SLy_Kyti wrote: »

This is disheartening.
Care to name these "top end guilds" that are seeing their members leave?

It would be easier to name all of the top guilds that aren't having issues with player morale...The best example I can give is Last Prodigies, they were an aussie hardcore guild that smashed every trial time for months but they completely died out, I can name many more but I don't want to start up pointless bickering and drama, I just want to let everyone know that with the way things are headed there won't be many people left to even remember SO mechanics, much less progress through them on a daily basis(which was the case prepatch)

Natjur wrote: »

Also when out of enlightenment, a lot of players log off and play some other game.

Given how quickly that runs out they must leave after what, an hour or so?

In any case, there hasn't been any "content" content in a long while. I've been hoping that they just saved some up to drop after console release, but a bone before then would have been nice.

The game was never designed for progression guilds. The pc release was effectively a paid beta as well. There is a reason why so much horizontal content was added instead of "end game" content. All content additions are likely to be little more than "things to do" and not tied to uber gear progression so I have no idea what carrot you are looking for on your stick.

It will be a wise option to think of this game as a coop TES game rather than a traditional mmo. Any player who has used "grind" spots to level and bypassed exploration, objective game play and questing dug their own grave. Describing any mechanics as "it won't level me fast or at all!" is not playing the game for what it is. ESO is an rpg mmo. Dodging systems because they are less efficient is outside of the game play design and the fault of the player.

That aside, the conversion to b2p put massive delays on the content delivery. This is effectively a new launch and the wait period for new end game content is upon us once again. Guilds leaving because they are bloated with with level capped players wanting to repeat dungeons 500 time like in Wow is like beta players complaining end game content is too light because they power leveled instead of actually playing the content before them. That is not the point of beta. ZOS will likely never admit they suckered PC users into paying for an extended beta but the push for the most basic TES features prior to console launch proves it. Their focus was NOT on end game and playing for end game alone over the last year was futile.

These players will leave and new players will arrive to play a TES game. I can only see ESO becoming the online TES game it wanted to be. Mmo players coming for any other reason other than being absorbed into the lore rich world of TES game will be disappointed.

Romo wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

.....
Starting next week, thousands of fresh meat new people will join the game and I'd imagine there will be a lot of new guilds, more people in Cyrodiil and eventually more players doing veteran dungeons.

I have seen this and many comments similar to it.

Unfortunately, for the "new people" that would come due to B2P, they could have bought the game, waited for April 18/19 install it, get the 30days that came with it and have "free" time until the FTP portion of B2P started on March 17.

So I think a lot of the "new" people, are already here.... and it is none too crowded is it?

For the part I've marked in bold I believe you meant to say February 18/19.

Romo wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Romo wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

.....
Starting next week, thousands of fresh meat new people will join the game and I'd imagine there will be a lot of new guilds, more people in Cyrodiil and eventually more players doing veteran dungeons.

I have seen this and many comments similar to it.

Unfortunately, for the "new people" that would come due to B2P, they could have bought the game, waited for April 18/19 install it, get the 30days that came with it and have "free" time until the FTP portion of B2P started on March 17.

So I think a lot of the "new" people, are already here.... and it is none too crowded is it?

For the part I've marked in bold I believe you meant to say February 18/19.

Yup.. yup... and OOOOPS!

Happens to the best of us... Just the other day I told my family I was going to Vegas in April, when I meant to say June. I wasn't confused about what month I meant, but somehow the wrong month just came out

Just look at the recent decision to nerf Undaunted helm drops (by moving them all to the last boss, eliminating farming runs).

Zos is catering to the extreme casual RP type crowd that doesn't care, and then also (in an odd way) catering to the extreme hardcore crowd that grind/farm whatever they want no matter how horrible the drop rates by (correctly or incorrectly) assuming they will hang around and grind even if the drop rate falls from 20%, to 2%, to .02%.

If you are a "REGULAR PLAYER", which to me means you play 4 or more days a week, but rarely 7 days a week, and for several hours on those days, but never "all day" without a break.....this game is a slap in the face.

For example: Undaunted Helms.

