Are people starting to give up on ZOS?

Fruitmass · September 2015

Honestly it's not the skill, gear, class, race changes they've made that bother me. It's things like the long loading screens, the changes to monster trophies, the 150 mat requirement to craft 1 piece of v16 gear, no noticeable effort to improve the LFG tool, bugged containers, input lag, random load screens in the middle of nowhere (made even more aggravating now that loading takes several minutes to get through and occasionally freezes up my desktop so I have to reboot) and this new focus on grinding (crafting, leveling and now apparently even basic gameplay seems to revolve around the concept).

Look I know grinding is necessary to some extent in every MMO and if someone wants to do it that's fine but good lord man, you shouldn't have to do it! That's what made me walk away from GW2, horrible RNG, strict diminishing returns, time gated mats/content and forced grinding.

Logging in, checking my mail, doing my writs and undaunted pledges across each of my characters has become a time consuming chore that saps my interest in playing the game any further once I finally get all that done. Which is a shame because despite everything I did enjoy playing this game up until now.

Deheart · September 2015

In response to the Original Post

I gave up on ZOS when ESO beta was over and I finally realized that the game was nothing like skyrim, nothing at all. Not to mention that during beta several things were promised for launch that never materialized.

Then once I realized that ESO was a decent game in of itself, I kept playing off and on. So while I gave up on ZOS, I didn't give up on ESO.

Then the whole free to play crapfunko happened, and ESO essentially started working its way to becoming a Pay to win game. Actually the 4th game to go FTP on me and in my experience, FTP in a game that started out Subscription is bad for the game itself.

I really don't want to give up on ESO (unlike the others) so I am trying to grind at least one char all the way to final veteran but I keep getting bored, deleting some old chars and starting new ones, as I like to explore different classes and the changes that has been made.

Also, there are so many other interesting games out there like Mortal Online, with a leveling where you really have absolutely no levels and no classes at all, that it's hard to keep an interest in a game where the developers are constantly changing rules and classes and other things in a bad way.

Stikato · September 2015

- ZOS delayed almost every single minor and major fix for months on end until the IC patch.

- During this same patch, they also decided to roll out several across-the-board heavy handed adjustments to combat.

- Gear was changed from a variety of unique setups into just a few cookie cutter builds.

- This gear, and motifs, and champion points, and rare dungeon loot, have been turned into extremely long grinds.

- Meanwhile, the update PvP players were waiting for, was completely and irrevocably changed by a last-minute decision.

The results?

PvE players are pissed: they are getting ganked in their new content
PvP players are pissed: they saw their old content get destroyed, and their new content bastardized by open access

Everyone is pissed: we waited, and waited, and waited for this damn patch. And they have almost completely botched the whole thing. IC is kind of fun still, but I can't see it being fun for much longer. Several notable players and posters have fled the scene. Even the complaints are dying down.

In ESO live, they admitted they weren't even aware of many bugs. They also said they have no plans to gate access to Imperial City on a game-wide basis. The one server they tried it on, predictably, is completely dead.

The real truth: while ESO benefits from some talented developers and good concepts, it has been terribly stunted by absentee (or incompetent) management and lousy internal communication.

In other words: the BIG decisions, like:

- What to focus attention on
- How/what to communicate to players
- How to listen and implement feedback
- How to handle access to new content
- How to approach balancing large portions of the game

Are usually laughably bad.

Sorry, I like the game and have no axe to grind. I just call it like I see it.

GreySix · September 2015

Deheart wrote: »

In response to the Original Post

I gave up on ZOS when ESO beta was over and I finally realized that the game was nothing like skyrim, nothing at all. Not to mention that during beta several things were promised for launch that never materialized.

Then once I realized that ESO was a decent game in of itself, I kept playing off and on. So while I gave up on ZOS, I didn't give up on ESO.

Then the whole free to play crapfunko happened, and ESO essentially started working its way to becoming a Pay to win game. Actually the 4th game to go FTP on me and in my experience, FTP in a game that started out Subscription is bad for the game itself.

I really don't want to give up on ESO (unlike the others) so I am trying to grind at least one char all the way to final veteran but I keep getting bored, deleting some old chars and starting new ones, as I like to explore different classes and the changes that has been made.

Also, there are so many other interesting games out there like Mortal Online, with a leveling where you really have absolutely no levels and no classes at all, that it's hard to keep an interest in a game where the developers are constantly changing rules and classes and other things in a bad way.

