State of the Game Address

Jade1986

KerinKor wrote: »

laced wrote: »

And not a peep on the EU servers actually being MOVED TO THE EU?! Really disheartening.....

Not disheartening at all, I have no 'latency' problems playing from Europe and I much prefer the servers being local to ZOS until the current set of problems is sorted out.

As usual, people are fixated on 'ping' times and blame everything on that, I see very, very few 'lags' situations and those I do are patently server-side and not due to the wire between they and me.

Not going to turn this into an argument, but on SWTOR and BF4 I have 10 ms lag, in this game, and I am NOT alone, I have a minimum of 160ms and a maximum of 600 ms in pve and near 1000 ms in pvp, have you checked your latency, I am guessing no. This is with 100 MB/s fiber optic. So it's not my, nor the other majority of the EU players' internet connections, it is the fact that we are using the US datacenters right now.

Aenra

@ZOS_MattFiror‌

Please know that those of us that have been around for a bit know and can relate to your issues. We will -still- be here, subbed, posterior to this launch month.

Please also know that our previous gaming experiences (while the cause of plenty a shout in these forums) are also a goldpile. IF taken advantage of. We support you. We remain. Give us a Bug subthread, give us a Feedback subthread. We will use it.

Thank you for the non formal, non self-entitled tone of your letter. It is much appreciated

Shimizu

I think as far as launches go, while there have been problems and frustrations this is far from the worst experience; the amount of server up-time has actually been quite impressive for launch week.

However, the team certainly has their work cut out for them to bring this game up to what would be an acceptable standard for a modern MMO.

Botters & spammers of course are a problem - I don't mind having to delete a few mails from my box when I log in, but the dungeon camping problem is a big problem, and not fixed by simply adding a timer to the loot - this just cripples real players not botters who can just rotate in more accounts. Hopefully we will see some improvement here in the short term.

Yes, there are bugs and broken bits but over the last few weeks I do keep seeing them getting fixed & sorted out, so kudos there.

Larger scale problem that I see is the direction the economy of the game is heading. The guild membership for buying and selling was a good idea on paper, but what it has led to is guilds with hundreds or thousands of players who want nothing to do with each other and only exist for having a 'shop'. The 50-member requirement to even have a shop has exemplified this problem and led to spam inviting, and no thought at all goes into who these people are that you're inviting in. If the objective is just to get as many players as possible for this purpose, why not just have a global market? You could still allow guilds to have an exclusive market for members with lower prices. This ties in with the inventory issues, of which there are already hundreds of comments, and guild banks. Why a member limit restriction to even have guild storage? Why the hate for small guilds of friends who wish to play together and share items, indeed to offset the horribly constructed inventory system?

Its a vicious circle currently. No inventory space means I'm not picking up anything I don't need which means I'm not selling anything except shopfeeding stackables, which means I don't have money to buy anything which leads to me trying to be even more self sufficient and trying to pick up everything to make food, glyphs, equipment ...which further worsens the lack of inventory space. I've heard the arguments about the inventory limit being the soft cap on your crafts, but honestly, even trying to level ONE tradeskill will take up 70-80 slots. I can't buy what I need easily as i've got to go through the broken, nonfunctioning guild store interface that can't really be searched, which means I have to find and join the biggest 'guilds' possibel full of people I don't really want to talk to or associate with but who might buy/sell something I need. A major overhaul of the inventory system is needed, sooner rather than later, as not only is the entire situation frustrating it will lead to further economic stagnation

This does not encourage community and I feel is detrimental to the game as a whole, as people don't want to join a small guild of friends to quest together because they don't want to give up their 'market slots' and unless they can scrape up 10 people there's no shared storage and if you've got 50, well its no longer a small guild of friends. The market really needs to be globally streamlined and if you want to have guild exclusive stores, then keep them as a guild benefit.

This is the only major problem as I see it. The class/skills system works, quests are interesting and innovative for the genre, travel takes reasonable time, etc. Sure there is room for tweaking/fixing these but overall - fine. Its just inventory management and guild management inasmuch as it pertains to inventory that are letting the game down.

kasdelfini

A FEW SUGGESTIONS:

1.) Gold Spam Issues. There probably is legal precedent for ESO to pursue said websites advertising gold for cash. Also, algorithmic detection of Gold Resellers on Chat based primarily on posts per minute and blacklisted words. UNLESS, it might be easier to Sell Gold via ESO website. Much like purchasing Palomino Horse or Imperial Edition. Thus getting rid of eso gold resellers. (players would much rather pay eso for genuine product vs third party illegal goods)

2.) Customer Service & Emails. Today I finally received my invitation code for the forums. Going through current customer service platform was hell. The only way I got my invitation code was to have you guys finally call me. (emails were returned to sender) I suggest upon purchase and register for primary eso, forums account is activated using the same credentials. Also, your current customer service platform has to be changed. Something more along the lines of "Desk" could work.

mndfreeze

djodars wrote: »

liam.dinsdalerwb17_ESO wrote: »

Any ETA on Australian servers? The latency is really a problem...