Without "helm farming runs" you have to find a group to complete the dungeon. With daily pledges it's almost impossible to group for a non-pledge vet dungeon. If the pledge is Wayrest, good luck forming a decent CoH group.

So, not only are you faced with a small chance of getting the drop (maybe 10%) but you also only get a chance to run the dungeon every few days. Pretty horrible.

On the other hand, your die-hard elite grinders and guilds all already have the sets. They grind new content the day it's released. They form up, grind and repeat, till everyone has it and then move on. They do 20 runs in a day when it takes a "regular player" probably 2 months to get 20 runs if they make it a priority.

On the other other hand, your super causal RP type, takes 6 months to get to lvl50, players don't give a rip. They don't care if they get the helm. They don't care if every player other than them already has 3000 CP. They are blissfully ignorant of the barriers in front of certain achievements.

For example: VR14 upcoming removal/releveling

The die-hard elite grinders got here FAST. They've enjoyed months and months of being OP and facerolling everything they find because they efficiently and OBSESSIVELY achieved VR14 almost immediately.

RP types don't care.

"REGULAR PLAYERS" Just recently achieved this milestone. After struggling to compete for months, I finally got my first VR14 only a couple of months ago. I have played since launch but achieved VR14 just in time to learn of the releveling. I have friends in the same boat and friends that are just now VR12 and VR13.

They should have releveled at the start when they realized how fast people were getting VR14 (if that was a problem) or they should leave it alone. It makes no sense to allow the elite few to enjoy it for months and then remove it after the majority of the people who want to achieve it finally get there.

For example: Champion Points.

And now here we go again. VR will be going away and we've all been essentially releveled (per the change). The elite will grind CP like crazy (already happening), the RP type don't care, but the Regular Players will struggle with the game until we finally get to 1000+ CP many months after the elite.....only to immediately see it nerfed/releveled again.

This game rewards the obsessive grinders and the super-casual RP crowd. Everyone in between that I talk to in-game is very frustrated.

olemanwinter wrote: »

Just look at the recent decision to nerf Undaunted helm drops (by moving them all to the last boss, eliminating farming runs).

Zos is catering to the extreme casual RP type crowd that doesn't care, and then also (in an odd way) catering to the extreme hardcore crowd that grind/farm whatever they want no matter how horrible the drop rates by (correctly or incorrectly) assuming they will hang around and grind even if the drop rate falls from 20%, to 2%, to .02%.

If you are a "REGULAR PLAYER", which to me means you play 4 or more days a week, but rarely 7 days a week, and for several hours on those days, but never "all day" without a break.....this game is a slap in the face.

For example: Undaunted Helms.

Without "helm farming runs" you have to find a group to complete the dungeon. With daily pledges it's almost impossible to group for a non-pledge vet dungeon. If the pledge is Wayrest, good luck forming a decent CoH group.

So, not only are you faced with a small chance of getting the drop (maybe 10%) but you also only get a chance to run the dungeon every few days. Pretty horrible.

On the other hand, your die-hard elite grinders and guilds all already have the sets. They grind new content the day it's released. They form up, grind and repeat, till everyone has it and then move on. They do 20 runs in a day when it takes a "regular player" probably 2 months to get 20 runs if they make it a priority.

On the other other hand, your super causal RP type, takes 6 months to get to lvl50, players don't give a rip. They don't care if they get the helm. They don't care if every player other than them already has 3000 CP. They are blissfully ignorant of the barriers in front of certain achievements.

For example: VR14 upcoming removal/releveling

The die-hard elite grinders got here FAST. They've enjoyed months and months of being OP and facerolling everything they find because they efficiently and OBSESSIVELY achieved VR14 almost immediately.

RP types don't care.

"REGULAR PLAYERS" Just recently achieved this milestone. After struggling to compete for months, I finally got my first VR14 only a couple of months ago. I have played since launch but achieved VR14 just in time to learn of the releveling. I have friends in the same boat and friends that are just now VR12 and VR13.

They should have releveled at the start when they realized how fast people were getting VR14 (if that was a problem) or they should leave it alone. It makes no sense to allow the elite few to enjoy it for months and then remove it after the majority of the people who want to achieve it finally get there.

For example: Champion Points.