Pretty close to my own experience; my wife and I wanted a TES game we could co-op, and this was the only one that answered the mail, badly-designed mods for the SP games notwithstanding.

So we played together (sort of - couldn't co-op the main story or two main side quests), and then we beat Molag Bal.

Everything after that seemed anticlimactic. I mean, you just neutralized the major threat, but then you learn that you're only a third into the game, and now Sir Pot-on-Head offers you a chance to start all over again as a nobody, fighting for your enemies?

Wife said screw it, and she hasn't played since. I play on and off, maybe an hour or so every couple of weeks.

JD2013 · September 2015

Deheart wrote: »

In response to the Original Post

I gave up on ZOS when ESO beta was over and I finally realized that the game was nothing like skyrim, nothing at all. Not to mention that during beta several things were promised for launch that never materialized.

Then once I realized that ESO was a decent game in of itself, I kept playing off and on. So while I gave up on ZOS, I didn't give up on ESO.

Then the whole free to play crapfunko happened, and ESO essentially started working its way to becoming a Pay to win game. Actually the 4th game to go FTP on me and in my experience, FTP in a game that started out Subscription is bad for the game itself.

I really don't want to give up on ESO (unlike the others) so I am trying to grind at least one char all the way to final veteran but I keep getting bored, deleting some old chars and starting new ones, as I like to explore different classes and the changes that has been made.

Also, there are so many other interesting games out there like Mortal Online, with a leveling where you really have absolutely no levels and no classes at all, that it's hard to keep an interest in a game where the developers are constantly changing rules and classes and other things in a bad way.

Mortal online looks interesting, but also looks blocky and juddering with really bad combat. And the PVP sounds ridiculously punishing for no real reason.

FuzzyDuck79 · September 2015

This thread has a lot of valid posts, posts that are very similar to what I feel. If Zenimax were to take notice of such things being put forward by the players, make the changes and try to sort a few bugs out, then this game would be absolutely amazing. I'm not sure there would be another game that could touch it. But instead we get rushed content and patches.There is a lot of thought gone into this game, but not in the right places it seems. I would have loved it if Imperial City came out later and the original bugs had been sorted. I probably would have paid more for it too knowing it was more complete.

Darlgon · September 2015

Alucardo wrote: »

lol if anyone thought Zeni was bad, I've just recently been permanently banned from my old MMO. I'm not sure why either.. the ban message was a little vague

So I send in a ticket, and get this reply

"The account has been banned and will not be activated again. This measure has been approved by the maximum authority regarding the game, and will not be modified."

Still vague.

Guess we all know where Sapience ended up then.

Callous2208 · September 2015

I gave up on eso during beta and wait patiently every day for a thread like this to come up so I can tell people I gave up on them a long time ago. Because that's not a little sad at all. Oh wait, I still play and don't stalk forums of games I no longer enjoy. Never mind, move along sorry for wasting everyone's time.

sadownik · September 2015

Callous2208 wrote: »

I gave up on eso during beta and wait patiently every day for a thread like this to come up so I can tell people I gave up on them a long time ago. Because that's not a little sad at all. Oh wait, I still play and don't stalk forums of games I no longer enjoy. Never mind, move along sorry for wasting everyone's time.

Game is b2p now, so the people who are not playing activly right now can start any time. And shrugging off the arguments of players who dont play the game is very short sighted. There is a reason why developers often send the poll to players that no longer play in which they can choose the reason for doing so.

Stikato · September 2015

Callous2208 wrote: »

I gave up on eso during beta and wait patiently every day for a thread like this to come up so I can tell people I gave up on them a long time ago. Because that's not a little sad at all. Oh wait, I still play and don't stalk forums of games I no longer enjoy. Never mind, move along sorry for wasting everyone's time.

People can be interested in things they don't participate in. I haven't enjoyed playing football in years, but I can still watch a game, or talk with someone about the West Coast offense.

Paske · September 2015

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Complaints and rants are dying down compared to one or two weeks ago. And less than 800 people watched ESO Live yesterday while the number were easily over 1000 in the past few months. Is ESO way past the turning point that it can never recover again?

I see you are well informed on issues at hand that ESO is going through.

So you made a well thought out post in order to start a debate.

I shall have to ponder over what was said in here before giving you my final verdict.

Mighty_oakk · September 2015

Paske wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Complaints and rants are dying down compared to one or two weeks ago. And less than 800 people watched ESO Live yesterday while the number were easily over 1000 in the past few months. Is ESO way past the turning point that it can never recover again?