@liam.dinsdalerwb17_ESO This will never happen... there isn't enough Australian players to warrant their own server. Maybe if the market extends to Asia you'll have a server then.

sadly the market did extend to asia, just not the normal player types we want to see.....They should setup a seperate mini-megaserver/instance and anyone coming from all those shady goldfarmer counties get auto put into it, so they can bot and farm all they want but have no interaction with the people in the UK and states, so they just bot by themselves in thai-china-indo-whatever instance land.

Yes I know really it wouldn't work thanks to simple proxies or even just having enough money (which they do) to just get a pipe VPN'd to an american host, BUT THE THOUGHT IS WHAT COUNTS.

I'm all for a better implementation of the timer feature. Once you have killed the boss (which needs to be set to ALWAYS drop its same loot) it auto pops you into a new instance where the boss respawns but never drops anything or gives you xp again. Because even people shouldn't be farming the same boss over and over, legimate players or not because the end result is the same to the rest of us. Perhaps for mobs that are bigger and more unique/harder to kill, achievment type stuff, the timer can reset to say, once an hour or even once every few hours.

For players that are trying to 'farm' you can always farm world mobs since that requires you to actually play the game, or at least play it more then just sitting at a boss spawn point. Or you can still farm bosses but will have to do it more the style of older mmo's where you finished doing one world boss and because the spawn time was so long, you set up a rotation of places you hit. So you do 8 dungeons, back to back.

Dekkameron

Thanks for the statement

KerinKor

kasdelfini wrote: »

A FEW SUGGESTIONS:

1.) Gold Spam Issues. There probably is legal precedent for ESO to pursue said websites advertising gold for cash.

Since the sites themselves aren't in America's jurisdiction and since this is a civil not a criminal matter then the only way ZOS can try to get them closed down is to pursue claims such as Copyright and that's very hard, there's a reason one of the world's largest RMT outfits in in Hong Kong.

The reason Blizzard is the only MMO developer who successfully shutdown a bot/hack developer was by winning a copyright case, the 'hacking' itself isn't a criminal offense and there is no civil law against it.

Gold selling is a hell of a lot harder to pursue because it's not at all clear if any civil offense is being perpetrated beyond breach of contract with respect to the TOS. Again, there's a reason no RMT operation has ever been shutdown by legal means by an MMO publisher.

xramirez535b14_ESO

I'm bothered that you made no mention of the biggest issue with PvE that happens across the board... Phasing. Grouping is highly discouraged in this game with the way the phasing works. I would like to hear something from the Devs on this. Is this working as intended? Did you intend for this to be played mostly solo?

slackmare

tpanisiakb16_ESO wrote: »

While it's nice to hear of this, I worry it's very little very late.

why not go the extra step and just allow people the option to do public dungeons alone? Barring the stuff in Cyrodiil, of course.

That said, it seems like Craglorn, while interesting to say the least, is going to be skipped over by a great many people in the same situation as myself. As this game is, as Angry Joe ever so eloquently put it, "Most unsocial PvE MMO game ever." it's been rather hard to find myself in PvE-centered guilds. I have yet to make any meaningful connections and I feel it's certainly a large part of the game design. While I've made many friends due to tanking dungeons, I have yet to ever be messaged by them again. Why? I feel they just don't know who the hell I am on their friends list because my tank name is different than my account name which shows up on rosters and friends lists. This all said, I know I'm not going to be able to have any meaningful progress into Craglorn or Trials. Is there anything on the back burner which is still going to keep people like me interested at end game? Or is there an expectation (and viability) to PUG?

Im not entirely sure its the game.... perhaps no one messages you again because they grouped with you and see how your a negative Debbie Downer. Personally ive met so many people here that i meet up with daily..in my guild and in my friends list. The SOCIAL part of a MMO is what YOU put in to it. And sounds like you just spew a lot of garbage. Im sure they know your @gamename. They've probably already associated it with that guy that just complains the whole time.

In your comment you spew wanting it to be social yet you come right around in the same paragraph and request the dungeons to be SOLO instances? Your probably the type that screams about all the bug fixes but FREAKS out when game goes down for maintenance to implement these said fixes. There is just no way to please you people. Complain if you do/ complain if you dont
sad

slackmare

Leiloni wrote: »

TGEK wrote: »

keondre.branchcub18_ESO wrote: »

forums dead, economy dead, company dead, game soon to be dead.