And now here we go again. VR will be going away and we've all been essentially releveled (per the change). The elite will grind CP like crazy (already happening), the RP type don't care, but the Regular Players will struggle with the game until we finally get to 1000+ CP many months after the elite.....only to immediately see it nerfed/releveled again.

This game rewards the obsessive grinders and the super-casual RP crowd. Everyone in between that I talk to in-game is very frustrated.

Great assessment.
+1 for writing it down

I have no clue how many of the leaderboard players have actually decided to leave ala permanent basis, but I do know that in the last top guild I joined the GM told me they had been dealing with atrition for quite a while because of disatisfaction with a whole seriers of issues, not just the lack of instances.

Truth is though this game has never offered progression raiding and it never will, since that is never been the focus so I don't see why anyone interested in it should be surprised really. Trials and vet DSA are not raids in any conceivable definition of the word to anyone who has actually done them in other games. They are dressed up DPS checks, long ago proven to be easily put on farm. SO offers more HPs on par with usual entry level raid, but not much else.

Many guilds asked and repeatedly about when might we see more traditional raids in the game which constituded something other than the same old tired recylced mechanics of block/roll doge/and AoE; we asked for debuffs and CC to actually matter rather than just DPSing, for group composition to matter, etc. Answers were the usual "we are looking at it internally" , "we would like to at some point in the future," etc.

It has simply proven to not be a priority of the game, and I am fairly certain that isn't going to change. One 12 man a year does not sustain a player base interested in that type of gameplay, and I would say @Tamanous is spot on with saying the game from B2P forward will likely be basically a nice coop for TES online and little else in the way of usual MMO elements. That need not be a bad thing, considering the player base as a whole and with what console launch will bring. It is what it is, to quote the cliche.

Many hardcore players have quit or left the game for a bit since this patch came out.

On the PVE side, there is little reason to do Trials besides the "fun" factor. Since the most optimized builds require 0 Trial gear, no one needs to actually do those anymore. Hard modes are really fun, but the hard mode loot still isn't usable. Right now, people are just farming DSA and the Undaunted helms (which they have been doing for months before this). Players enjoy fun content, but there ALWAYS needs to be an incentive. This is MMO design 101. Practically no one ran Vet dungeons before the Undaunted gear was released. Now, people run them daily. For Trials, my main PVE guild used to run them daily. Now? Maybe once or twice a week.

The lag in PVP has really changed the scene. Many of the hardcore PVP guilds that play during primetime are just not there anymore. This has caused a big influx of newer players, which is good because they are no longer getting repeatedly stomped by unkillable zerg blobs. However, it's still a blow to the PVP community because you lost its biggest supporters.

There's no reason to play for anybody who is achievement oriented.

No, I am not talking about the "achievements" any monkey can accomplish by installing a mod that tell him where to go, but about true, epic PvE encounters or true, epic PvP battles.

Having played many other MMOs I can only say that trials are just a facade of a raid. I know of only one, 2003 MMO that got worse raiding... because it basically got none as design choice.
Heck, even failed MMOs like Warhammer Online had hours long, lots-of-bosses raids and that was basically a pure PvP game!
And some of its drops were good-to-best-in-slot for certain PvP builds.

Now, not only ESO trials are so flat, so repetitive, so linear, so tactics-less, just "so grindy". No. Now they also don't yield any reward AT ALL.
Why waste the effort setting up a trials guild, getting all online and on Teamspeak, buy tons of expensive potions, foods, shards etc. etc.... and then all you get is gear these days nobody would even give to a craft mule alt?
I have 3-4 and even 5 per every single Aether set piece including jewelry and weapons and... all of this is utter garbage now.

I won't even start talking about PvP, that is the initial reason why I joined ESO ("there thou shalt see DAoC reborn!") and that it took all of an evening to understand it's as bad as SWTOR "outdoor PvP". Plus ages long running back on death.

Now, I know ZoS are (re)setting everything for the console players. And of course, as usual, they are completely oblivious about what awaits them. Console players are not easily pleased. Nor suffer in silence, you can be sure of that.

No augmented censorship (so, not totally oblivious after all!) on the forums won't stop the waterfalls of drama that shall happen once console players will learn they got sold a lemon.

