ESO is losing interest. Any idea why?

Elsonso · August 2017

SnubbS wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

SnubbS wrote: »

I only read the first page and everyone is spewing utter trash—HURRRRRR IF U LUUK AT DUH NUMBUHS FRUM MARCH16 2 MARCH17 CLERLY EZO IS DOIN BETTR DEN EVR.

As much as I love what this chart shows, because it backs up what I always say about ESO player population (being low and declining) it has an inherent problem being that it's steam and steam is not truly indicative of true population numbers on PC because not everyone has/plays ESO through steam. The fact that people may believe that ESOs PC population tripled going from Oct 16' to Nov 16' is laughable.

However, this is indicative of two basic things—barely anyone plays ESO, and the population is declining. I'd love to say that this is because of some of the horrid changes over the last couple of patches, but it's more likely to just be the normal cycle a game goes through as it slowly dies off. The player-base is undoubtedly small and getting smaller by the month, no singular metric will disprove this—but added together, the numbers are not favorable.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/most-played/games/xbox

33rd most played game on Xbox, losing to the likes of 2K16—the 2K from 2 years ago.

No presence on twitch, the game just doesn't get viewership because there's no buzz, there's little interest and there are few players.

Zo$ has the numbers, the numbers likely aren't good for them and that's why they aren't released, and why they speak in generalities when asked about population #7millionPlayers. Perhaps a shake-up is in order, something that drastically alters the game for the better—something which creates buzz. That's at least my hope, because the game is stale.

Wait a second. Elder Scrolls Online shows up on the first page in the XBox most-played games list, and that is a sign of failure? Also the first page of the top paid games. I am thinking you are reading your own desires into this.

I don't really have a desire for the game to fail—I do want the game to hurt so that the devs may make changes to shake it up, but I don't want to log online at 7pm and see Vivec have 1 bar population for each alliance.

33rd is horrible in my opinion—I can't see that as being acceptable. I feel like you're either overrating how many people that actually is. Or perhaps your standards are even lower than mine.

Elder Scrolls tends to be a niche market, and ESO is no exception. Skyrim was a wild success, and that certainly helped with ESO, but I certainly never expected ESO to be as popular as it is today.

So, yeah, being in the top 50 games is good.

Mitrenga · August 2017

WhoSlappedThePie wrote: »

I wish Zeni would read this because it is a great game they just need to keep it fresh; new trials, more stable servers, decent creative employees, balancing, listening to feedback, more events, a new 2-man vDSA/vMA, pvp segregation, activity finder with min level search in trials etc. Employ me! I gots the ideas.

It was stated in the forums before, ZoS invited some streamers to discuss future changes. Perhaps the people that have been invited already stated those problems. We need to hear from them as well.

Tactical32 · August 2017

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

It doesn't help that ESO released Morrowind with content cut from it so they can release it in Oct/Nov and charge us more for it. It also doesn't help that the Fall content HotR is all 4 person raid content that only interests 15-20% of the players. HotR in itself isn't bad, raid players need new stuff also, but combined with the lack of content in Morrowind, that's the problem. Well it seems the devs got what they wanted. Players show up for a week or two to do the new content, then disappear for a few months until the next content is released.

(In the end, I believe ESO will screw itself with these policies. The are several good MMO's being released in late 2017 and early 2018 that will take paying players away if ESO doesn't improve something soon. It's sad but one of the top reasons I hear/read that people are still putting up with the bugs and other problems in ESO is because there's nothing better out there to play. That will change soon.

I actuall lol'd.

You can always spot the Destiny kids blinging like a neon sign.

Azurya · August 2017

perhaps look here for answers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60e7KbZ8MI

dissappointed

ArnoTerranova · August 2017

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!

After taking a proper look at the original source to confirm the sayings of @Tandor, I can confidently say that the guy who made this post did not read the graph properly. I understand why the education system is questioned lol.
In addition, we must, however, notice that steam does not represent the true amount of players since some of us are playing without using this platform (as we can't merge our teso account with steam's account)

ccfeeling · August 2017

I cant enjoy the game with huge lag , not even play in cyrodiil lol , lag x 10!
This is the problem zos team cannot solve ,
just wait a better game with normal server in the market , it takes time
No extra crown , no eso plus

kevlarto_ESO · August 2017

Dev team took game in a direction a lot of people did not like, that was the one reason a lot of people I know left the game followed by sick of the cheating and nothing being done, I know a few people that used to be hardcore fan boys of the game that left and when you start losing those people you are in a spiral in the wrong direction.

MythicEmperor · August 2017

Clown crates

Vanagrand · August 2017

In my case.

