The Direction of ESO

idk · February 2020

Contaminate wrote: »

ZOS has gone into least effort max profit mode. It’s making them money, so quality gameplay (nevermind functional gameplay) is one of their lowest concerns

While this is a great comment to get agrees and such it does ignore the very hard to ignore fact that Zos adds more content each year than any major MMORPG out there. That takes a large amount of effort and rises games like WoW and FFIV which are probably there closest competitors.

Chaos2088 · February 2020

TheFM wrote: »

skyhawk002 wrote: »

ZOS is drifting hard into maintenance mode cash cow at this time.

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Oh look another doomsday thread....-continues playing-

How are you playing? I crash every five minutes. 0 addons, 0 problems in other games.

Click the play button and off I go.....:)

A_Silverius · February 2020

Chaos2088 wrote: »

Oh look another doomsday thread....-continues playing-

ZOS: -Continues releasing poor quality content-

Lysette · February 2020

Dalarius_Avicius wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

The problem I see here is that this discussion so far is just one-sided - from the perspective of competitive gamers. But there is as well the other perspective of what you call casual players. Both have totally different expectations on what a good and enjoyable game is and they play as well on different ends of the gameplay.

For competitive players the actual game is "endgame", whereas for casuals endgame is what they will most likely never reach nor would they want to, because their goal is to enjoy themselves in an interesting and beautiful game world with some challenge, but not too much of it. That is why most of the game is "easy", simply because this type of players likes it easy and basically stress free - adrenaline rushes are not what they are looking for, but basically a theme park which is doable even if they have not much of a clue how game mechanics work - there are plenty of those, if not even the majority.

That is why most of the game is easy mode - but of course this is not what competitive gamers want.Those look for a challenge and are permanently asking for more challenges. The problem with this for any gaming company is that this type of player will burn through new content in a matter of days, if it takes so long at all. But this content took months to create. So regardless what ZOS would try to do, this group will never be satisfied - so this is a sisyphus task to do for them.

But what can be done is to please the casual player base and there is the actual money to make as well - because casuals are caring for fluff, they want to enjoy themselves and spend money on cosmetics, houses and stuff - simply because they don't have all day to play and will therefore never be able to be competitive - and they know it and are fine with it. I am one of them, that is why I'm telling you this in order to make you see the other side of the coin as well.

There are of course mixed types - but I guess that the majority is of the casual type and ZOS will know this - they have the numbers and cater mainly to where the most money comes from and where the most satisfaction with the game is. And now look at what you all wrote - this doesn't sound like satisfaction and is an endless stream of blame and insults.

Just think about it.

I understand your perspective, but what you're basically saying is that they'll always cater to the casuals, to get over it and deal with it. But what you fail to understand is that BOTH sides of the coin can and should be catered to. I'm part of both the RP and PVP community and I get both casuals and more "hardcore" players. ZOS has the resources to put in some time and effort into creating content for both playerbases, not just ostracizing one group and satisfying the other.

That is not what I wanted to say with it - it is just pretty impossible to put both sides of the coin into the same area and expect it to work - both sides have totally different likes and dislikes when it comes to gameplay and especially for how the game should be played -an example: Competitive players want balance and in the end every class has similar kind of abilities just with different names. That is not what role players want - they want diversity and it is as well not a bad thing to have unbalanced classes in this case - or to play a character who isn't a hero type and has flaws is interesting to play - basically an anti-hero or a normal guy, who is out adventuring for fun.

Then the speed in which both sides go through PvE content - they "roll" new characters to high level within hours or days - and rush through the game, running around like crazy, just picking up quest or resource points on the way. This is ruining the experience of those, who want to do it slow paced, with a lot of time to explore and eventually even WALK and just blend in.

This is the problem I wanted to point out - that the playstyle of both is basically incompatible and what is fun and enjoyable for one side is annoying or too easy/difficult for the other. If both would be separated, it would be fine, but in a mix it is problematic.

