Should ZOS focus more on cosmetics or combat and performance?

Ryori729

My comments are specific to XBox. I can't speak on the other platforms.

I have an alt account I use on my Xbox One. Yes, I know it is very old in terms of the console life span at this point however, they claim to still support it. With the One, I would say performance is more stable but worse. During the PvP event BGs were stop motion. Was in Cyrodiil last night and as soon as I got in melee distance to an opponent, the stop motion started. Years ago, I didn't have that problem. Large groups caused the game to crash but never had an issue with a 5 on 5 fight like it does now. Base game activity is a problem with bosses that spawn a lot of AoE and/or adds. In IA at times I fought invisible mobs for 5-10 seconds. It has become common for me to be riding along and then teleport backwards demounted.

I don't care as much about the One, but the core point is that I am seeing things in the last few months that were not as bad as they are now.

On the new X series, Cyrodiil is still lag prone. BGs were not stop motion, but issues were common. IA is more solid but some days there is still a desync of several seconds at times. Even overland things, skills stop firing for a bit. I have to dodge roll to be able to loot something.

A guildmate who raids at Vet level for achievements often has had issues where they loose several team members at the same time which for some achievements ends that run and they have to start over.

So I understand that they have different teams, but at this point to me they are putting new paint on a building that seems about ready to collapse. I have played MMOs for 20 years, and none of them have had the performance issues of ESO. To be fair, they were all on PC but I think a new series X is way more powerful than the PC I had 20 years ago and I was in 20v20 BGS then.

Also, I will say I do still enjoy the game, but the frequent technical issues are taking away from that.

Kappachi

reazea wrote: »

Kappachi wrote: »

Kind of a loaded question the way the OP is phrased. Any dev should of course focus more on gameplay elements/combat/performance/etc. But I feel like they've been doing a good job with that, my only concern is overland difficulty but they addressed that and said they'd fix it. I've liked the combat changes that made weaving less core to the experience for instance while still giving it a benefit if you do go for it. Vet content feels very well balanced still, etc.

And no, ToT/companions do not fit into "cosmetics" category, companions are directly involved in combat & have their own unique and special abilities and ToT itself is a fully featured game mode that gives good rewards for playing.

In my view companions are more like pets. They certainly aren't needed in an MMO where there are thousands of others you can group with to complete content. Plus, PvE content is so easy a companion isn't going to help much. We can just blow everything down with sub par builds as it is. And ToT is a card game. Nobody invests $5,000 into a computer to play card games. And housing is strictly cosmetics in every way.

All these things detract from the core of the game and the bloat negatively impacts performance. So the OP has some pretty good points in my view. End game content with groups of high APM players suffer enormously with performance issues. It's a really big problem. As the OP pointed out, casual players don't have performance issues for the most part. Certainly not in comparison to what it's like in Cyrodiil or vet trials.

Have you never reached favor with one of your companions? You get their bonus ability permanently, Each companion you max out is like a free CP slot-in, Tanlorin's is really useful for force lockpicking & not breaking picks for instance, or the other new one's ability to detect heavy sacks is as big as the lv 10 excavation tree perk. Also overland content will get harder & companions make soloing the non-DLC dungeons a lot easier... Sure it's an MMO but when you just wanna chill and play alone why is there any problem with that? This is pretty much the biggest singleplayer RPG in existence with its content.

reazea

Kappachi wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Kappachi wrote: »

Kind of a loaded question the way the OP is phrased. Any dev should of course focus more on gameplay elements/combat/performance/etc. But I feel like they've been doing a good job with that, my only concern is overland difficulty but they addressed that and said they'd fix it. I've liked the combat changes that made weaving less core to the experience for instance while still giving it a benefit if you do go for it. Vet content feels very well balanced still, etc.

And no, ToT/companions do not fit into "cosmetics" category, companions are directly involved in combat & have their own unique and special abilities and ToT itself is a fully featured game mode that gives good rewards for playing.

In my view companions are more like pets. They certainly aren't needed in an MMO where there are thousands of others you can group with to complete content. Plus, PvE content is so easy a companion isn't going to help much. We can just blow everything down with sub par builds as it is. And ToT is a card game. Nobody invests $5,000 into a computer to play card games. And housing is strictly cosmetics in every way.

All these things detract from the core of the game and the bloat negatively impacts performance. So the OP has some pretty good points in my view. End game content with groups of high APM players suffer enormously with performance issues. It's a really big problem. As the OP pointed out, casual players don't have performance issues for the most part. Certainly not in comparison to what it's like in Cyrodiil or vet trials.

Have you never reached favor with one of your companions? You get their bonus ability permanently, Each companion you max out is like a free CP slot-in, Tanlorin's is really useful for force lockpicking & not breaking picks for instance, or the other new one's ability to detect heavy sacks is as big as the lv 10 excavation tree perk. Also overland content will get harder & companions make soloing the non-DLC dungeons a lot easier... Sure it's an MMO but when you just wanna chill and play alone why is there any problem with that? This is pretty much the biggest singleplayer RPG in existence with its content.

I have six companions maxed out and am getting the perks from all six of them. None of the perks are worth the time and effort it took to level the companions.