Why are players dropping like flies?

FierceSam · November 2019

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Still no genuine stats to back up the premise of this post.

It’s all apocryphal and, thus, irrelevant. Only ZOS know the reality of player numbers and you sense that even they don’t trust the data as they would surely ensure that the servers were capable of meeting demand if they did.

Just to refute the basic assumption that fewer people are playing. You will always notice when someone around you, who you are familiar with, leaves. You will only rarely notice when a new player joins.

The same with guilds. You will notice when a guild you are familiar with closes, you won’t necessarily notice the new one(s) that take its place.

The guilds I was in saw a massive surge in members when guild finder was introduced. They’ve all been at near capacity ever since and there is a very regular culling of inactive players to free up guild slots.

TL:DR show me the numbers

Tldr, just look at PvP. It doesn't take much to realize half the game, the PvP side, the side they advertise super hard at release is shriveled up and dying.

Another post saying there is no proof from you position with your head under a rock and buried in the sand

Show me the numbers.

Anything else is just apocryphal and means nothing.

siddique · November 2019

I would like to reiterate that this is not a statistics class about people asking to see numbers. It can very well be said otherwise, to show numbers that population has NOT declined.

I made this thread after three of the top five guilds disbanded on PS4, one with 1500 people spanning over three guilds with at least 70/80 percent population active. It is no longer the case.

Also, I did not say that newer population is not coming in the game, I said endgame vet players seem to have dropped drastically.

Its getting harder to find a team to do content like vCR or vSS.

Tandor · November 2019

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Still no genuine stats to back up the premise of this post.

It’s all apocryphal and, thus, irrelevant. Only ZOS know the reality of player numbers and you sense that even they don’t trust the data as they would surely ensure that the servers were capable of meeting demand if they did.

Just to refute the basic assumption that fewer people are playing. You will always notice when someone around you, who you are familiar with, leaves. You will only rarely notice when a new player joins.

The same with guilds. You will notice when a guild you are familiar with closes, you won’t necessarily notice the new one(s) that take its place.

The guilds I was in saw a massive surge in members when guild finder was introduced. They’ve all been at near capacity ever since and there is a very regular culling of inactive players to free up guild slots.

TL:DR show me the numbers

Tldr, just look at PvP. It doesn't take much to realize half the game, the PvP side, the side they advertise super hard at release is shriveled up and dying.

Another post saying there is no proof from you position with your head under a rock and buried in the sand

The fact that the game is split into PvP and PvE doesn't make the PvP section equal half of the activity, and I don't believe it ever was. Moreover, every time people complain that PvP is dead and the campaigns empty they are talking about Cyrodiil, whereas a lot of the PvP activity is now focused on Battegrounds and, doubtless to a far lesser extent, duels and IC. That at least is how I read the PvP situation based on what I see on the forum, as I don't engage in PvP myself. Cyrodiil will doubtless enjoy a renaissance if ZOS can fix the performance there, but to say that PvP is dying seems to me to be unsubstantiated and erroneous when you look at PvP as a whole, and not just at Cyrodiil.

Rungar · November 2019

all there is really to go by is concurrent steam numbers vs steam sales vs total sales.

according to steam the steam sales of eso are 2 million-5 million. Say ~3 million of the 13 million claimed.

so thats 18-23% or so of zos sales being conservativve. You could argue that steam concurrent represent 15-20% of all concurrent players.

so i would estimate the total concurrent peak population on all platforms to be about 100,000-150,000 concurrent players/ ~500k active population currently and around 250,000 peak eso or about 750k active population. Not bad by any means.

while im pretty sure there has been a drop overall i think it has more to do with natural game rythims where sales tend to decline after a while no matter what you do because everyone who wanted it has it by now.

the only thing zos can do now is bring back older players who played before and moved on but to do this i think they will need to redesign the endgame with new and better gameplay systems and of course better performance which would be a gamble.