Forums being dead is the biggest shock to me.

I usually spend quite a lot of time on forums for a game I'm really into, but ESO's forums have never appealed to me since I first saw them back in September. I have transferred my time to Reddit as the format works well and a lot of people post interesting topics. I would however support these forums if they did a revamp to the format and hopefully more players would follow.

Also I found this thread via Reddit. Js!

Yeah you cannot find ANYTHING on these forums. I usually only come here to click service alerts and then head to Tamriel Foundry for their superb forums. Not to mention when the server goes down...threads pop up almost instantly giving insight of why it went down...Come to the forums here to find out? /crickets
Nothing...nada.

These forums are quit a joke indeed.

castigulaub17_ESO

Thank you for the update. The game is great, I am having a great time. The bots are out of control. The bots now own all the public dungeons. They are very easy to spot. They always huddle stacked on top of each other. Now in two groups of four.

The bots are preventing players from looting and defeating the end bosses. I am glad you are aware and upset by the situation. The bot problem is getting worse, not better. Not just worse but drastically worse.

My idea, assign GM's to patrol these bosses, and ban the bots on the spot. Again very easy to find. Look for bots stacked on top of one another, also look for the nonsense names: fsdghshf and dshsdlash, etc.

This bot problem is the most detrimental to your game right now. This is your game killer. What ever you are doing, its not working. Change tactics and get aggressive. At the end of the day, if people can not complete content they will cancel their subs. This game charges a premium sub fee, as customers we expect premium service. Right now this is not happening. Certain content is not accessible due to bots.


I want this game to succeed, I hope you take action, soon. The free month is almost over.

Klarick

Aenra wrote: »

@ZOS_MattFiror‌

Please know that those of us that have been around for a bit know and can relate to your issues. We will -still- be here, subbed, posterior to this launch month.

Please also know that our previous gaming experiences (while the cause of plenty a shout in these forums) are also a goldpile. IF taken advantage of. We support you. We remain. Give us a Bug subthread, give us a Feedback subthread. We will use it.

Thank you for the non formal, non self-entitled tone of your letter. It is much appreciated

Exactly this. Not everyone is new to the MMO genre, as most of these posters seem to be.

Great game by the way!

Dirtybyrd

Keep up the Good Work!! I love it so far, and I am glad to kno that you all are working on bugs, bots and them damn spammers! lol... ESO got my $15 per mth. We all need to remember! The game has only been live a month, We have to work with them so that they can know what we are wanting and going thur.

Eire_Raven

Hi Matt, thanks for the update. Know you guys/gals are working hard and while I'd certainly like things fixed sooner than later, I'm not about to give you crap for doing your best. This is my first MMO and I came to it due to my love of TES. I'm very pleased so far and can't wait to see what the game looks like in a few months when most of these issues are locked down. And thanks for making it so easy to report players like gold spammers - I take 30 seconds and do my part to kick these fools out.

grizzbi

Thanks for this much needed feedback. It's a little bit more detailed than usually and it's a great move.

Now about the cancel animation exploits. Here is my feedback. I'd like to be sure that this is not overlooked because it's something many of us would like to be addressed (please have a look at the relative post in english customer help section with more than 8K views and 160+ comments):

There are different animations during combat

There's an animation before a skill connects to the target, even for instant skills.
There's an animation after the damage is done: it's the time the attacker needs to take to recover from the move to be back, able to do something else.

How they can be cancelled

You can do instant damage by cancelling the first animation (for all the instant abilities, which all have an animation by default). You can also probably "optimize" any skill by cancelling the second animation to be back on foot immediately. And If you cancel the first animation(for instant abilities), in fact, you cancel both, logically.

The exploits

If you do it manually, you may have some results. But when used with macro, it can become even worst. For different reason, more and more people have direct access to macro tools. There are even topics in this forum about it. People just share their scripts. It's as simple as a copy/paste. This needs to be corrected before people have to use it to gain an unfair advantage over those who don't. And the combat definitely needs to keep its animations to stay interesting and visually pleasant.

A possible solution

For the first one, the casting/Loading animation:

- Damage should never be applied before it connects visually. It means that instant abilities should not really be instant but instead very short.
- You should be able to "reset" a skill before it connects with a block or a higher priority skill. But then the damage should not be applied.

For the second one, the "recovery animation":

- You should never be allowed to cancel this animation even with a higher priority skill. That's a cooldown. And it's necessary. Depending on the skill, this cooldown may vary. And It should match the visual animation length so people can learn to use it.

There's no easy solution. But I think it's a logical one.

I hope it can help to make this game (even) better.

