ESO is losing interest. Any idea why?

alainjbrennanb16_ESO · August 2017

Kneighbors wrote: »

http://steamcharts.com/app/306130#6m

-15% every month during summer! Exactly same time year ago player pool was widening.

New patch kicks in, you would expect the game to gain interest? Nada. It isn't getting any more popular.

I know there are going to be people telling they feel no difference and game is very popular and it's just that most players playing directly through client.

But it feels the same ingame. I see exactly half of the player amount on line comparing to game peak times. It's normal to see 30/495 guildies online in our PvE oriented guild.

i would say more to do with peeps getting kicked from groups, bugs, long load screen, and cheating

zaria · August 2017

maboleth wrote: »

Kneighbors wrote: »

For battleground match you need 12 people. If that amount of online players makes the game feel populated enough.to you then you are all good

I adore how some people twist the words of others when it's not in their favour.

It's 12 people, yes - per match that happens every few minutes in 4am.

And those of 12 souls in a single Battlegrounds have to be playing very late in the night, be on EU side, want to do a PVP action and have Morrowind chapter installed. So these perks alone narrow the gaming population quite a bit.
To have these newly made, sold-separately matches readily available in wee hours is just fantastic and says a lot about population.

Looking at the graph, minimum players on steam is 5K, 1/3 or less is on steam so 15K players minimum, an huge amount of the players who play a lot have morrowind so its easy to get groups main issue might be group finder.

On the other hand I tried to pug as healer for nWGT now and had to wait 8 minutes and gave up, its has not happened before so the sky is falling.

Raraaku · August 2017

I think if the Devs established a direct line of communication with the community would be huge. I'm not talking about, leave your questions and if you're lucky enough you might get an answer on ESO Live. I'm talking about an active Q&A discussion with the player base on a regular basis, or even just taking part in discussions on the forums. I think that you can feel a noticeable difference in a community in which developers are actively interacting with their players compared to that in which there is virtually no discussion or acknowledgement from the developers and only the community manager interacts with the players because that is there job.

SoLooney · August 2017

I noticed a lot of previous guilds that it was dying, events hosted had hardly anyone showing up and used to have 12 people consistently for trials, now we struggle hard to even get 10.

This game is still fun to me but cannot compare to my favorite patch honestead where I had a ton of fun without worrying about resources drained in an instant and having to constantly farm new gear and weapons, not fun, people get bored and burned out running the crap 100s of times with rng always screwing you over and then doing it 100s more times when a meta changes in a couple months.

I understand that changes happen and are necessary at times, but it just feels like a drag with eso

Kneighbors · August 2017

Raraaku wrote: »

I think if the Devs established a direct line of communication with the community would be huge. I'm not talking about, leave your questions and if you're lucky enough you might get an answer on ESO Live. I'm talking about an active Q&A discussion with the player base on a regular basis, or even just taking part in discussions on the forums. I think that you can feel a noticeable difference in a community in which developers are actively interacting with their players compared to that in which there is virtually no discussion or acknowledgement from the developers and only the community manager interacts with the players because that is there job.

Unfortunately the latest PTS event showed quite the opposite relations. Landing such a massive change on the last day was huge. I can only imagine the feelings of the guy who bought infused mothers sorrow sword for 300k from me day before 3.1.5 patch notes. I imagine the same guy is a determined player who was testing stuff on PTS for his future build.

Overall it feels that many players take the game much more seriously than devs do. Testing tens of sets, running hundreds of parses.. They invest huge amount of time into understanding the outcome of devs nonchalant quick decisions. Making most important changes on a last day is simply a spit in the face.

Cêltic421 · August 2017

Zvorgin wrote: »

@frateanu.luiseb17_ESO the sustain changes with Morrowind and the CP rework have been some of the best things they have done in the game. The last minute rework of HotR was not good, I agree.

I agree. I hesitated at first but after playing post Morrowind I like the sustain and cp changes. Best change ZoS has done to this game. Not sure about HotR for it has not come out on consoles yet.