I see you are well informed on issues at hand that ESO is going through.

So you made a well thought out post in order to start a debate.

I shall have to ponder over what was said in here before giving you my final verdict.

Arrrrggghh the suspense is killing me

tordr86b16_ESO · September 2015

I gave up months ago.

Callous2208 · September 2015

Stikato wrote: »

Callous2208 wrote: »

I gave up on eso during beta and wait patiently every day for a thread like this to come up so I can tell people I gave up on them a long time ago. Because that's not a little sad at all. Oh wait, I still play and don't stalk forums of games I no longer enjoy. Never mind, move along sorry for wasting everyone's time.

People can be interested in things they don't participate in. I haven't enjoyed playing football in years, but I can still watch a game, or talk with someone about the West Coast offense.

But the people not playing aren't interested, they're just complaining about things that shouldn't bother them since they aren't playing. These friends you discuss football with that do enjoy the game. Would they take anything you said seriously if you started by telling them you hate football, hadn't watched it years and listed the things that were wrong with it in your opinion? No. They would shrug it off and talk about other things since obviously, you aren't a fan.

Furthermore this thread is in every forum of every game on the market right now 1000 times over. It will pop up a great number of times in Black Desert, Bless, Star Citizen, and every game everyone is just waiting to be released so they can leave ESO. No one honestly comes to these threads to share insight or give ideas in hopes the game gets better. As it is with everything in life, its fun to rage and gripe about things and have a bunch of other people pat you on the back, parrot what you've said and click agree. If you've filled out a poll with the reasons you quit a game, sent by the developer, there is your feedback. High-fiveing each other and talking about the games you're looking to replace this with is not feedback anyone can use to make a game better.

Keep in mind these forums represent the minority of players. We can speculate all day how many people are leaving the game, but at the end of the day it will just be speculation. While you guys are griping and letting off steam, the rest of us will either be playing the game, or moving on to the next one without leaving our emotional baggage in this title.

Cody · September 2015

I lost faith a little after 1.6 hit. Nirnhoned was utterly broken and allowed users to get ridiculous amounts of spell resistance, making magicka builds almost utterly obsolete. This kept on for over three months(I quit before they finally fixed it), with ZOS refusing to fix it for whatever ridiculous reason they cited back in the time. This incident showed me how little certain people at ZOS seem to care about this game.

the game started out pretty good. The only real issues gameplay wise that I can remember was vamps using a batswarm literally every 10 seconds and certain players and perhaps a guild or two exploiting broken or bugged parts of the game for fast and undeserved XP. Both of which were not really that big of a deal as they were addressed fairly quickly. After about 3 months it started going down hill, for reasons im sure everyone, even the newer people, know. I have not fully given up however. The game is not all bad, it has many good points. ZOS just needs to get their priorities straight.

Xjcon · September 2015

Since this game is B2p the amount of people they retain over the course of a DLC after initial sales means very little. But it would be interesting to see the amount of subs that have been canceled over the last few months.

Paradox · September 2015

They signed their own death certificate with the IC patch. Way too many idiotic decisions, way too many issues, and the forum interaction has been horrible.

aco5712 · September 2015

Paradox wrote: »

They signed their own death certificate with the IC patch. Way too many idiotic decisions, way too many issues, and the forum interaction has been horrible.

They need to close all the campaigns except 3. Non-vet ungated. Vet gated. Vet ungated. Then they need to raise pop caps back to 500ish for the gated. All the PvErs arent gonna fit inside the ungated so they will have to play gated and help us with cyrodiil. Then PvPers will be happy and then PvErs still have their IC even though it will be qued or they can come help and get it the proper way.

SeptimusDova · September 2015

This one cans Haz Agrees for Evryones

Keepercraft · September 2015

yes

kevlarto_ESO · September 2015

My friends and I are huge fans of the game, like most of the guild we are in, and the one thing I hear the most is, everyone is getting tired of the talk and the lack of action, we know things take time but with all the new games and competition on the horizon ZOS needs to get the player base excited about the game, when I look at the forums these days, I see a lot of nitpicking small details, tells me some of the player base is getting bored.

BigM · September 2015

The one thing I never seen in an MMO before was when you have a major bug that either makes the game unplayable or to advance and or exploits that are destroying the economy they take there good old time to fix it. Other MMO's would have the problem fixed within a day more so if it was an exploit. Here I have seen it take a couple of weeks or even a month to finally get it fixed. Then we end up with another bug that was just as bad as the last.