1st. Lack of interest for the high-end content. Why should I run a trial if all the meta gear as a magic-sorcerer is available from dg farming or world bosses? I have been a hardcore player of wow and the raids progression where a thing, knowing that every new raid will drop better gear. Yes, that makes old ones useless but at least you were always progressing or having the feeling to becoming stronger. Yes, I can run a trial and make it smoothly so my name would be there, but that's not motivating for me.

2nd. Not ranked pvp. Its very frustrating to join the PVP, either bg or cyrodill in this game. In battlegrounds there is one good thing, if you die you re-spawn immediately, but in the other hand if you are facing a a premade group or a group of solo players but more skilled or experimented than you its became really frustrating to not being able to do anything else than die. A ranked system is a must. I'm pretty sure im not the only one on this.
In the other hand we have cyrodil. The Idea is great, large areas of battle with castles to take. But in reality its became on who have the largest group of players win. And if you die and nobody can res you then you are ***. Need to horse up to 5-10m to the battle. So its very disappointing at least for me.

I started with my cousin 3 month ago, and at the begging the game was great, the leving is good and fun, the dungeons when you are a new player are challenging, looking for sets, reading guides to know where to find the gear but...after we have all the current "meta-gear" and being *** by betters players in pvp the only thing interesting we found was creating a new char but it only worked for a couple of weeks. Now we are tired and both canceled eso-plus subscription and probably will leave this game.

aresula · August 2017

ztyhurstub17_ESO wrote: »

From my experience running trials got a lot harder after Morrowind.

In my opinion the developers need to take a hard look at combat in general.

Heavy attack animations don't actually match the duration, and in general make combat feel very slow and boring.

We have DoT and Buff durations that are all over the place.

I cut most of the post out to save space, but I agree with all of it.

Another thing they could improve on is just the UI feedback in general. The dungeon queue system is terrible, it doesn't give you a loud noise to let you know if it's ready. It doesn't tell you how long to expect a group to form or even show who it's "grouped" you with so you know how many people you're even waiting on. Hell dungeons in general should probably be looked at. Two DPS slots for each tank/healer combo is madness. We should try to expand it to at least 3 or 4 DPS per group and have dungeons scale to however many players are in it.

The inventory system probably scares a lot of newcomers away and there is currently no middleground to alleviate this problem. So you start off with no bank/bag upgrades and you can hardly pick stuff up. All your gold is going into bag/bank upgrades and you will be forever poor till you finish them. Or you buy ESO+ and suddenly inventory isn't even a game mechanic anymore. Crafting bag might as well be an infinite bag of holding.

Where is the middleground? Why not double the starting bank/bag space? Then give people an option to buy a lesser crafting bag cheap and permanently that can hold only 100 or so crafting items. Because otherwise your bank can never be used to swap items to alts, or store gear, because it'll be filled with nothing but crafting mats. You'd still have to store crafting mats in your bank and pour a depressing amount of hours into inventory management. But you'll at least have a chance to enjoy the game and ESO+ will still be better.

Speaking of ESO+ and the crown store in general the prices need to be more logical. $120 to buy a single in game house and furnish it? What drugs are we smoking here? $15 only buying 5 crown crates? When it would make more sense to be 15 crates. I'm sorry but a single crate is not a $5 value not even close. $40 for this Azura furnishing set which isn't impressive at all? Who is buying this junk? The one that slayed me the most was the $60 motif that happened JUST before a crown sale... it MAYBE would've been okay if you could pay $30 for it but even then that's still ludicrous. $30 for an outfit is on the same insane level as BDO's greed but $60 is just insulting.

HotS and Overwatch both have a lootbox system. You can pay for boxes that give you neat stuff in them. But guess what, they also allow you to earn lootboxes SLOWLY just for playing the game and actually participating in it. If you want people actively playing your game then this is how you hook them. If all you're doing is waving cash only rewards with no ingame way to earn it you'll just get whales who throw money at you, get bored, and quit forever and have the game die over time. Maybe you should start following the example of a company that made it into the fortune 500, might not be such a bad idea afterall.

Kay1 · August 2017

Wait for Destiny 2

90% of the best PvP players on my server are quitting to give a chance to Destiny.

Practically everyone I talked to is gonna get it and ESO just release 2 monsters set and none is viable besides the dorihaus 1 piece and just 1 viable set

This was the correct time to give a good class balance change and buff all the *** up classes but no nothing.

I hope this game recovers from Destiny because I know even if ESO is *** right now it can only get better year after year anyways but with Destiny getting released on PC now the numbers will lower and it looks beyond fantastic.