Breaks are needed for this game. It's very repetitive. So maybe alot of people taking a break from the game for the summer. That's what I do, summer time I'm just busy and have no time for gaming so I don't play nearly as much as I do during winter.

danno8 · August 2017

mb10 wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

So the fact that there were 8,378 players online as an average in July 2017 compared to 3,286 players in July 2016 is a clear indication that the playerbase is falling and the game is in trouble?

I guess that modern education systems have a lot to answer for!

July was the double AP time so those figures are definitely not a good representation. Also just a month after the expansion.

But they are over 10,00 right now.

danno8 · August 2017

Kneighbors wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Steam is a very limited section of the ESO players, even those on PC. Steam probably attracts a different demographic than the game as a whole. The numbers could very well not be indicative of ESO at all.

Second, anyone who looks at that chart sees months activity increases and decreases which includes a year over year increase that is more than double, almost triple which would mean success and business analysis looks at year over year to determine growth.

In the end, it shows a solid increase in the playerbase from the steam perspective but also activity cannot be considered a solid representation of ESO's popularity by any means. Just looking at the information logically.

Lol, it's like we are the only two people (including the OP) in the thread that actually looked at the chart.

OP, last year the concurrent users on August 29 was 3950. August 21 2017 was over 10,000. All of 2016 did not go over 10,000 according to steam but 2017 has seen nothing less than 10,000 concurrent.

You would make a really poor investor. You can't just look at the last statements returns and panic when there is a dip. There are ALWAYS dips. You need to look at the big picture. And according to steam the big picture is a HUGE increase in 2017 over 2016.

Last year is the point where I and many many others joined the game. Game went on sale drawing a lot of attention. It was less buggy than today, more dynamic (easier resource management = skills spam). Tanks had 30k hp and were running different sets in the dungeons (not HP sponges of today everyone running Plague+Ebon or a choice of 2 other sets). Heals also had enough resources to spam attack skills like Radiant Destruction (prior 21% nerf). The game was much more dynamic and popularity was booming.

Looking at it today, where tanks and heals are fully supportive roles with a very strict requirements for vet content of the game. DD's running heavy attacks builds. Game became a niche for retired people taking opposite direction from fast paced action of most popular online games today.

Statistics aren't lying, game popularity dropped from 29k steam peak players Nov16 to 11k this month. Yes it is still higher than it was before game went on sale. It is pretty dumb to compare gaming graph to trader graph. Game's lifespan is not long enough to invest in low point and expect to sell at rise. Any low point can become a point game will never return to. For example there is no chance game will get back to 29k steam peak players with current developers. It is a cheap game now and the only way to draw popularity now is going f2p. I can't predict what will happen if it will go f2p but sure enough I don't want to be there when it happens.

Uh oh guys! Look at that last bar for Q2 2017. It's lower than the bar before it! It looks like Apple is dying. The statistics don't lie!

Lieblingsjunge · August 2017

A lot of the people I used to talk to - quit because PvP became unplayable for solo or smaller group. (Not gonna mention anything to start that discussion here, look up any other PvP-thread and you know why).

Server performance. It doesn't help with new content if the servers keep performing badly. Even though they try to fix it - at some poin the people get enough and simply quit.

All the changes. They're made way too quick. I agree that changes were needed, but you have to change literally everything at once. Should've done it gradually to let people get used to it.

I can imagine some high-end PvEers are quitting because there's no incentive to actually go for world No. 1 score on this/that. At some point you just lose interest I guess.

Taleof2Cities · August 2017

Surprised this thread is still getting posts ... Steam accounts represent a very narrow slice of the overall ESO playerbase.

Stovahkiin · August 2017

Maybe because ESO and it's developers suck now? Instead of hiring better people to make the game better, Zeni just hires new forum mods to delete comments and posts that have criticism in them.

Elsonso · August 2017

Tandor wrote: »

The proportion of players who have to do that is exceedingly small, and they are the type of player most likely to read patch notes anyway. Most of the other players don't even notice supposedly game-breaking changes and when forced to respec just put the points back where they were and carry on the same as before.

