don't get whitewashed?
Bug 3: Inaccessable Lorebooks/Eidetic-I used to frantically chase after 100% Eidetic on my main because I wanted to complete everything on her but in recent years some lorebooks have been unobtainable and take either years to fix or have not been fixed. I have two books I cannot get from Necrom and it killed the fun of Eidetic hunting for me. I can see four ways to fix this and at this point I don't care which you go with: 1. make eidetic account wide like achievements, can have people still collect the books and hide it similar to scribing ui wise before that character unlocks it, 2. make all books associated with a quest autofill into eidetic on quest complete and maybe make bookshelves/random books prioritize unknown books for the player, 3. actively go back and give all quests post book spawns that are accessable, new quests have this as part of their process, 4.open instances to players post quest (bonus for this is doubles as screenshot enjoyers can get cool visuals after a quest they might want to go back to on a specific character).
Bug 4: Queue Bugs-Endless queue bug happens in battlegrounds, dungeons, and tales of tribute. Worse, you can't often tell if a queue is bugged or if it's just a dead hour. Phantom groups bug is another one.
Bug 5: Nightblade Bowproc Freezing-I don't have a video of this but at random I will have my bow proc not cast and freeze my character for 2+ seconds in the firing animation for bow proc and I have to barswap or dodge roll to unlock myself. It's really frustrating especially in intensive combat. I'm not sure what causes it but it's been an issue that happens to me on occasion for years.

Top Pain Points
Pain Point 1: Lead Curation/RNG/Lore Blurbs-again, I care about lore/story stuff. It's irked me to no end that leads have no guaranteed pity/curation and there are still some original leads I've never had drop for me in game. Some leads are tedious enough to farm one time let alone three for all lore entries. The system as is has potential but misses the mark of what players want from it for lore/story enjoyers.
Pain Point 2: Cosmetic Pain Points-I have a lot of these because lore/story/cosmetics are my main love in this game even if I mostly do trials these days. I still think the IA styles being locked to classes was a mistake and I would once again request the class restrictions be lifted so people can wear what they want. Some styles have undyeable sections which ruin an idea for a look and can limit what matches with what. There are many pieces that would look amazing together but they clip horribly (yes, even older/base game styles). There are some styles (og worm cult, og huntsman, asylum weapons) that were never released to players that some of us would want access too. Please let us have hide options on every slot. Also toggling flaps+hipguards+tassets+loincloths would be appreciated. Character models and some base game styles really could use a texture upgrade, especially if base game is getting some love finally (ty for doing that btw). There are still several dye colors that are crown store stamp only, release them to the dye station please. Please give us the option to have scars+tattoos as different slots, also jewelry/makeup/headwear/eye cosmetics also getting separated especially as there are more of them.
Pain Point 3: Lore/Story/Questing-I would love a story/replay mode to be able to redo quests even without a reward for story purposes or to see the other option I didn't choose or to screenshot a character in a cool story area I can no longer go back to. This would also help with achievements like "this one's on me" and other events that get locked after you complete quests or an achievement. A lot of people I know would like a recommended/chronological to release order for quests and things and find play in any order without any recommendations confusing and afaik the player chronological order chart is no longer maintained. People have mentioned story/solo mode for dungeon stories would be nice (especially because even if you are a good player decked out to the nines some dungeons have anti-solo mechanics that make you phone a friend even if you could do it on your own otherwise). Also as others mentioned please make time pass and show character growth. It's ok to keep play in any order but a recommended order and change/growth would be nice and everything not happening in one year. It's really immersion breaking.
Pain Point 4: Inventory Nightmare-stackable treasure maps, more qol to surveys (tradeable, stowable in craft bags,etc), crown store poisons/potions/foods/etc often junk up space, having to drag around multiple sets for trials on top of juggling loot pickup and other stuff in inventory, wanting to keep lore trinkets/treasures but on top of pinched space it's kinda awful to, upgrades for bank/bag needed for cap, etc.
Pain Point 5: Social Tools/Reporting-I've played this game for a decade and the social tools leave a lot to be desired. Guilds often have to use third party apps like discord to organize, and addons attempting to make in game tools better often trigger social bans/spam flags which hurt guild leads and officers. On top of that, there are a lot of bad actors and griefing players who ruin parts of the game for others for years who do not get penalized despite multiple reports. I've been stalked and harassed personally by someone who despite multiple reports and 20+ other women I know having similar experiences was not banned. In the time this went on he changed his name five times when we tried to warn other victims. There are people who grief tales of tribute, battlegrounds, pvp, etc that are infamous in the community that consistently do this behavior. It's not fun to be against someone who permanently ropes in ToT to frustrate/waste other's time/cause them to forfeit. It's not fun to be in battlegrounds with an inter or afk in spawn or ragequitter who constantly puts their team at a disadvantage. It's not fun to be followed around in cyrodiil or ic by someone telling their friends your position so they can attack you, etc. It's not fun to queue into a dungeon and have someone randomly flame you because you're going too fast or slow for their liking or not doing the strategy they prefer. It's not fun to have a person threaten to kick you from a dungeon if you don't give them your loot they've spied via addons. All of these have caused me to look for alternative games to play in recent years because I don't have faith anything will change as I don't think I've ever had a report come back with anything done about it despite putting details into it. The only people I've ever seen banned were people using slurs or blatantly exploiting and even then it's usually a tempban. You don't have to give details but something like league's feedback report system and actually trying to tackle toxicity would be nice because while I love eso, a lot of times other games are far nicer and people know that if they misbehave there will be consequences and they might lose their account they've invested in. Also, 100 cap on friend and blocklist for playing ten years is painful, can it be increased?

Bonus request: Can we please have the ability to have our alts queued up as a companion and/or houseguest? I would really appreciate it because that was my original hope for companions. As nice as the companions are, I would really rather be roaming around with my alts queued up with a look/skill bar/mount instead.

Tried to make the list more personal, some of what I'd put otherwise was already in the thread earlier but wanted to reiterate some that might otherwise be lost or add a few I didn't see.

tomofhyrule · March 4

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Hey everyone - just wanted to drop in and let you know we've been lurking. Lots of great feedback and callouts over the last month! Thank you so much for taking the time to post.

We've been comparing all of this feedback to our internal lists. There's lots and lots of overlap which is great, (i.e. - stuck in combat, floaty combat, queue problems, patcher breaking, "phantom group bug"... etc) but there are also a few callouts that we weren't aware of and have added them to the list.

Thanks Rich. It makes us feel good to know the team values our feedback.

Because of this thread, I'm actually feeling rather excited to see what's coming in U46. I'm eager to see that, even if some of the smaller bugs and pain points are not at the top of the priority list, that some of that low-hanging fruit can be already actualized. I realize that some of the larger points could take longer to address, but seeing some of these points starting to be addressed would make us more excited about the future of the game.

I would actually love to see more dev comments in the patch notes, especially those where the devs can say "this is something that we saw people asking for." Normally there are only dev comments for combat or set changes, but there have been times (e.g. cosmetic changes like skill VFX or outfit system changes) that something changes and there are no comments, even if the PTS thread about that issue ends up getting to 10,15+ pages of responses and it ends up feeling like those comments are for naught.

I'm very excited to see the new dungeons coming out next week, and this thread has absolutely made me eager to see what the team has to share with us in April.