And when I read then that some say ZOS is putting out poor content - then I think, from where would they even know that?- they didn't take the time to actually look at things, just take in the atmosphere and explore at a pace, in which the artwork of ZOS can be experienced. With rushing through the game every region feels similar, of course, because they just do the same things in every region and skip that,what would make it different. To me every region has a quite different feel and atmosphere to it - because I take the time to look at it and if I find something nice eventually, fine, but if not, as well no problem, I had a wonderful time just enjoying the artwork of ZOS.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · February 2020

First up there has been a wave of censoring or shutting down topics which may 'shame' the current state of the game. I agree that unproductive chatter/trash talking isn't getting anyone anywhere, but anger has a root and anger gets 'stuff' done.

As a regular player and an organiser in some respects, I've seen many players I know leave in 2019 and moving on to other MMO's. It goes to show that they still like the MMO genre (mostly for PVP), but are no longer satisfied here.
Indeed, for many years the PVP campaigns have:
- Lagged severely with timeouts and errors logging back in
- The meta changes more often than our underwear (Many feel the current is a tanking/healing/one button meta)
- Out of game 'politics' and 'debates' dictate the game's direction (It's an over-time MMO -> You can't be great off the bat)
- No significant changes to the PVP overland have been made (asides the bridge renovations and the addition of a hammer)

So normally MMO's last what..10 years? (approx).. It feels like there's no longer real interest from our game producer nor their teams and we've hit a midterm era were the game feels unfinished, untested, unmaintained and hence kind of dull.

Get yourselves a motivating team leader, guys or motivate him/her

TheHsN · February 2020

Yes, This update even a good one that we had to redownload the game. And it a good time to stop a side and wait what is going to be next year. Cuz this year im out...

poor content develop
no new things
poorly copy paste contents or game plays or skill or animations.... ETC

still class balances are awful
no new weapon
no new class

stop eso+ and wait next year. and i am doing it first time since beta... but enough is enough...

Galwylin · February 2020

Hanokihs wrote: »

You forgot 3B. Everyone rushes to the forums to complain about the devs making useless changes because they already have Caltrops, and 3C. Everyone else rushes to the forums to complain about the one skill that accidentally became 0.01% more effective than Caltrops in PVP. lol they can't win no matter which route they choose.

That's true to a point. But this is where vision is so important. The devs should have a vision beyond nerf the thing that actually works as created. I play nightblade mostly. My skills have changed so much from when I started to playing. And the thing they were changed to do they didn't even do as well as the reason to change them in the first place. And we see this in skills over and over. Now I see a new balance patch is coming I don't think oh I hoped they did this or that but well what are they breaking this time. Just knocking down dominoes to have a whole new set of dominoes next time. Instead of seeing caltrops as even a problem to address is a problem when you vision should be no this is how the game works if you want this result you will need caltrops. And do something new instead of circle jerking a problem that isn't one.

For the most part I approach the game as a single player game. I group up but not on a regular basis. The things that are fun with a group are so one dimensional that you literally can do something once and know everything from here on will be exactly like that. So if those social ties aren't tight, its easy to see the game as the same movie playing over and over again with new scenery each time but everything else the same. This isn't solely an ESO problem but as more players see more games doing things differently you just come to the place that for now I'm probably good on most MMORPGs. So I don't begrudge them seeking new players. Once they've seen a few things they'll be right with older players even if they only do a faction of the content available to them.

Question is if that's good enough for them and if it is I guess we either accept or perhaps move on. But man these balance patches can really accelerate that decision.

svartorn · February 2020

They are in max profit mode it looks like.

Also appears to be moving away from organized group content.

Urvoth · February 2020

svartorn wrote: »

They are in max profit mode it looks like.

Also appears to be moving away from organized group content.

Unfortunate since organized group content is the backbone of MMOs.

Urvoth · February 2020

Lysette wrote: »

Dalarius_Avicius wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

The problem I see here is that this discussion so far is just one-sided - from the perspective of competitive gamers. But there is as well the other perspective of what you call casual players. Both have totally different expectations on what a good and enjoyable game is and they play as well on different ends of the gameplay.