Like it or not a few of this games core systems are very anti player and thats where their focus should be.

FierceSam · November 2019

siddique wrote: »

I would like to reiterate that this is not a statistics class about people asking to see numbers. It can very well be said otherwise, to show numbers that population has NOT declined.

I made this thread after three of the top five guilds disbanded on PS4, one with 1500 people spanning over three guilds with at least 70/80 percent population active. It is no longer the case.

Also, I did not say that newer population is not coming in the game, I said endgame vet players seem to have dropped drastically.

Its getting harder to find a team to do content like vCR or vSS.

First, ‘seems’ is highly subjective, it has no genuine value in terms of whether player numbers of any type are increasing or decreasing.

Not sure about vSS, but vCR has been around for over a year. The numbers of endgame level players who have been there, got the gear, and the T-shirts has risen (from zero to more than zero). Because of their very nature (they like challenge) these players will move on to new content that excites them or only do it as part of paid, achievement selling groups, so the pool of available, interested players might be reduced. The pool of players to do vCR is further diminished by the requirement that players have stupid DPS and/or already know all the mechanics, which prevents newer players from joining.

But that’s all my *** apocryphal thinking with no basis in reality. It might be 100% accurate or 110% total bollocks.

You want to make a case, show me the numbers

siddique · November 2019

FierceSam wrote: »

siddique wrote: »

I would like to reiterate that this is not a statistics class about people asking to see numbers. It can very well be said otherwise, to show numbers that population has NOT declined.

I made this thread after three of the top five guilds disbanded on PS4, one with 1500 people spanning over three guilds with at least 70/80 percent population active. It is no longer the case.

Also, I did not say that newer population is not coming in the game, I said endgame vet players seem to have dropped drastically.

Its getting harder to find a team to do content like vCR or vSS.

First, ‘seems’ is highly subjective, it has no genuine value in terms of whether player numbers of any type are increasing or decreasing.

Not sure about vSS, but vCR has been around for over a year. The numbers of endgame level players who have been there, got the gear, and the T-shirts has risen (from zero to more than zero). Because of their very nature (they like challenge) these players will move on to new content that excites them or only do it as part of paid, achievement selling groups, so the pool of available, interested players might be reduced. The pool of players to do vCR is further diminished by the requirement that players have stupid DPS and/or already know all the mechanics, which prevents newer players from joining.

But that’s all my *** apocryphal thinking with no basis in reality. It might be 100% accurate or 110% total bollocks.

You want to make a case, show me the numbers

I agree that it's been around sometime now but it still remains the hardest content in the game to date. +3 obviously.

FierceSam · November 2019

siddique wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

siddique wrote: »

I would like to reiterate that this is not a statistics class about people asking to see numbers. It can very well be said otherwise, to show numbers that population has NOT declined.

I made this thread after three of the top five guilds disbanded on PS4, one with 1500 people spanning over three guilds with at least 70/80 percent population active. It is no longer the case.

Also, I did not say that newer population is not coming in the game, I said endgame vet players seem to have dropped drastically.

Its getting harder to find a team to do content like vCR or vSS.

First, ‘seems’ is highly subjective, it has no genuine value in terms of whether player numbers of any type are increasing or decreasing.

Not sure about vSS, but vCR has been around for over a year. The numbers of endgame level players who have been there, got the gear, and the T-shirts has risen (from zero to more than zero). Because of their very nature (they like challenge) these players will move on to new content that excites them or only do it as part of paid, achievement selling groups, so the pool of available, interested players might be reduced. The pool of players to do vCR is further diminished by the requirement that players have stupid DPS and/or already know all the mechanics, which prevents newer players from joining.

But that’s all my *** apocryphal thinking with no basis in reality. It might be 100% accurate or 110% total bollocks.

You want to make a case, show me the numbers

I agree that it's been around sometime now but it still remains the hardest content in the game to date. +3 obviously.