Doctordarkspawn · August 2017

gethemshauna wrote: »

Because people love stability, and last few patches forced us to change gamestyle atleast twice?

This.

Combine this with the fact that they willfully go -against- player wishes, nerf *** the community does not want nerfed, refuse to admit they are wrong, and currently have more downtime then once a week with the longest maintence times I have ever seen.

The word is mismanagement. The game is being mismanaged.

Better example of mismanagement: ZOS nerfed Templar on Morrowinds release, taking major mending from them for no reason, and giving it to warden.

Warden sucks and no one uses it competatively. Do you see the issue here?

Also. Look at the agree ratio on those who are calling out the mismanagement, to the ratio of agrees on the people going 'this is fine'. The defenders have around 6, the attackers have around 60. This should be some evidence that the 'this is fine' opinion is a signifigantly lower minority than advertised.

People will hide behind the whole 'statistics red incorrectly' bit, but the problem isn't 'the players are leaving'. It's play retension. You see a trend when you look at the graph over the long term, they gain a large influx of players, then lose those players rapidly as the months go by. And the reason they lose them, is the mismanagement. Players come to enjoy the content, leave because the designers seem to do everything in they're power to inhibit that goal.

Something needs to change in the way ZOS itself operates. Not the game. Not the playerbase. ZOS. They're modus operandi has, and allways will be, the problem. Not actually giving a crap about PTS feedback. Actually releasing on live what they -said- they were going to, something they recently STOPPED doing. Holding back updates that are not ready, something they refuse to do. So long as these issues persist, this graph will continue to show the plight of ESO. An inability to retain players for more than a few months unless they are diehard fans.

Doctordarkspawn · August 2017

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

MarzAttakz wrote: »

I've recently gone back to Guild Wars 2 after a three year break brought on by a variety of reasons. I'm quite amazed by how much has changed and the 8 months I've spent in ESO has highlighted a number of things.

Where to begin? Here's my reasoning after 8 months in ESO in no specific order...
Too many meta altering changes in too short a space of time. In a nutshell everything since the lead up to Morrowind has left me with the impression of minimal progress on every one of the 7 characters I've levelled to CP315. That's not a good thing.

I still haven't found a non-trade guild that I can call home. Granted the onus is on me to do so but nothing in game pulled me in enough to dedicate and represent a guild. Without one running certain content becomes a PITA.

Too many bugs, too few fixes. Too much emphasis on crown related items.

The nightmare that is Group Finder. Toxicity experienced as a result. Lack of functionality. Bugs.

Crafting and the ludicrous material requirements for CP160 gear.

Abyssmal experience that is the trade system.

Absolute ludicrous pricing for crown items and the supposed expansion that is Morrowind. As contrast, last week I pre-purchased the upcoming GW2 expansion and got the first expansion, 2000 gems ($50 worth), a free character slot and a number of cosmetics thrown in for free. I've used 2/3 of those gems to purchase 2 account bound outfits, a bank stack upgrade and an extra 30 item bank space. I still have enough left over to make a clutch purchase when I want to. I've just set foot into the new OLD expansion which introduced a plethora of awesome things like character gliding, account bound specializations, an entire new zone made up of multiple areas, new weapon skins, new enemies and a metric kitten ton of new things. That is an expansion, unlike Morrowind.

Trash server performance has sealed it for me. Something is very wrong here.

There is a reason why the new GW2 expansion is so cheap and why they're giving all this stuff away: they're also bleeding players. GW2 is a game with just as many problems as ESO.

Agreed. I like both games and have played both games on and off over the last several years. Both forums are full of very similar complaints. But on the good side, when I press weapon swap in GW2, my weapons actually swap.

And when I sit down to play GW2 sometimes, I actually get to play my way. Because the classes playstyles arrent ***' scrapped for stupid reasons.

You can actually -play- a healtank or a beefy DPS there, because the holy trinity dont matter so much. That freedom of access I'd kill for in ESO.

Doctordarkspawn · August 2017

Personofsecrets wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert @Wrobel

Does the ever changing vision for the game include losing players because nobody likes crappy resource "balance" updates?

This.

We protested the balance changes in Morrowind. The only people who liked them, were the people who were never going to leave. WE NEVER WANTED THIS.

Sheyta · August 2017

you mean the rain ??

agingerinohio wrote: »

I don't think it is. I see new players all the time.
Also, it's summer time. Most people are outside enjoying the nice weather.

Mojmir · August 2017

I've summed up alot it in my sig.

zaria · August 2017

aresula wrote: »

ztyhurstub17_ESO wrote: »

From my experience running trials got a lot harder after Morrowind.