For competitive players the actual game is "endgame", whereas for casuals endgame is what they will most likely never reach nor would they want to, because their goal is to enjoy themselves in an interesting and beautiful game world with some challenge, but not too much of it. That is why most of the game is "easy", simply because this type of players likes it easy and basically stress free - adrenaline rushes are not what they are looking for, but basically a theme park which is doable even if they have not much of a clue how game mechanics work - there are plenty of those, if not even the majority.

That is why most of the game is easy mode - but of course this is not what competitive gamers want.Those look for a challenge and are permanently asking for more challenges. The problem with this for any gaming company is that this type of player will burn through new content in a matter of days, if it takes so long at all. But this content took months to create. So regardless what ZOS would try to do, this group will never be satisfied - so this is a sisyphus task to do for them.

But what can be done is to please the casual player base and there is the actual money to make as well - because casuals are caring for fluff, they want to enjoy themselves and spend money on cosmetics, houses and stuff - simply because they don't have all day to play and will therefore never be able to be competitive - and they know it and are fine with it. I am one of them, that is why I'm telling you this in order to make you see the other side of the coin as well.

There are of course mixed types - but I guess that the majority is of the casual type and ZOS will know this - they have the numbers and cater mainly to where the most money comes from and where the most satisfaction with the game is. And now look at what you all wrote - this doesn't sound like satisfaction and is an endless stream of blame and insults.

Just think about it.

I understand your perspective, but what you're basically saying is that they'll always cater to the casuals, to get over it and deal with it. But what you fail to understand is that BOTH sides of the coin can and should be catered to. I'm part of both the RP and PVP community and I get both casuals and more "hardcore" players. ZOS has the resources to put in some time and effort into creating content for both playerbases, not just ostracizing one group and satisfying the other.

That is not what I wanted to say with it - it is just pretty impossible to put both sides of the coin into the same area and expect it to work - both sides have totally different likes and dislikes when it comes to gameplay and especially for how the game should be played -an example: Competitive players want balance and in the end every class has similar kind of abilities just with different names. That is not what role players want - they want diversity and it is as well not a bad thing to have unbalanced classes in this case - or to play a character who isn't a hero type and has flaws is interesting to play - basically an anti-hero or a normal guy, who is out adventuring for fun.

Then the speed in which both sides go through PvE content - they "roll" new characters to high level within hours or days - and rush through the game, running around like crazy, just picking up quest or resource points on the way. This is ruining the experience of those, who want to do it slow paced, with a lot of time to explore and eventually even WALK and just blend in.

This is the problem I wanted to point out - that the playstyle of both is basically incompatible and what is fun and enjoyable for one side is annoying or too easy/difficult for the other. If both would be separated, it would be fine, but in a mix it is problematic.

And when I read then that some say ZOS is putting out poor content - then I think, from where would they even know that?- they didn't take the time to actually look at things, just take in the atmosphere and explore at a pace, in which the artwork of ZOS can be experienced. With rushing through the game every region feels similar, of course, because they just do the same things in every region and skip that,what would make it different. To me every region has a quite different feel and atmosphere to it - because I take the time to look at it and if I find something nice eventually, fine, but if not, as well no problem, I had a wonderful time just enjoying the artwork of ZOS.

Competitive balance only means all the classes have similar abilities when developed by an incompetent team. Other games have classes with very different abilities that are still balanced.

kind_hero · February 2020

I have also started playing in the beta, so I feel how the game became stale. What I mean by this is that, even though I love the game, I can't overlook how standardized it became.

The events, one year chapters, dlcs, etc follow the same pattern, even the rewards are iterations of the same thing (the indriks); the devs became very predictable. You know they will release a dungeon DLC before the chapter and one after, you know that each zone DLC has double xp/loot event, you get tickets and you buy another type of indrik. There is no surprise aside from the next year theme, everything is predictable, as the stolen puzzle you track each new chapter.

