The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/
User experience
This is a post about the user experience focused on the points in the game that seem to be lacking currently. Eso has a couple of designed negatives build in while psychology 101 dictates to turn those around into positives. In no specific order:
1) Armour goes down the drain in a single evening or less resulting in both a negative user experience paying high repair bills and lowering the perceived value of coloured gear dramatically, I personally stopped giving a damn what colour my gear has, I'm not repairing it anyway. You have turned gear into fast-food instead of "proud to own" items.
2) Other players around should be fun and the more the merrier. Instead you come up with a classic contested content design in the form of mobs/chests/resources/etc. Quest mobs die so fast in way too overcrowded server shards that you can't even get a single hit in. The concerning part is that this will not stop after the initial peek because its a mega server; everyone will always be stuffed in overcrowded shards as it is now. I understand that this is subjective but I haven't heard anyone being positive about this so far.
3) Too much lag. Because of, both over crowded shards, and not moving the EU server to Europe (as you promised) the player experience is pretty much continuously negative in this aspect for a large chunk of your player base.
4) Gold spam. Just too bizarre for words that no one of you saw this coming or even worse; that a decision was made during development to "sort it out when it happens".
The first three can easily be solved by quick and bold decision making, the last one less so unfortunately. Anyway these points are, in my eyes, quite a danger for your retention rate.
I do enjoy the world and the story telling within it immensely, they are easily as good as the single player elder scrolls worlds before it. I am unsure whether or not this is enough, there is a large disconnect between the solo and the mmo experience of the game. I can only hope that the impact of the above is less than I estimate it to be. I sincerely like the game a lot, enough to take the time to write this feedback.
My apologies if this post is placed in the wrong forum, the structure of these forums eludes me.
Kind Regards,
Deg
1) Armour goes down the drain in a single evening or less resulting in both a negative user experience paying high repair bills and lowering the perceived value of coloured gear dramatically, I personally stopped giving a damn what colour my gear has, I'm not repairing it anyway. You have turned gear into fast-food instead of "proud to own" items.
2) Other players around should be fun and the more the merrier. Instead you come up with a classic contested content design in the form of mobs/chests/resources/etc. Quest mobs die so fast in way too overcrowded server shards that you can't even get a single hit in. The concerning part is that this will not stop after the initial peek because its a mega server; everyone will always be stuffed in overcrowded shards as it is now. I understand that this is subjective but I haven't heard anyone being positive about this so far.
3) Too much lag. Because of, both over crowded shards, and not moving the EU server to Europe (as you promised) the player experience is pretty much continuously negative in this aspect for a large chunk of your player base.
4) Gold spam. Just too bizarre for words that no one of you saw this coming or even worse; that a decision was made during development to "sort it out when it happens".
The first three can easily be solved by quick and bold decision making, the last one less so unfortunately. Anyway these points are, in my eyes, quite a danger for your retention rate.
I do enjoy the world and the story telling within it immensely, they are easily as good as the single player elder scrolls worlds before it. I am unsure whether or not this is enough, there is a large disconnect between the solo and the mmo experience of the game. I can only hope that the impact of the above is less than I estimate it to be. I sincerely like the game a lot, enough to take the time to write this feedback.
My apologies if this post is placed in the wrong forum, the structure of these forums eludes me.
Kind Regards,
Deg
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