Actually, it is probably more annoying that they have their skills/attributes/etc reset than anything else. Most of the complaining that I hear is not about the changes, but the fact that they have to go redo their characters. If ZOS would make the reset optional, as best possible, a lot of people probably wouldn't change anything.

Raraaku wrote: »

I think if the Devs established a direct line of communication with the community would be huge. I'm not talking about, leave your questions and if you're lucky enough you might get an answer on ESO Live. I'm talking about an active Q&A discussion with the player base on a regular basis, or even just taking part in discussions on the forums. I think that you can feel a noticeable difference in a community in which developers are actively interacting with their players compared to that in which there is virtually no discussion or acknowledgement from the developers and only the community manager interacts with the players because that is there job.

We've been asking for this sort of thing for years. It is not a priority for the studio.

SoLooney wrote: »

I noticed a lot of previous guilds that it was dying, events hosted had hardly anyone showing up and used to have 12 people consistently for trials, now we struggle hard to even get 10.

If anything this is reflecting a shift in the interests of the player base. It doesn't really speak to population size, but more to how attached they are to the other people in the game. My guilds are seeing similar situations, with fewer people participating in guild events (meaning with other people) across the board. I know I no longer participate in any guild activities. I used to do all the fun stuff and showed up to a lot of different guild events. Now, I rarely even know when they are happening. I couldn't tell you why, for sure. Just busy, I guess, but often times I am in the game when they are doing it and ignore it.

Analysis of the Steam numbers presented by the OP shows that the game is still expanding, and is still doing very well against prior years. We might be on the cusp of that changing to a downward trend, but that is entirely speculation that cannot be confirmed until we see the September numbers. Someone remember to make a thread in October so we can revisit this.

NewBlacksmurf · August 2017

1. Frequency of negative interactions due to new bugs, existing bugs and unresolved bugs
2. Crown store
3. Eso Plus
4. Experiences with support
5. Lack of QoL on new QoL updates which are often aligned under a financial requirement.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · August 2017

I'm losing interest because of several reasons:

Terrible RNG
Too much BOP
Relentless grind

One of the biggest problems is you spend forever grinding dungeons for gear, and by the time you get what you need, they nerf it (because of the no-talent crybabies) and you have to start all over. I want to spend my time running trials for leader board bragging rights, PVP'n, and questing for fun, but I can't do that because they keep me buried in dungeons. I don't plan on quitting anytime soon, but I find myself thinking about it more often.

@ZOS_GinaBruno (you may be the only person who actually cares about us)

Kneighbors · August 2017

danno8 wrote: »

Uh oh guys! Look at that last bar for Q2 2017. It's lower than the bar before it! It looks like Apple is dying. The statistics don't lie!

There is a long way between losing interest and dying. My point was to show using statistics and in-game observations that ESO community isn't taking positively the direction the game is going. I understand that many still do. But game population is on a decline and there are specific reasons to it.

PS. Btw, you attached steadily raising graph, while ESO graph on steam is exactly opposite if you look at 6 months time span.

Thunderknuckles · August 2017

I'm wasting my "breath" here, but have you all not been playing MMO's long enough to know that these kinds of complaints are rife in every single one of them ? I mean without exception. LOL I came back to ESO after playing Star Wars TOR for years and THAT game has devolved into little more than Star Wars digital toon dress up.

Edited for typo.

Gilvoth · August 2017

seedubsrun wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

please increase sneak speeds,
and cut sorcerer damge and shields in half,
and listen to the customers requests and game will increase subbs.

Nerf sorcs requests are sounding pretty pathetic ..... no valid reasoning behind them

here is some reasoning you might want to look at of sorcerer being overpowered

ccfeeling · August 2017

ZOS never announce the number of players in different platforms

Kneighbors · August 2017

Thunderknuckles wrote: »

I'm wasting my "breath" here, but have you all not been playing MMO's long enough to know that these kinds of complaints are rife in every single of them ? I mean without exception. LOL I came back to ESO after playing Star Wars TOR for years and THAT game has devolved into little more than Star Wars digital toon dress up.

Honestly it's my first MMO. I was playing FPS games like CS and BF and I can't remember any changes there that made people waste their time on same boring content again and again hoping to get back to where they were before the changes.