The gear, it follows the same pattern all the time, same 5 piece sets, 2 piece monster sets and 3 piece pvp sets. Problem is that now there are so many sets of which only a few are useful or interesting, the rest are just filler. And they keep releasing sets which none will bother using, because even the best sets are not very hard to obtain on normal difficulty or by crafting. There is no direction of changing this game concept, to add interesting items which could compete with sets or offer other game play styles. Why not have a 7 piece set that has 2 important bonuses? Why not have interesting non set pieces?

Some of the core systems became old, like the champion system. We have no idea what they plan to do with this system. You just get stronger, but there are no downsides, such as execute starts from 40% but costs double, or increase the effectiveness of one class tree at the expense of the other two.

The worst is the lack of communication, even on the PTS forum, where you would expect more contact with the devs. It seems they have a very clear picture of what they want, and we are just helping them testing those ideas, because most of the feedback is ignored, except when there is a lot of pressure on the forums.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · February 2020

kind_hero wrote: »

I have also started playing in the beta, so I feel how the game became stale. What I mean by this is that, even though I love the game, I can't overlook how standardized it became.

The events, one year chapters, dlcs, etc follow the same pattern, even the rewards are iterations of the same thing (the indriks); the devs became very predictable. You know they will release a dungeon DLC before the chapter and one after, you know that each zone DLC has double xp/loot event, you get tickets and you buy another type of indrik. There is no surprise aside from the next year theme, everything is predictable, as the stolen puzzle you track each new chapter.

The gear, it follows the same pattern all the time, same 5 piece sets, 2 piece monster sets and 3 piece pvp sets. Problem is that now there are so many sets of which only a few are useful or interesting, the rest are just filler. And they keep releasing sets which none will bother using, because even the best sets are not very hard to obtain on normal difficulty or by crafting. There is no direction of changing this game concept, to add interesting items which could compete with sets or offer other game play styles. Why not have a 7 piece set that has 2 important bonuses? Why not have interesting non set pieces?

Some of the core systems became old, like the champion system. We have no idea what they plan to do with this system. You just get stronger, but there are no downsides, such as execute starts from 40% but costs double, or increase the effectiveness of one class tree at the expense of the other two.

The worst is the lack of communication, even on the PTS forum, where you would expect more contact with the devs. It seems they have a very clear picture of what they want, and we are just helping them testing those ideas, because most of the feedback is ignored, except when there is a lot of pressure on the forums.

I don't know, if they don't fix up this pressing and embarrassing state of the game (after 60Go patch) I think 2020 is the last straw for me personally.

I've been clinging on whilst others got up and left a while back.

ATomiX69 · February 2020

Everything after CWC was *** so w/e keep throwing money at them and theyll keep delivering a stream of low quality content no one ever asked for.

A_Silverius · February 2020

ATomiX69 wrote: »

Everything after CWC was *** so w/e keep throwing money at them and theyll keep delivering a stream of low quality content no one ever asked for.

I was going to say Summerset was alright until I remembered this:

Urvoth · February 2020

ATomiX69 wrote: »

Everything after CWC was *** so w/e keep throwing money at them and theyll keep delivering a stream of low quality content no one ever asked for.

Pretty accurate, their content has become formulaic, reiterative, and stale. Content announcements aren’t even exciting anymore since you already know what they’re going to announce beforehand. Nothing is new or innovative, and we barely even get a full copy pasta trial each year.

Dusk_Coven · February 2020

Eevee_42 wrote: »

Anybody who enjoys PvP in this game can attest to how lackluster it is. No new systems have been added in nearly 3 years; it is clear that this is not something they care to improve on and basically put it on the backburner while applying their band-aid fixes. Can't figure out how to fix premades pugstomping? Rather than solving the core issues, they just completely remove the ability to group with friends in an online game. This kills the game for anybody who plays BGs socially whether it is with a guild, friends, or their partners. Cyrodiil is not a suitable replacement either; it's basically a horse riding simulator between keeps and outposts, you may or may not get zerged down, all the while getting 15 FPS and fighting tankbot builds.