Everything is hard the first time you do it. It becomes easier the more you do it. After a while you forget it was even difficult. Eventually it becomes ordinary.

At that point, you might want to move on to something else to replicate that original feeling. I know I often do.

I’ve always found there was a sweet spot about 2 weeks after the release of content, when people have done the content, but it’s still a collaborative effort and you are trying to find the best solutions together. I find that really fun. After that it all goes downhill and everyone suddenly expects you to ‘know’ how to do it in the approved cookie cutter way and it gets progressively less interesting to me. I imagine that is how top endgame players feel after they have been running the same trials for a year.

I think the issue for really good endgamers is similar to any challenge driven person, they really enjoy the ‘breaking’ of the challenge, the figuring it out and mastering it and they’ll put a load of effort and time into cracking it. But once it’s cracked, the real excitement is over and everything else is downhill until the next challenge. And they are so active (and their numbers are relatively small) that ZOS can’t afford to produce enough content to stimulate them constantly (and that’s not knocking ZOS, it’s true of every gaming company). So they go dormant, or move on, until the next challenge comes along, at which point they might come back for a bit. And that is a perfectly ‘normal’ process in a game that has been going for 5 years.

Maybe the real challenge is not to worry about that, but to do something to encourage talented, but less driven players to step up and take part in the vCR +3 or vSS runs.

DarkPicture · November 2019

Rampeal wrote: »

StrykerGaming wrote: »

TragedyOA wrote: »

Some streamers are moving on to other games.

Well, I'm not moving on to other games. ESO is one of my favorite games I enjoy streaming. It's superior to the other fantasy games like 'Neverwinter' or 'Dungeon and Dragons Online.'

^This^

No other MMO gives you more lore than ESO. No other MMO let's you play as a werewolf or Vampire. No other MMO looks nearly as good or has better combat mechanics as ESO.

The all screaming "The End is Nigh!" Will be the first to preorder the next expansion

what u mean playing as vampire? XDD u just using it only for passives, there is no any gameplay + u have garbage skills
werewolf gameplay? u only using 2 skills and spam light attack so its garbage either

im not gonna say about lore [snip] where u can running as werewolf/vampire in city and thats not a problem BUT when necro will use 1 skill...oh jezuz

[Edit to remove profanity]]

TequilaFire · November 2019

First of all I could give a crap about overall numbers or new players, what matters to me is the number of friends and guild mates that are no longer playing. So stick your proof requests.

pdeb360 · November 2019

The combatteam got no clue wth they are doing. Buff de AOE > nerf the AOE and buff the dots > Nerf the Dots. Thats in shot what happend last few updates/patches. There is no long term strategy, [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Fallen_Ray · November 2019

Some may reply to your post sayind "I always find people". But fail to notice your point. I do, I play on PS4. Few weeks back used to find groups for trials with ease. Same for Vet dungeon pledges. Yesterday the Dragonnerf patch dropped on PS4. And i can say I did see a colossal decline in population compared to a few weeks back.

Capital cities weren't as lively. Queues for dungeons left you on a forever waiting state. [snip]

If you ask me the current patch suck overinflated cow mammary glands, big time. I still play the game because I recently got a friend of mine into it a month ago and hes just hooked on the stuff. If it weren't because of him. I would've gone to Final Fantasy XiV, Black Dessert Online or any other game. Because I'm fed up with [snip]

[edited for bashing]

rumple9 · November 2019

server issues. Ive been playing since beta but now im ready to quit

ShawnLaRock · November 2019

I just came to post, “apocryphal” again.

S.

Rungar · November 2019

pdeb360 wrote: »

The combatteam got no clue wth they are doing. Buff de AOE > nerf the AOE and buff the dots > Nerf the Dots. Thats in shot what happend last few updates/patches. There is no long term strategy, clearely they lack good employees.

thats not true at all. The wanted a distinction between aoe and single target in an effort to reduce resource hog aoes so they buffed single target and everyone went nuts so they reverted that and increased aoe costs instead.

thats all it was.

