Looking at my beautiful mounts and collecting more mounts to look at + overland content which is still enjoyable.

I started playing because it's an Elder Scrolls game, I'm still here for the same reason.

Although I did recently realise the fact that I don't play World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic or Lord of the Rings Online means the setting doesn't over rule all other considerations for me. I do need to like the game design and the business model as well. But even so, I wouldn't have looked twice at this game if it wasn't for the Elder Scrolls setting.

The potential and promise of glory in PvP.
You have to bleed and suffer for it. Sacrifice for it.
Give yourself to it.
Get out of of feelings for it. Take your L's for it.

...I'm not there yet. But I can see it somewhere in the distance and I want to get there.

That's what keeps me playing.

I didn't want to pick the option that says "Lack of alternatives" but to be honest I don't know what else to do with my free time at the moment. Plus I still love playing it

There's also the fact that after the update I'm officially considered a low level

My wife plays it. Else, I would have stopped 2 years ago, when they butchered the Bosmers and ruined my then 4 years old thief.

I have to say, though, the new champion system allowed for a revival of that character, so maybe i'll actually start enjoying playing her again.

Oh, also, housing. Would be better if heartwood wasn't so stupidly expensive, or even better, if we actually made furnitures out of, you know, regular wood... But hey, housing is fun.

(tl;dr at the end)
Wall of text incoming, interesting read if you actually wanna see a perspective rarely seen on these forums (i started lurking recently)
before we go, i know this is overly positive, but the negatives are at the end don't worry, also for clarification:
progress oriented = "tryhard", a person that does their research, googles stuff, is interested in what's good and what not
non-progress oriented= "casual", a person that likes to have fun with their game and isn't interested in competition


Background about me:
[My past mmo experience] I spent a collective ~25.000 hours in the following mmos over the past 15 years:
wow, ff14, neverwinter, bdo, gw2, runescape and god knows how many more hours in aion, metin2, and other eastern mmos.
I think i have a broad view of the genre.

[What i care about in mmos] I am a progress oriented player mostly interested in the competitive part of endgame pve(if the game has one).

[Where i currently stand in ESO] I started playing ESO in july 2020 (recieved game as gift a few years back but never installed) and i am(with my group of friends i found in craglorn) very close to getting Gryphon Heart, finished it more than 5 times with 30-35/36 vitality

Here's why i play ESO and will keep playing for the foreseeable future:
- The amount of bugs is very reasonable for the size of the game and perhaps the most well refined mmo currently on the market. Whoever says otherwise regarding number of bugs expects perfection and it isn't reasonable in this day and age in this context.
- The fact devs are actively working to improve cyro pvp(i don't pretend to know what's happening there, i don't pvp but that's what i see from the outside, take this statement with a fist full of salt)
- The monetisation is decent. The crown store is cosmetic only and offers no mechanic related, "bis" or "mandatory for progression" items.
**if crown gifting would not be a thing then this game would be definitely labeled as p2w by whoever can't afford eso+ because of their country's economy, and i'd fully agree because it has so many dlcs**
- The progression is good. You feel yourself getting stronger as you get better item sets and gain more cps.
- And regarding progression, i like that game knowledge matters. You can run arguably very sub-optimal gear and cps now and still clear all the 4man content as long as you know what you're doing.
- The number of possible playstyles that could make you "competitive", basically one person can achieve anything he wants in eso without learning how to LA weave, they make money through crafting/fishing/trading/looting chests/nodes/urns/stealing/EVEN ROLEPLAYING, I SAW THOSE CHONKY KHAJIITS DANCING ON EU AND I HAD TO GIVE THEM GOLD, and they just buy a run if they want a certain achievement. I consider this good design because you can just do whatever you want, it's true. Also you can never even care about those things and enjoy the numerous voice acted storylines, there's plenty of hours there.
(this one deserves an explanation: by competitive i mean make gold to upgrade your gear, buy housing stuffs, crowns for gold etc)
- The fact that over the past 9 months of there hasn't been a single patch where my gear became completely obsolete (yes, maybe meta has changed and i had to adapt in order to have the best of the best of the best of the bis, but not mandatory to still do fairly decent)

And my last point leads nicely into my comments regarding the last patch:

Good part about last patch
Devs have stated they want to bring down the dps by 15-20% and they did exactly that. I have seen so many "reworks" in my day where devs had the goal to reduce overall damage yet it resulted in some classes losing 95% of their dps, some gaining 50% extra, and 100% of the content oustide of dummies became unkillable or oneshottable by standard abilities.
ZOS pulled off the last update and deserves a gold medal.
( I sort of understand why they did this, to this day i still don't know what some of the bosses in 4man dungeons do because they always died before showing me their mechanics in the 200k dps half decent groups could achieve. It was ridiculous.)
-The 0cp to ~300cp have gained damage, as well as any non-progress oriented player because there are much less completely useless cp options and they are better explained.
-Devs gave us some qol features in the new cps, also with the major gallop, that's pure gold, well done.
-They listened and reverted a bug fix because it was harmless, never in my life have i heard of such a thing. Devs that listen? ***? This left me speechless for some reason.

In short, i can't find the "gotcha" part of the last patch, you know, the part in the patch notes where you can exactly pinpoint one sentence and go "ahaaa, so this is how they'll make more money". It's usually very apparent in every single big patch in other mmos currently on the market.