Just sad and hard to accept. All we get on the forums, is we reported it or we let them know of your ticket.

PainfulFAFA · September 2015

1.6 killed it for me.

-broken nirnhone
-broken maces
-broken performance

2.1 rolled in where they blanket nerfed everything when all they had to do was fix those 3 things.
Kinda made me realize the mentality of ZOS

I said IC would make or break this game and it is certainly breaking it for me. I gave on ZOS during 1.6 and nothing has changed since then.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · September 2015

People aren't giving up on ZOS, ZOS is giving up on this game.

Imperial City was supposed to have actual PvP content. Hold districts, gain AP, rescue the city from the daedra.
All of those mechanics were removed and tel var was added and a huge grind was made.

ZOS gave up on the model of creating quality content, and instead chose a model of gear grabbing and forcing a huge grind.

Come out with DLC
Raise Level Cap
Populate your DLC by making it the only place to grind XP and get new gear
Make grinding and gearing take as long as bearable to buy yourself time
Once everyone is finally geared and leveled, Come out with new DLC
Raise Level Cap...

What is missing from that list is creating a fun, re-playable experience people want to return to. Instead, "endgame" content is going to be stripmined, abandoned, then new DLC will replace it with a new grind. ZOS won't bother updating all of the old "endgame" content because they need people to pay for the new stuff. We can already see this happening with DSA and trials.

Ichnaea · September 2015

BigM wrote: »

The one thing I never seen in an MMO before was when you have a major bug that either makes the game unplayable or to advance and or exploits that are destroying the economy they take there good old time to fix it. Other MMO's would have the problem fixed within a day more so if it was an exploit. Here I have seen it take a couple of weeks or even a month to finally get it fixed. Then we end up with another bug that was just as bad as the last.

Just sad and hard to accept. All we get on the forums, is we reported it or we let them know of your ticket.

HEY! But glass motif is on the Crown Store now! That makes you happy right? I'm starting to feel like Zeni fixing bugs is like me trying to do laundry. Every time I try to pick something up I drop a damn sock. But I'll keep playing. Because like a chick in a bad relationship, I keep thinking Zeni will change.

Stikato · September 2015

Callous2208 wrote: »

Stikato wrote: »

Callous2208 wrote: »

I gave up on eso during beta and wait patiently every day for a thread like this to come up so I can tell people I gave up on them a long time ago. Because that's not a little sad at all. Oh wait, I still play and don't stalk forums of games I no longer enjoy. Never mind, move along sorry for wasting everyone's time.

People can be interested in things they don't participate in. I haven't enjoyed playing football in years, but I can still watch a game, or talk with someone about the West Coast offense.

But the people not playing aren't interested, they're just complaining about things that shouldn't bother them since they aren't playing. These friends you discuss football with that do enjoy the game. Would they take anything you said seriously if you started by telling them you hate football, hadn't watched it years and listed the things that were wrong with it in your opinion? No. They would shrug it off and talk about other things since obviously, you aren't a fan.

Furthermore this thread is in every forum of every game on the market right now 1000 times over. It will pop up a great number of times in Black Desert, Bless, Star Citizen, and every game everyone is just waiting to be released so they can leave ESO. No one honestly comes to these threads to share insight or give ideas in hopes the game gets better. As it is with everything in life, its fun to rage and gripe about things and have a bunch of other people pat you on the back, parrot what you've said and click agree. If you've filled out a poll with the reasons you quit a game, sent by the developer, there is your feedback. High-fiveing each other and talking about the games you're looking to replace this with is not feedback anyone can use to make a game better.

Keep in mind these forums represent the minority of players. We can speculate all day how many people are leaving the game, but at the end of the day it will just be speculation. While you guys are griping and letting off steam, the rest of us will either be playing the game, or moving on to the next one without leaving our emotional baggage in this title.

Dude, we are in here discussing a game. People who are interested in this discussion are going to come here and talk about it. It doesn't mean they have to like the game, or that ZOS is going to listen and react to every word.They may be positive or negative. They may compare it to other games. And yeah, I actually don't enjoy the way football is going lately. I miss the running game, and when I talk about it with friends, they listen to my point of view. My friends don't stop the conversation because I or they think something was better in the past.