Cameryn

I'd really like the banking system fixed.

I like the provisioning crafting skill. On my main it's maxed out and I try to keep our guild bank organized with crafting materials. Unfortunately, due to the fact that things don't autostack, and you can't combine them in the bank, you have to take things out to combine them and put them back in the guild bank. 500 slots may seem like a lot, but not to an active guild.

The problem? The fact that you can only do a few items at a time. "Waiting on last transaction" nonsense is killing me.

You guys really need to fix this. Autostacking, without any bugs or exploits, should be a no-brainer.

TheGrandAlliance

Any statement in regards to the "Imperial Edition lockout" and the failure of customer service to respond?....

kirnmalidus

KerinKor wrote: »

Not disheartening at all, I have no 'latency' problems playing from Europe and I much prefer the servers being local to ZOS until the current set of problems is sorted out.

The servers aren't currently "local to ZOS" per se, I'm pretty sure they are using the Amazon cloud platform to host the megaservers.

Carde

@Milanna‌

Except in this case your "supplies" are paying customers that are going to click unsubscribe.

Azzuria

keondre.branchcub18_ESO wrote: »

forums dead, economy dead, company dead, game soon to be dead.

Can you add a '***' forum button that also adds the account to the in-game ignore list?

Other than that, thanks for the update and keep up the good work! I've noticed incremental improvements in game play and stability over the past few weeks and look forward increased playability and content.

codyyoungnub18_ESO

Azzuria wrote: »

keondre.branchcub18_ESO wrote: »

forums dead, economy dead, company dead, game soon to be dead.

Can you add a '***' forum button that also adds the account to the in-game ignore list?

Other than that, thanks for the update and keep up the good work! I've noticed incremental improvements in game play and stability over the past few weeks and look forward increased playability and content.

I wish.


P.S. Loving the game, keep your vision.

Majic

The Vision Thing

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

We’re working on fixing problems, we’re combatting black market gold farmers, and we have a hefty new patch coming shortly. ESO is already an awesome game, and it will only get better from here. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you in Tamriel.

Thanks for a refreshing, informative, no-bull report. Communication has been a big problem, so please keep this up and make it a habit for the rest of the staff.

I know there are plenty of problems to solve and that you have your work cut out for you, but ambitious goals and a willingness to take risks have always been a hallmark of this franchise and have always paid off.

As long as you stay true to your vision, the game embodies it and your deeds match your words, I'll be a customer.

Impress me.

Milanna

Carde wrote: »

@Milanna‌

Except in this case your "supplies" are paying customers that are going to click unsubscribe.

Witty, but no. The supplies are the loot.
You can relax though. I was not serious, and I don´t see this being implemented anytime soon. Do you?

Grageeky

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

As it’s now two and a half weeks since we officially launched on April 4, I think it’s a good time to bring everyone up to date on The Elder Scrolls Online service...

Thank you Matt! Excellent communications to the community and accolades to ZOS for making the best game ever!

Carde

Milanna wrote: »

Carde wrote: »

@Milanna‌

Except in this case your "supplies" are paying customers that are going to click unsubscribe.

Witty, but no. The supplies are the loot.
You can relax though. I was not serious, and I don´t see this being implemented anytime soon. Do you?

Wasn't trying to be witty, just my honest assessment of the situation.

And to answer your question: Yes, potentially.

jvargas150_ESO

Fix ONE OF THE MAIN ISSUES ASAP,

Why does a sword and shield do more damage then a 2hander?!! How did this get past BETA?!! This alone makes me want to quit...

Before you say anything on the this topic or that I am wrong do a lil research or try it out your self by calculating the DPS difference between the two..

mhmfrogub17_ESO

It's been two weeks since I put in a ticket about my back slots being reset. I lost 20 slots (from 80 back to 60). The ticket number was 140410-002103, I have yet to get my slots back or the money to purchase them again. Needless to say, this is pissing me off.

According to this topic the bank bug was fixed but I don't see it and it affected more than just a few people.

Raventiger_sb

I too would like to add my thanks for this game. I've really enjoyed this game, and I'm glad to see ZOS working on sorting out the launch issues.

Ryskim

Currently I am loving the game. Yes the RMT is a problem and yes I hate them too. Make the drops from dungeon bosses untradeable and unsellable and problem solved.

Other than that I am still looking for playable Necromancy. It's the only thing I hugely miss from this Elder Scrolls game. I want to be a necromancer and join the Bloodthorns and do missions for Angof the Gravesinger. I would fall in love forever with this game if I could do that.

Lunachik

Thanks for all you do to continue making the game even better! I can only imagine what you're up against, esp dealing w/gold farmers, bots and trolls, oh my! Stay strong!