ESO taught me a lesson. I was angry at Dice (developers of Battlefield series) that produced franchise game every one and half year and charged 50-60$ for new game. So I decided not to buy BF4 and eventually moved to ESO.
Looking at it now its much better to get a huge update every 1.5 year for 50$ than getting "rebalance" every 3 months and start farming like a lifeless 12 y/o boy instead of playing the parts of the game you like.

My ESO days are coming to an end and now I feel I'm going to be more willingly paying for new games. ESO+ is actually much more expensive than buying a new online game every year.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · August 2017

Raraaku wrote: »

I'm not talking about, leave your questions and if you're lucky enough you might get an answer on ESO Live.

They haven't been doing that for a while anyway.

PepterKleptic · August 2017

Main issues I have with the game are:

Devs take EZ path to balance, nerfing good gear instead of buffing underperforming, forcing people to change instead of making them want to experiement
Devs ambivalent attitude towards players and lack of communication along with making anti player changes without thinking them through
Sickly rodents being substituted for certified hamsters to power the servers
Dungeons that should have been included with Morrowind being released as separate DLC
Hatefully broken matchmaking or in the case of trials, no matchmaking (even a player driven grouping tool or LFG channel would be an improvement on the current mess)
My horse has a funny expression on his face

I got a plus sub to try to keep my interest in the game, but so far I find myself still doing other things instead of playing, such as joining in whinefest threads on forums.

danno8 · August 2017

Kneighbors wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Uh oh guys! Look at that last bar for Q2 2017. It's lower than the bar before it! It looks like Apple is dying. The statistics don't lie!

There is a long way between losing interest and dying. My point was to show using statistics and in-game observations that ESO community isn't taking positively the direction the game is going. I understand that many still do. But game population is on a decline and there are specific reasons to it.

PS. Btw, you attached steadily raising graph, while ESO graph on steam is exactly opposite if you look at 6 months time span.

The graph I showed was over the lifetime of the IPhone. If you also look over the lifetime of ESO you can also see a more or less steadily increasing graph, with peaks and troughs, just like the IPhone.

My point was if you choose to cherry pick areas of the bar graph then you can show whatever you choose to, but that is poor statistical analysis. People play the game when new content comes out, then there is a steady decline until the next bit of content.

The dip in the last 2 months in EXACTLY what I would have predicted after Morrowind launched. IT is normal.

Debate the games merits, but don't use these statistics to justify your point, because you are attributing cause and effect when you really have no idea if that is the case. And even if it was it would be masked by the fact that player interest wanes in the weeks following a big release anyway.

MLGProPlayer · August 2017

Thunderknuckles wrote: »

I'm wasting my "breath" here, but have you all not been playing MMO's long enough to know that these kinds of complaints are rife in every single one of them ? I mean without exception. LOL I came back to ESO after playing Star Wars TOR for years and THAT game has devolved into little more than Star Wars digital toon dress up.

Edited for typo.

There is a reason why the genre as a whole is dying. They all end up making the same mistakes, more or less.

MLGProPlayer · August 2017

Resfeber wrote: »

This is interesting to see in comparison to the fact that ESO's general score on Steam has gotten a lot better. ESO had been in the meh so-so but okay grade for ages and is finally at a point of "mostly positive" which is surprising.

Reviews have actually started to trend slightly downward again.

Thunderknuckles · August 2017

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Thunderknuckles wrote: »

I'm wasting my "breath" here, but have you all not been playing MMO's long enough to know that these kinds of complaints are rife in every single one of them ? I mean without exception. LOL I came back to ESO after playing Star Wars TOR for years and THAT game has devolved into little more than Star Wars digital toon dress up.

Edited for typo.

There is a reason why the genre as a whole is dying. They all end up making the same mistakes, more or less.

I won't disagree much with that. There seems to be a certain amount of artistic narcissism amongst game devs where they, again I say seem, think that many suggested changes to their "baby" are worthless. Rift is a good example. That game came out of the gate blazing. Huge player base. That lasted for 3 years, roughly, then...just the most seemingly random decisions by the development team that quite literally all but emptied every single server.