You just wrote several paragraphs explaining how pointless it is to discuss a game, on forum that is designed for people to discuss a game. The only pointless post I see here is yours. If you don't like it, the back button is on top of your browser.

Stikato · September 2015

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

People aren't giving up on ZOS, ZOS is giving up on this game.

Imperial City was supposed to have actual PvP content. Hold districts, gain AP, rescue the city from the daedra.
All of those mechanics were removed and tel var was added and a huge grind was made.

ZOS gave up on the model of creating quality content, and instead chose a model of gear grabbing and forcing a huge grind.

Come out with DLC

Raise Level Cap

Populate your DLC by making it the only place to grind XP and get new gear

Make grinding and gearing take as long as bearable to buy yourself time

Once everyone is finally geared and leveled, Come out with new DLC

Raise Level Cap...

What is missing from that list is creating a fun, re-playable experience people want to return to. Instead, "endgame" content is going to be stripmined, abandoned, then new DLC will replace it with a new grind. ZOS won't bother updating all of the old "endgame" content because they need people to pay for the new stuff. We can already see this happening with DSA and trials.

Very well said. Unfortunately it does seem that the original concept has morphed into promoting endless grinds that encourage Crown Store purchases. I guess it just took this long for the "vision" to really take hold.

Before, for "top of the line content" we had: Craglorn (for awhile), Hel Ra, AA, Sanctum, Cyrodiil, veteran dungeons/pledges, and v10 zones to some extent.

Now we have IC.

Mojmir · September 2015

One good thing about all this,it a good place for giving out thread awesomes.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · September 2015

I say just take the servers offline for a while.......Just remove the Champion System and the Veteran System and leave it at that, compensate those who wasted their time grinding by giving them free crowns or something and those things in the crown store unlike everything else actually cost real money so if I buy some potions from there then they better be the best damn potions in the game and by that I mean they should restore your health completes when used not by 4000 or 5000 points.

Add other ways for players to enjoy the game instead of having everything being combat oriented!!!, add immersion and roleplay into the game and that can make its own content, add things like Animal hunting, perhaps Horse or Guar Racing, make being a Vampire or a Werewolf actually worth something, instead of it being a skillline, Im talking lunar transformation and a need to sate your bloodlust by killing innocents in werewolf form once a week or you lose something also you shouldn't rack up a bounty if your in beast form, Vampires should have debuffs in sunlight cause vampires who don't suffer in daylight are NOT vampires, hell the ones in ESO don't even have fangs, and they should actually get more powerful at night and NPCs should react accordingly.

Cap the game at level 50 also make it so everything isn't all combat oriented, we have fishing what else do we have? add animal hunting or miscellaneous Jobs or something to do, I don't create new characters because I don't like the Veteran System and I am not the only one, I have no problem with going from level 1 - 50 but Vr1 to Vr16 takes to damn long and gets repetitive and the CP system is even worse...there are players walking around with over 1000cp and are almost damn unkillable which isn't fair to us who actually have lives, the IC was supposed to have all these features such as an alliance being able to control a district but they got removed and replaced by this Tel Var Cr** which is now creating an even larger grind which also ruined PvP as I have not seen any large scale battles since it came out because everyone is too busy GRINDING Tel Var stones which the existence of them might I add doesn't make sense.

If people want to level in this game have levelling tied to something different and not how powerful someone's character is, maybe the goal can be to be the wealthiest player in the game, add the housing system and that can really shine, give people a reason to buy different mounts and return the change they had where they all had different stats, also why are there so many enemies in the game? half of these mob spawns are like 5 meters from each other.

TX12001rwb17_ESO · September 2015

Ichnaea wrote: »

BigM wrote: »

The one thing I never seen in an MMO before was when you have a major bug that either makes the game unplayable or to advance and or exploits that are destroying the economy they take there good old time to fix it. Other MMO's would have the problem fixed within a day more so if it was an exploit. Here I have seen it take a couple of weeks or even a month to finally get it fixed. Then we end up with another bug that was just as bad as the last.

Just sad and hard to accept. All we get on the forums, is we reported it or we let them know of your ticket.

HEY! But glass motif is on the Crown Store now! That makes you happy right? I'm starting to feel like Zeni fixing bugs is like me trying to do laundry. Every time I try to pick something up I drop a damn sock. But I'll keep playing. Because like a chick in a bad relationship, I keep thinking Zeni will change.

2 bad the glass motif costs twice as much as the DLC, I wonder though how much would the DLC we were actually expecting cost?