Major_Lag · November 2019

siddique wrote: »

Is this the beginning of the end?

Error: This account is already logged in.

Tigerseye · November 2019

At this point, I think they should probably just move us all to the US server and be done with it.

We might have to rename some of our characters, but oh well.

Bam_Bam · November 2019

Waves and cycles. Ebbing and flowing. Nothing lasts forever and guilds come and go.

With regards to the guilds, the old ones that have folded, usually the leader(s) has taken them as far they can - they have all the gear, all the gold, all the fame - there's nothing left except nerfs and continued performance issues and fake promises that "it will get sorted but no ETA" - its a crock of [snip]. There's nothing left for them so they move on and without their charisma and knowledge, the things that successful guild leaders have. when thats gone - the guild dissolves.

But new people come along. They get hooked. The cycle repeats itself.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Indoril_Nerevar · November 2019

I am very glad you have pointed this out.

You will see others reply with nonsense like:.

What do you mean?

...I think its more lively than ever....

Not sure where you are getting this from

This may be PC or PS4 player opinions but nonetheless,

ARE they the kind of player that ARE IN FACT dropping like flies or ARE they the kind of players that stick around?

With this being said, you must now ask yourself:

"In a time like this, than, what kind of players are still sticking around? And what are the majority of them like?"

That is why players are quitting rapidly. The time and money grabs and grinds that ESO have do not compare to the community of players that make the game no longer fun; it becomes the straw that broke the Camel's back.

This is a very bad time, indeed.

Game modes are being stacked and cheated. Friends grouping up to ruin it for a few but benefit the rest of themselves. Trials and even Public Dungeons are being sold for carries.

The average player's experience is that the average player is "toxic" or a "troll" or a "cheat".

Cyrodiil and Imperial City/ Alliance Points in General are just being farmed by small circles of friends and guilds who happen to be the only few people who still play PvP to begin with.

Multiple consoles, accounts: One person.

Over aged individuals, politically biased or gnerally racist: repeating the same things everyday

People with weird power trips or ways of reasoning - almost like youre meetin the same *** up over and over again. People catch on, they get sick of it, see a pattern, move on and quit.

A lot of people are just simply incompatible to be around or play with.

...And we just never experienced it this badly in other MMO's. So, yes it is "silly nonsense" as I put it, when we play the same games and somehow these people don't know what you are posting about.

They clearly do. It's just all apart of the community. That's what I am teling you.

A good player was hard to come by before. Someone you can play a game with properly.

But, now they are a rare breed and a treasure.

Indoril_Nerevar · November 2019

People really dislike it when these threads hit top of the chart. Let that remind you of the community I speak of..

probabkyravi · November 2019

Cyrodiil population has more than halved since Ebony Blade was removed 2 years ago.

richo262 · November 2019

The reason I play less and less is because with the upheaval of builds all my gear needs to be replaced.

I don't mind this in and of itself, it is part of playing the game, but I have nowhere to put my old gear, and as it is still decent, just not meta, I have to weigh up decon'ing it, vs farming new. If I could rack it up somewhere like an armory, I'd be playing again and refarming.

I have many 'characters' but most are simply builds. I'd prefer have 6 characters (one of each class) with multiple builds but ESO doesn't let me do that. So I log in and see a list of writ jockeys and only a handful of characters. I log in, do writs, log out and wonder why I did that. That is generally the extent of my playtime. In events I may satisfy event requirements for tickets.

For me to care about this game I'd want to see the ability to merge up to 3 characters into 1. Resulting in that 1 character getting the option of 3 different racials and 3+ different build profiles and each character being able to rack up weapons / armor to their own collectible tab. Cost of racking up an item is that it cannot be unracked (withdrawn and given to an alt) and you can only store one of each type (no two daggers, no two rings).