In my opinion the developers need to take a hard look at combat in general.

Heavy attack animations don't actually match the duration, and in general make combat feel very slow and boring.

We have DoT and Buff durations that are all over the place.

I cut most of the post out to save space, but I agree with all of it.

Another thing they could improve on is just the UI feedback in general. The dungeon queue system is terrible, it doesn't give you a loud noise to let you know if it's ready. It doesn't tell you how long to expect a group to form or even show who it's "grouped" you with so you know how many people you're even waiting on. Hell dungeons in general should probably be looked at. Two DPS slots for each tank/healer combo is madness. We should try to expand it to at least 3 or 4 DPS per group and have dungeons scale to however many players are in it.

The inventory system probably scares a lot of newcomers away and there is currently no middleground to alleviate this problem. So you start off with no bank/bag upgrades and you can hardly pick stuff up. All your gold is going into bag/bank upgrades and you will be forever poor till you finish them. Or you buy ESO+ and suddenly inventory isn't even a game mechanic anymore. Crafting bag might as well be an infinite bag of holding.

Where is the middleground? Why not double the starting bank/bag space? Then give people an option to buy a lesser crafting bag cheap and permanently that can hold only 100 or so crafting items. Because otherwise your bank can never be used to swap items to alts, or store gear, because it'll be filled with nothing but crafting mats. You'd still have to store crafting mats in your bank and pour a depressing amount of hours into inventory management. But you'll at least have a chance to enjoy the game and ESO+ will still be better.

Speaking of ESO+ and the crown store in general the prices need to be more logical. $120 to buy a single in game house and furnish it? What drugs are we smoking here? $15 only buying 5 crown crates? When it would make more sense to be 15 crates. I'm sorry but a single crate is not a $5 value not even close. $40 for this Azura furnishing set which isn't impressive at all? Who is buying this junk? The one that slayed me the most was the $60 motif that happened JUST before a crown sale... it MAYBE would've been okay if you could pay $30 for it but even then that's still ludicrous. $30 for an outfit is on the same insane level as BDO's greed but $60 is just insulting.

HotS and Overwatch both have a lootbox system. You can pay for boxes that give you neat stuff in them. But guess what, they also allow you to earn lootboxes SLOWLY just for playing the game and actually participating in it. If you want people actively playing your game then this is how you hook them. If all you're doing is waving cash only rewards with no ingame way to earn it you'll just get whales who throw money at you, get bored, and quit forever and have the game die over time. Maybe you should start following the example of a company that made it into the fortune 500, might not be such a bad idea afterall.

Yes, 4 player dungeons was an bad idea, 5 works well in WOW and give more dd slots. They did not plan for the dungeon finder however and this would be hard to balance.
And handle ready for dungeon better, and why dissolve group if some don't respond?

Part of the reason I left ESO was inventory issues, ended spending half my game time juggling stuff between bank alts.
This was not fun gameplay so I stopped.

The cash shop yes, the crates is way overpriced and it looks like they reduce the crown gem return.
Price level is generally too high,

Another tread about level 10 in dlc dungeons, why is it an level 45 restrictions on normal vault of madness but not nIcP.
Because at launch normal dungeons had fixed levels.
Changing this so level requirement somewhat matches the current difficulty would be trivial.

No the game is very healthy
but its so much stupid easy to fix stuff around.

Hammy01 · August 2017

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

It's sad but one of the top reasons I hear/read that people are still putting up with the bugs and other problems in ESO is because there's nothing better out there to play. That will change soon.

This is especially true for console players... atm ESO is the only real fantasy MMO on the market. I for one would love to throw money at another ESO competitor as I am getting tired of the constant issues that have been with the game for a very long time!

wolfie1.0. · August 2017

I just want to say that I dont use the steam launcher Anymore. Too many login issues with that as the cause so I launch out side of steam. So Steam does not track my ESO game time.

Enslaved · August 2017

Game is dying, omg, its doom I tell you, DOOM.

Bait thread.

Kalante · August 2017

The only people who are still enjoying this game are casuals or competitive trials guild players to ego boast among each other and look down on others. PVP is a joke and no good players ever takes it seriously because it's unbalanced and it takes no skill. The people who give good feedback and point out bad decisions when the patch notes change for the worse they then get shunned by the zos larper brigade.

To new players is as if nothing happened but say good bye to your core players. The new players are the ones who will keep this game going and hopefully they shell out as many crowns as possible because i doubt they are gonna stay for long once they reach the top level that zos has so much diminished.

Game is boring and the combat changed for the worst.

This is why this game is dying.