It is obvious that ESO
(1) cannot keep up with managing PvP -- they don't even bother to acknowledge or investigate bugs and possible exploits anymore such as the rez-with-scroll bug or suspicious rollbacks

(2) cannot attract and retain a healthy population; instead it just attracts griefers and un-competitive people using cheese and pay 2 win

(3) do not know how to create a competitive model so you end up with wildly unbalanced matchups that is immediately counter to attracting and retaining new PvP players; and do not have the time, expertise, or solutions to overhaul and put in place a properly competitive model

(4) they are spending way too much time and resources trying to accommodate it -- so much crashing in Cyrodiil but nothing on that scale experienced elsewhere

(5) has at its core a character building system that is not designed to accommodate PvP at all given the vast number of permutations possible multiplied by the many modes of PvP, resulting in cheese builds and teams and ball groups

They should really just shut it all down or completely abandon it and focus on what they have proven to do better in the past -- single player PvE game experience. Stop wasting time on this crash and just let it burn itself out.
Try to recapture their successes with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, etcetera.

Lysette · February 2020

Dusk_Coven wrote: »

Eevee_42 wrote: »

Anybody who enjoys PvP in this game can attest to how lackluster it is. No new systems have been added in nearly 3 years; it is clear that this is not something they care to improve on and basically put it on the backburner while applying their band-aid fixes. Can't figure out how to fix premades pugstomping? Rather than solving the core issues, they just completely remove the ability to group with friends in an online game. This kills the game for anybody who plays BGs socially whether it is with a guild, friends, or their partners. Cyrodiil is not a suitable replacement either; it's basically a horse riding simulator between keeps and outposts, you may or may not get zerged down, all the while getting 15 FPS and fighting tankbot builds.

It is obvious that ESO
(1) cannot keep up with managing PvP -- they don't even bother to acknowledge or investigate bugs and possible exploits anymore such as the rez-with-scroll bug or suspicious rollbacks

(2) cannot attract and retain a healthy population; instead it just attracts griefers and un-competitive people using cheese and pay 2 win

(3) do not know how to create a competitive model so you end up with wildly unbalanced matchups that is immediately counter to attracting and retaining new PvP players; and do not have the time, expertise, or solutions to overhaul and put in place a properly competitive model

(4) they are spending way too much time and resources trying to accommodate it -- so much crashing in Cyrodiil but nothing on that scale experienced elsewhere

(5) has at its score a character building system that is not designed to accommodate PvP at all given the vast number of permutations possible multiplied by the many modes of PvP, resulting in cheese builds and teams and ball groups

They should really just shut it all down or completely abandon it and focus on what they have proven to do better in the past -- single player PvE game experience. Stop wasting time on this crash and just let it burn itself out.
Try to recapture their successes with Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, etcetera.

Well, the only thing broken is pvp - you don't have to chuck out all of the game, it is enough to just get rid of what is broken and this game could go on for a decade or more without much trouble. Most play PvE anyway like Skyrim, I do not even see a need for an ES6 at all, because we basically have this with ESO and it doesn't take years for new content, we get it several times per year in ESO. Not that I would want to buy anything from Bethesda again, but there is simply no need for an ES6. ESO has become what it was made for - "Skyrim with friends" - just that it's more than just Skyrim. The PvE sector is fine and can go on like this for a long time - just pvp is broken and I wouldn't be sad, if it would be gone for good.

It will not happen though, because the game was advertized with the faction warfare - still that is the root problem of ESO, the rest is fine.

eso_lags · February 2020

Contaminate wrote: »

ZOS has gone into least effort max profit mode. It’s making them money, so quality gameplay (nevermind functional gameplay) is one of their lowest concerns

100% agree and they have never shown us otherwise

Casterial · February 2020

Leaked images of ZOS making a direction for the game!

rpa · February 2020

Looks its going in direction of freemium mobile game.

lemonizzle · February 2020

Looks as if ESO has been put in a slow burn mode, using its continuous mmo profits for other Zenimax/Bethesda projects. Which is of course expected, but not at the expense of its content quality. Someone high up fits everything into a grindy schedule, both for them and us, and there is no room left for actual creativity or effort (for example, them taking a longer time to cover the whole map region of Elsweyr, not 3/4).

rager82b14_ESO · February 2020

I mean, I like this new ZOS that is starting to slowly fix the combat issues. If they fix the combat animation exploits, and keep on with the focus they been doing. I think the future looks bright.