Bad part about this patch, and the game in general
-Specifically this patch: mazzatun being broken and cp's not wanting to stay slotted
-About the game in general: Performance. I understand, game is massive and there are lots of things that can break...but damn mate, performance is bad. Memory leaks, crashes galore, lag spikes during the one and a half big cyro fights i've been a part of. I dare you to do vhof and not have one crash in the group.

super duper TL;DR:
i play eso because it's fun and devs aren't complete idiots like in all other mmos, they still take some feedback and interact with the community
also last patch did exactly what they said it would do, reduced deps by x amount
and no i can't feel any difference in content other than worse sustain, i still don't know what blood twilight and talfyg are supposed to do in vet ct

noneatza wrote: »

(tl;dr at the end)
Wall of text incoming, interesting read if you actually wanna see a perspective rarely seen on these forums (i started lurking recently)
before we go, i know this is overly positive, but the negatives are at the end don't worry, also for clarification:
progress oriented = "tryhard", a person that does their research, googles stuff, is interested in what's good and what not
non-progress oriented= "casual", a person that likes to have fun with their game and isn't interested in competition


Background about me:
[My past mmo experience] I spent a collective ~25.000 hours in the following mmos over the past 15 years:
wow, ff14, neverwinter, bdo, gw2, runescape and god knows how many more hours in aion, metin2, and other eastern mmos.
I think i have a broad view of the genre.

[What i care about in mmos] I am a progress oriented player mostly interested in the competitive part of endgame pve(if the game has one).

[Where i currently stand in ESO] I started playing ESO in july 2020 (recieved game as gift a few years back but never installed) and i am(with my group of friends i found in craglorn) very close to getting Gryphon Heart, finished it more than 5 times with 30-35/36 vitality

Here's why i play ESO and will keep playing for the foreseeable future:
- The amount of bugs is very reasonable for the size of the game and perhaps the most well refined mmo currently on the market. Whoever says otherwise regarding number of bugs expects perfection and it isn't reasonable in this day and age in this context.
- The fact devs are actively working to improve cyro pvp(i don't pretend to know what's happening there, i don't pvp but that's what i see from the outside, take this statement with a fist full of salt)
- The monetisation is decent. The crown store is cosmetic only and offers no mechanic related, "bis" or "mandatory for progression" items.
**if crown gifting would not be a thing then this game would be definitely labeled as p2w by whoever can't afford eso+ because of their country's economy, and i'd fully agree because it has so many dlcs**
- The progression is good. You feel yourself getting stronger as you get better item sets and gain more cps.
- And regarding progression, i like that game knowledge matters. You can run arguably very sub-optimal gear and cps now and still clear all the 4man content as long as you know what you're doing.
- The number of possible playstyles that could make you "competitive", basically one person can achieve anything he wants in eso without learning how to LA weave, they make money through crafting/fishing/trading/looting chests/nodes/urns/stealing/EVEN ROLEPLAYING, I SAW THOSE CHONKY KHAJIITS DANCING ON EU AND I HAD TO GIVE THEM GOLD, and they just buy a run if they want a certain achievement. I consider this good design because you can just do whatever you want, it's true. Also you can never even care about those things and enjoy the numerous voice acted storylines, there's plenty of hours there.
(this one deserves an explanation: by competitive i mean make gold to upgrade your gear, buy housing stuffs, crowns for gold etc)
- The fact that over the past 9 months of there hasn't been a single patch where my gear became completely obsolete (yes, maybe meta has changed and i had to adapt in order to have the best of the best of the best of the bis, but not mandatory to still do fairly decent)

And my last point leads nicely into my comments regarding the last patch:

Good part about last patch
Devs have stated they want to bring down the dps by 15-20% and they did exactly that. I have seen so many "reworks" in my day where devs had the goal to reduce overall damage yet it resulted in some classes losing 95% of their dps, some gaining 50% extra, and 100% of the content oustide of dummies became unkillable or oneshottable by standard abilities.
ZOS pulled off the last update and deserves a gold medal.
( I sort of understand why they did this, to this day i still don't know what some of the bosses in 4man dungeons do because they always died before showing me their mechanics in the 200k dps half decent groups could achieve. It was ridiculous.)
-The 0cp to ~300cp have gained damage, as well as any non-progress oriented player because there are much less completely useless cp options and they are better explained.
-Devs gave us some qol features in the new cps, also with the major gallop, that's pure gold, well done.
-They listened and reverted a bug fix because it was harmless, never in my life have i heard of such a thing. Devs that listen? ***? This left me speechless for some reason.

In short, i can't find the "gotcha" part of the last patch, you know, the part in the patch notes where you can exactly pinpoint one sentence and go "ahaaa, so this is how they'll make more money". It's usually very apparent in every single big patch in other mmos currently on the market.

Bad part about this patch, and the game in general
-Specifically this patch: mazzatun being broken and cp's not wanting to stay slotted
-About the game in general: Performance. I understand, game is massive and there are lots of things that can break...but damn mate, performance is bad. Memory leaks, crashes galore, lag spikes during the one and a half big cyro fights i've been a part of. I dare you to do vhof and not have one crash in the group.

super duper TL;DR:
i play eso because it's fun and devs aren't complete idiots like in all other mmos, they still take some feedback and interact with the community
also last patch did exactly what they said it would do, reduced deps by x amount
and no i can't feel any difference in content other than worse sustain, i still don't know what blood twilight and talfyg are supposed to do in vet ct

Are you me? We have the same play style /mind set and I also started in July 2020.

It's Elder Scrolls. Always played, always will.

I have either become too picky as I have got older or games have gotten worse in general, then again its probably a bit of both.

The lag in cyro keeps me in