Mystrius_Archaion · August 2017

I'm losing interest because it's the same old grind in the same old game type.
I've already been through the more interesting quests once, and it is hard to do anything more than once especially when it is a grind to get to(new character).

Solution to my lost interest:

1) I need much more customization options and more powerful customization. I love the power of the DC Universe Online customization and the customization in City of Heroes(Paragon Chat, as another option) and just in general looking as I really want with more options for skin and specific body parts.

2) Give us a system to redo the fun quests with different dialogue choices even. This would be like the Flashback system from the older MMO City of Heroes. You can make the mechanic work differently for legal reasons very easily, not to mention that it wasn't a new mechanic for them either.

3) I want more ways to be overpowered and, essentially, cheat.
One example of this is the Blade of Woe. I love one-shotting npc enemies. I wish this applied to almost all enemies. There would just need to be different hit boxes and animations for the non-humanoid or different height enemies.
I also want to more obviously cheat such as having the champion system grant god-like power to be able to solo 4-person dungeons and possibly trials. I'm not a grouping fan especially when grouping is harder than solo content. If I work hard enough I should be able to solo what I work to solo. That is what I call a challenge.
Sometimes, I just don't want a challenge. Actually, this is most often. I just want to blow through npc enemies with my flashiest most fun skills, especially AoEs. I would love to spam the destruction staff elemental storm ultimate through dozens of enemies.

I really really miss the latter aspect from latter parts of other games.
There is a reason the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series was so fun and games like Bulletstorm and Lichdom Battlemage exist. They even tried something like this with an MMO called Dungeon Runners from NCSoft.
Comedy and awesome effects are so much fun.

snakester320 · August 2017

I lost interest in eso after the crown store got more and more expensive scam crates etc... housing isn't fun ...everything is either a huge grind so they can sell it in the crown store or overpriced ... content thats released is small or cut up to sell off later for more money!! Game itself is fun but Ive never liked some of the systems such as guild traders and the dungeon class systems and I refuse to support disgusting money grabs hence why I find my self no longer interested in the game!!

Kneighbors · August 2017

Enslaved wrote: »

Game is dying, omg, its doom I tell you, DOOM.

Bait thread.

I never meant to say that ESO is dying. As I already said I just wanted to show that the direction dev's are taking the game is seems to be resulting in lower interest.

That said I now see almost daily one good dedicated player from our guild leaving the game. They are just selling their accounts for cheap and new people renaming it. I'd never care about it but it makes me a lil sad to see that daily. Most of these guys are "elitist" with 45k dps builds.

I think the diversity where noone is sure what is best anymore is not good. It's like you want to be sure that Mercedes is better than Kia, this eay you will try to get Mercedes relentlessly and not just keep going with Kia just because it gets you where you want to go and that's pretty much enough. Feels really dull. I simply don't see any reason whatsoever to try and improve my build. You can relax and fun around now, no reason to take this game seriously. A perfect choice for a casual player.

derpmander · August 2017

The sustain nerfs really hurt the gameplay. We are forced from a fast paced light weaving skill based conbat to AFK heavy attacking on every class bar a select few. *** like this pisses me off when the devs talk so much false *** about fast paced combat when they ruined the very idea of it during the morrowind base game patch.

Blackbird_V · August 2017

derpmander wrote: »

The sustain nerfs really hurt the gameplay. We are forced from a fast paced light weaving skill based conbat to AFK heavy attacking on every class bar a select few. *** like this pisses me off when the devs talk so much false *** about fast paced combat when they ruined the very idea of it during the morrowind base game patch.

That actually hurt, but pretty easy to adjust with that.

What also doesn't' help is constant nerfs that are so necessary. Morrowind had way too many changes for a single patch. HoTR imo is actually ok, sadly no class balancing or FIXING TEMPLARS.

Also not to mention there's more bugs in this game than the Amazon, so.......... yeah.

However, transmog is promising. Knowing ZoS' greed and lack of care, it's probably gna be a crown thing.

ZiRM · August 2017

Even though ESO still has problems that have been around since Beta/launch I'm still having fun and addicted.

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO · August 2017

Yarlenzey · August 2017

Nestor wrote: »

Its Summer, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, people are wearing less clothing leading to thoughts that are not gaming related.

It snowed here yesterday.

Technically, only HALF THE WORLD is experiencing summer. Some players live in the other half.

We have money, too.

Berret · August 2017

I don't hop on a lot since my "end game" in any MMO is cosmetics, pets and mounts. And well Zen just shoves those things into crown crates, we can't even get a mount that's not a horse in game! Unless you Crown Store it.

I usually don't mind cosmetics in the Crown Store, but I do when it's ALL of them!