LotRO...when I played that game years and years ago I can tell you from experience that their dev team just didn't give a crap about what any player thought. Star Wars TOR...started out strong. 5 years later and some less than stellar decisions on the devs behalf, to include ye olde money grab greedfest where they really only began to focus on their game store, has driven off a massive number of their player base. It's mostly just Star Wars digital doll dress up now.

I hope ESO doesn't go down similar paths. Now, all that being said, I also have to point out that many players gripe and whine constantly, so it can be tough for the dev teams to sift through all the pure garbage suggestions to find the ones that actually have merit. It's a tough thing they have to deal with and players are a fickle crowd.

Billy2112 · August 2017

Here is my two cents. These games are usually designed with the exploration step by step system of seeing the content. Go here do that beat this boss that boss etc. As I see it, many of the 'steam generation' before entering a game look for the meta and fastest way to end game. Then when they have nothing to do they complain its the developers fault. Now Im not saying devs don't play a part in this. But this devour devour rush rush attitude of today's adhd gamer is not something devs can keep up with and when they try they release poor bug laden content that has exploits. just my two cents. :P

Drakkdjinn · August 2017

MMOs are progression based; ESO is currently on a trend of disrupting progression with constant arbitrary untested changes that are not directly related to new content or playstyle options at the expense of improving the base game.

ARR aka Annual Recurring Revenue should be how ZoS should be thinking in terms of monetizing this game and any sane techie can speak to the merits of operating on that business model. Currently ZoS' stance in practice, whether intended or not, is: capture as much $ as possible from short-term players with empty, pointless, and superficial microtransaction items and screw the dedicated people looking for the basic, refined QoL improvements that would keep subscribers and grow the ranks of a steady invested playerbase. It's pigheaded, backwards, and a big '*** you' to all of us that know in our heart of hearts that this game could be THE mmo if some 'no duh' changes were implemented imminently and aptly.

When I started ESO I immediately saw the potential and bet on it with heavy time investment into guild and community building -- my original corps are long gone because ZoS does not listen or care for players that want to play in Tamriel for the long term. ZoS current approach is, stupid, shortsighed, and Sad by any account. I'm not surprised at all that new content only captures new players for a short time that leave immediately after these silly sweeping changes go into effect; the numbers reflect that plainly.

All that said, the potential is still there and salvagable; there's a great game in here somewhere, but ZoS is certainly not the company capable of tapping this potential unless they gain some degree of self-awareness.

MLGProPlayer · August 2017

Billy2112 wrote: »

Here is my two cents. These games are usually designed with the exploration step by step system of seeing the content. Go here do that beat this boss that boss etc. As I see it, many of the 'steam generation' before entering a game look for the meta and fastest way to end game. Then when they have nothing to do they complain its the developers fault. Now Im not saying devs don't play a part in this. But this devour devour rush rush attitude of today's adhd gamer is not something devs can keep up with and when they try they release poor bug laden content that has exploits. just my two cents. :P

The thing is, this game actually has a lot of content. It's just mind-numbingly easy. I shouldn't need to force myself to play through the Orsinium or Morrowind zones. I should be excited about it. Right now, I find myself skipping new content (I will buy it, just not play it) for several months because I'm not interested enough in the story (and there is nothing else there besides a story).

The problem with this game is that once you reach endgame, the rest of the game becomes trivial. There is no challenge there anymore. The only place you can find a challenge is in the 5 raids and 6 DLC dungeons.

MinarasLaure · August 2017

Personally, and I'm still playing, I'd like to see less new content and more fix for what we have already.
Two new dungeons with two pretty much useless Monster sets don't make me happy.
And I can't say Morrowind was much better, I mean yeah, new map new quests, main story too short and too many places locked cause incomplete.
All of my guild mates are waiting for Monster Hunter world to come out, I guess I'll follow them.

lucky_Sage · August 2017

the game has grown but the biggest problem is not following old promises
biggest one is play how you want
second is spell crafting
every year they change the plan on the game
cp system is awful pve and pvp wise awful doesn't make you specialize
non cp is dead