Ragnaroek93 · November 2019

There are several things which made me quit. Performance makes PvP horrible, Battlegrounds are lackluster with no proper matchmaking and only 4v4v4 gamemodes, lack of challenging solo or duo content with proper rewards (vMA release was years ago and we got nothing since then) and so many class abilities got pruned down for no reason (for example Surprise Attack/Funnel Health losing some core features which were somehow fine for years or adding cast times to ultimates which 90% of the community didn't like), they literally do the same mistakes which WoW did. I honestly don't recognize the game which I loved to play anymore.

GhostofDatthaw · November 2019

FierceSam wrote: »

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Still no genuine stats to back up the premise of this post.

It’s all apocryphal and, thus, irrelevant. Only ZOS know the reality of player numbers and you sense that even they don’t trust the data as they would surely ensure that the servers were capable of meeting demand if they did.

Just to refute the basic assumption that fewer people are playing. You will always notice when someone around you, who you are familiar with, leaves. You will only rarely notice when a new player joins.

The same with guilds. You will notice when a guild you are familiar with closes, you won’t necessarily notice the new one(s) that take its place.

The guilds I was in saw a massive surge in members when guild finder was introduced. They’ve all been at near capacity ever since and there is a very regular culling of inactive players to free up guild slots.

TL:DR show me the numbers

Tldr, just look at PvP. It doesn't take much to realize half the game, the PvP side, the side they advertise super hard at release is shriveled up and dying.

Another post saying there is no proof from you position with your head under a rock and buried in the sand

Show me the numbers.

Anything else is just apocryphal and means nothing.

Lol @FierceSam just open your eyes. I don't have to show you any numbers because zos doesn't release numbers so you asking for them is like asking for me to unplug the sun.

I have been playing this game since it's release, so I have WATCHED the amount of players dwindle. If you think the population is not dwindling it just shows you are a very new player, probably only playing a year or so.

How about you show me proof and numbers that it is not dying. Since I know for a fact it is, how about you prove it is not to me. Because you don't have numbers either anything you say is apocryphal and means nothing

PrimusNephilim · November 2019

siddique wrote: »

So, what's the plan? All the big guilds seem to be disbanding or have disbanded on PS4, I have heard of an exodus pre dragonhold on PC as well. All the veteran players seem to have lost interest or just stopped bothering

Whats your source and what guilds are you referring too?

I belong to several large guilds and we're all busy with events/trials so I'm at a loss with your statement. If you're referring to Magic's disbandment, the guild leader was a little too pretentious in my opinion.

MajBludd · November 2019

The performance sucks and the content quality has gone down, imo. We havent had a good dlc since Wrothgar.

Oh and zos and their lack of care. For example the issue with orc passives. Why do they take so dam long to fix a fundamental part of the game? But they'll be quick to fix an issue with the crack store.

I understand they need to make a profit, but when you neglect issues that actually are a problem, people get tired of it and leave.

Enjoy the downward spiral of eso

Raudgrani · November 2019

We are leaving because of the sledgehammer approach mentality of the combat developers. When you've played the game for years, and have like +15 characters, it's not so amusing having to rebuild everything all the time. It's stupid to the degree of slotting a VMA staff will do more damage on a stamina build, than slotting a VMA bow. Bizarre 40-50% buffs followed by a similar nerf next update, plus (of course) a 1500 cost increase on said skill. We are literally seeing changes where you can't even keep up rotations without at least heavy attacking, but maybe even "... 5 second paus, repeat rotation". It's not the same game anymore. Sad to say it.

Mayrael · November 2019

MajBludd wrote: »

The performance sucks and the content quality has gone down, imo. We havent had a good dlc since Wrothgar.

Oh and zos and their lack of care. For example the issue with orc passives. Why do they take so dam long to fix a fundamental part of the game? But they'll be quick to fix an issue with the crack store.