Imagine a console player, maybe accustomed at the millisecond precision of Dark Souls combat, having to mash "rubber controls" in ESO that respond with the same readiness of an 80 old guy.
Imagine a console player accustomed to millimetric balance ending up playing a class easily performing 30% worse than anything else.

Ah, the things that we are going to see!!!

I dunno. I'm in a good guild. I feel insulated from the frustration. Mostly I've just been excited recently crowdsourcing thief maps with my guildmates.

1.6 has been pretty fun for me so far. I guess you'd call me a casual player. I play most every day in small stolen moments that don't add up to a large amount of time.

Looking forward to the good times ahead.

olemanwinter wrote: »

Just look at the recent decision to nerf Undaunted helm drops (by moving them all to the last boss, eliminating farming runs).

Zos is catering to the extreme casual RP type crowd that doesn't care, and then also (in an odd way) catering to the extreme hardcore crowd that grind/farm whatever they want no matter how horrible the drop rates by (correctly or incorrectly) assuming they will hang around and grind even if the drop rate falls from 20%, to 2%, to .02%.

If you are a "REGULAR PLAYER", which to me means you play 4 or more days a week, but rarely 7 days a week, and for several hours on those days, but never "all day" without a break.....this game is a slap in the face.

For example: Undaunted Helms.

Without "helm farming runs" you have to find a group to complete the dungeon. With daily pledges it's almost impossible to group for a non-pledge vet dungeon. If the pledge is Wayrest, good luck forming a decent CoH group.

So, not only are you faced with a small chance of getting the drop (maybe 10%) but you also only get a chance to run the dungeon every few days. Pretty horrible.

On the other hand, your die-hard elite grinders and guilds all already have the sets. They grind new content the day it's released. They form up, grind and repeat, till everyone has it and then move on. They do 20 runs in a day when it takes a "regular player" probably 2 months to get 20 runs if they make it a priority.

On the other other hand, your super causal RP type, takes 6 months to get to lvl50, players don't give a rip. They don't care if they get the helm. They don't care if every player other than them already has 3000 CP. They are blissfully ignorant of the barriers in front of certain achievements.

For example: VR14 upcoming removal/releveling

The die-hard elite grinders got here FAST. They've enjoyed months and months of being OP and facerolling everything they find because they efficiently and OBSESSIVELY achieved VR14 almost immediately.

RP types don't care.

"REGULAR PLAYERS" Just recently achieved this milestone. After struggling to compete for months, I finally got my first VR14 only a couple of months ago. I have played since launch but achieved VR14 just in time to learn of the releveling. I have friends in the same boat and friends that are just now VR12 and VR13.

They should have releveled at the start when they realized how fast people were getting VR14 (if that was a problem) or they should leave it alone. It makes no sense to allow the elite few to enjoy it for months and then remove it after the majority of the people who want to achieve it finally get there.

For example: Champion Points.

And now here we go again. VR will be going away and we've all been essentially releveled (per the change). The elite will grind CP like crazy (already happening), the RP type don't care, but the Regular Players will struggle with the game until we finally get to 1000+ CP many months after the elite.....only to immediately see it nerfed/releveled again.

This game rewards the obsessive grinders and the super-casual RP crowd. Everyone in between that I talk to in-game is very frustrated.

Well said.

This should be no surprise to anyone. SO is 6 months old now. AA and HR are 10 months old. Vet CoA is 4 months old and Vet CoH is 8 months old. When you combine a lack of new content with sub-standard rewards, end game guild membership is going to plummet, especially when people realize it may be another 4 or more months before any new content is released. I have shoes from 10 years ago which are not as stale as this game.

LonePirate wrote: »

This should be no surprise to anyone. SO is 6 months old now. AA and HR are 10 months old. Vet CoA is 4 months old and Vet CoH is 8 months old. When you combine a lack of new content with sub-standard rewards, end game guild membership is going to plummet, especially when people realize it may be another 4 or more months before any new content is released. I have shoes from 10 years ago which are not as stale as this game.

Hey... but until i get that sharpened master bow, imma keep running it over and over, amiright?

I just wanna know when I can stop running dsa for loot that'll never come. But seriously. I should stop.