Casterial · February 2020

rager82b14_ESO wrote: »

I mean, I like this new ZOS that is starting to slowly fix the combat issues. If they fix the combat animation exploits, and keep on with the focus they been doing. I think the future looks bright.

exploits?

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

rager82b14_ESO · February 2020

Casterial wrote: »

rager82b14_ESO wrote: »

I mean, I like this new ZOS that is starting to slowly fix the combat issues. If they fix the combat animation exploits, and keep on with the focus they been doing. I think the future looks bright.

exploits? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs

Yes exploits. Just because they like something does not mean it is not a exploit. They admit that it was not intended, and was force to balance around it because everyone does it.

Does not change the fact it is a exploit. Either the development team did not want to fix it. Did not know how to fix it. Or just did not have time to do it. All three choices i'm not a fan of.

Cążki · February 2020

Yes sir.
I totaly agreee with OP.
Eso is STAGNANT, Ctrl + c ctrl + v, no new gameplay experience.
Only new maps and "barrels" in dungeons.
Endgame dosnt exist here.
Cp dead.

Yesterday in one night i done all dlc vHarrowstrom with random 810cps and after;

whats the point on overland for me, for max cps, is usless riding simulator !!!

My idea was to w8 for Greymore and see what they will make:

-Overland maps are just empty and feel loneles in mmorpg game ESPECIALY FOR END GAMERS 810cp, 20k achives ect. NOTHING THERE JUST TREES WATER AND IDIOT IA "WOLFS" , so put open pvp into this area to grow some life in this areas and animate some activities there for MAX cps and what ? "antiquity system" ok nice idea riding simulator from point a to point b ok but where is competetitive fluently connection between world activities and competetitive experience , there is NOTHING TO DO ! On open pvp areas it was be perfect but if game leads me to farm antiquity fragmetns only for my furniture home its so dumb. I can say it is making money from players for doing nothing for players. Great philosophy from creators.

what zos should do is-> Why not to make 1000mil HP dragon flying around tamriel with no PIN on map and spontaneous landing spot? WHy not 1000mil hp monster boses unpredictaly walking on cyro with out pin on a map ?

Contaminate wrote: »

ZOS has gone into least effort max profit mode. It’s making them money, so quality gameplay (nevermind functional gameplay) is one of their lowest concerns

This understand only players who played mmos for last 10 years olso they are connoisseur and trust their time.:
Yes sir olso!

Elsonso · February 2020

Lysette wrote: »

I do not even see a need for an ES6 at all, because we basically have this with ESO and it doesn't take years for new content, we get it several times per year in ESO. Not that I would want to buy anything from Bethesda again, but there is simply no need for an ES6.

I would not say that there is no need, but I am certainly not counting the days to TES6. However, you are right about Bethesda. Bethesda Softworks has done a lot to dissuade me from buying any of their games, and I think they have been successful. Like ZOS, they just seem more interested in providing a monetization platform than an entertaining game. I feel like the studio's ATM machine.

gatekeeper13 · February 2020

About the BGs...

1) Its unfair for people who solo play to face well-organized, well balanced, pre-made groups. Chances of winning are like 0% because pugs are most of the time unbalanced and the result is one pre-made group winning the game easily. Even if you are a good pvp player, you ll get slaughtered in BG against good, pre-made groups that communicate.

2)Its also unfair for people who want to have fun with their friends in a BG game, not to be allowed to play with a pre-made group.

So imho I think ZOS should add a special category in BGs that is only for solo players and another one that will allow groups too. That way, both sides will be satisfied.