I understand they need to make a profit, but when you neglect issues that actually are a problem, people get tired of it and leave.

Enjoy the downward spiral of eso

Welcome to the club. Magblades shade this time was fixed in... 1 year. Undo ult from Psijic line is bugged since January this year and wont be fixed this year 99%. So you will be lucky if orc passive will get fixed in next 6 months.

Czekoludek · November 2019

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

GhostofDatthaw wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Still no genuine stats to back up the premise of this post.

It’s all apocryphal and, thus, irrelevant. Only ZOS know the reality of player numbers and you sense that even they don’t trust the data as they would surely ensure that the servers were capable of meeting demand if they did.

Just to refute the basic assumption that fewer people are playing. You will always notice when someone around you, who you are familiar with, leaves. You will only rarely notice when a new player joins.

The same with guilds. You will notice when a guild you are familiar with closes, you won’t necessarily notice the new one(s) that take its place.

The guilds I was in saw a massive surge in members when guild finder was introduced. They’ve all been at near capacity ever since and there is a very regular culling of inactive players to free up guild slots.

TL:DR show me the numbers

Tldr, just look at PvP. It doesn't take much to realize half the game, the PvP side, the side they advertise super hard at release is shriveled up and dying.

Another post saying there is no proof from you position with your head under a rock and buried in the sand

Show me the numbers.

Anything else is just apocryphal and means nothing.

Lol @FierceSam just open your eyes. I don't have to show you any numbers because zos doesn't release numbers so you asking for them is like asking for me to unplug the sun.

I have been playing this game since it's release, so I have WATCHED the amount of players dwindle. If you think the population is not dwindling it just shows you are a very new player, probably only playing a year or so.

How about you show me proof and numbers that it is not dying. Since I know for a fact it is, how about you prove it is not to me. Because you don't have numbers either anything you say is apocryphal and means nothing

The only numbers we can provide are from steam charts. They are good for showing trends as you can treat them as survey of the whole playerbase. And the numbers are pretty grim atm, usually this time of the year we can see less players then normal but we never saw so big exodus of players (1/3 of steam playerbase) that takes so long (5 months at the moment, even worse then the exodus after game release which wasn't good). Of course you can say that these players move from steam to normal client but mind that steam problems occured in past too but player decline was still lower. ZoS had a nice increase of players this year and lost most of them (partialy because of wow classis, destiny 2, etc) + they lost HUGE amount of endgame players during this year, probably due to technical issues, too frequent, big meta changes and poor management of the game. Current state of game population is "okayish" but if zos will lose more players, you may finally see that something is wrong. Most endgame raiding players already see that

apri · November 2019

Sustain nerfs were unpopular around Morrowind. They have not become more popular now.
People are burnt out over all the nerf/buff changes.
People are burnt out over the set nerfs of golded out items.
People are burnt out over performance decrease, lag, endless loading screens, crashes and unfixed game bugs.
People are burnt out over the cash shop ESO turned into with the most recent addition of close-to pay2win elements (bought skill lines for BGs, for example).
In the end people also are burnt out with the consequences of burnt out people, aka decrease of population in Cyrodiil and PVE endgame activities.
People are unhappy with the lack of information which direction ESO does take. We got a roadmap for the performance work which is good but we also need a roadmap for the combat changes.
People are unhappy with the most recent Dragonhold DLC which seems over-priced for what it provides and might have been a more reasonable free addition for Elsweyr owners (it concludes the Elsweyr storyline after all).

Did I miss anything? Most likely. This is no objective feedback, it's what a lot of guildies, friends and myself are unpleased with when it comes to the most recent changes of this game.

Aurielle · November 2019

I haven’t played ESO in months. Two main reasons:

1. Terrible performance, especially in Cyrodiil.
2. Having to rebuild my characters from scratch/farm new gear every update.

Logging in just became a frustrating chore. I’m having far more fun in other games these days.