To all saying it's because AWA just because you don't like it doesn't make it true.
1. Most players in game have no idea what's coming, they just casually play the game and don't track announcements.
2. Factors impacting palyer base decrease are multiple. Season of the year, political and economic reasons. Other games launches (New MMO games, cRPGs and many many more have launched recently). Burning out. Shifting to consoles etc. etc. etc.
3. Players amount floating is pretty normal thing. I bet that after launch of the chapter it will increase and after that it will drop again.
matterandstuff wrote: »To all saying it's because AWA just because you don't like it doesn't make it true.
1. Most players in game have no idea what's coming, they just casually play the game and don't track announcements.
2. Factors impacting palyer base decrease are multiple. Season of the year, political and economic reasons. Other games launches (New MMO games, cRPGs and many many more have launched recently). Burning out. Shifting to consoles etc. etc. etc.
3. Players amount floating is pretty normal thing. I bet that after launch of the chapter it will increase and after that it will drop again.
AWA hasn't even hit yet, and all those casual players won't know what 's about to hit them until it drops and they start questioning why their character progress tracking is broken to all hell. That's a drop that's still coming.
Caligamy_ESO wrote: »Personally for me it just got extremely stagnant. My entire pvp guild quit about 2 years ago and there has been absolutely no reason to return for them. I am still in their discords and the general feeling there is they would rather just play literally anything else. Got tired of promises and lack of progress I guess.
My pve group I ran dungeons and trials with really disliked Blackwood and Deadlands, companions were a huge let down, and the story seemed like it was written for.. well I don't really know who they were aiming for there.. children? It really doesn't help there hasn't been anything substantially new to ESO in years.
We were watching hoping for *at least* a new skill line, weapon, or class and instead its a card minigame with some bonus loot probably akin to excavation. That does nothing at all the alleviate the boredom of pressing the same 5-8 buttons ad nauseum in the same skill rotation for 2 years. Play another class? I have. All of them. In stamina and magicka variants and quite frankly.. the rotations are nearly identical for every class, and the homogenization of gear sets definitely didn't alleviate that, it just made it MORE prevalent.
In short none of us are getting whatever the next chapter ended up being called (and that's a first for me since I permanently own all previous DLC with or w/o sub, nor are we subbing anymore. Half of us ended up in FFXIV which has been eye opening in terms of quantity AND quality of expansions instead of one sacrificing the other, and the story is quite frankly phenomenal by comparison.
Where ESO struggled last December (at least in our eyes) with selling Deadlands, Square had to postpone sales of their expansion because too many people were buying it and every server they had was heavily congested with 1000s of players in queues for hours and hours, and even still... no one wanted to stop playing it. 1 DLC over there sells for around the same price ESO puts out a chapter for except it takes you days or weeks to clear it instead of 5-6 hours. If I am being honest.. I doubt any of us will return, but I keep looking for news of changes hoping something will feel inviting again.
It's a fun pve game for the story and side quests.
Basically zero communication happening with the community , it's as if the game is some niche cult like followed game, and it's not lol.
My honest opinion, who cares about account wide achievements and tiltes anyway? If so, a skin for clearing vet content is way cooler than a title and those skins can be used on toons that never did that content.
I think people just need a ventile to moan about things and while I'm not a big fan of that card-game thing they add, I will also have to try it out first to give honest opinion on that. At least IMO ZOS could have spent their time on other, more important parts of the game instead, but let's give those new systems a fair chance first now that they have spent time and resources into them.
In regards to the actual topic of this thread: In almost any MMO out there the number of players variies throughout expansions. I.e. beofre and short after new content is released, numbers usually go up significantly and go down once all of the new content is done. That is natural. And not everyone values certain content the same. Some want to see more love for PvP, some don't like the darkwood/deadland stories, some joined ESO because of the dragons and their connection to ES5: Skyrim and some joined ESO as WoW was trending downward heavily. There are various reason why people join and leave a game
Oliviander wrote: »I am a veteran player subbing all the way since 2014
I have bought the new chapter but only becaus it was
a few hours before I realized that they will be killing my characters
with the implementation of AWA.
In the meantime I cancelled my sub over this tragedy
and the PTS thread indicates that there are many other
veteran players who feel exactly the same and
are cancelling their subs. :'(
Agreed. Not being able to replay the game from scratch with your alts after your main has gotten all the achievements they wanted is a dealbreaker for many.
The freefall continues.
https://steamcharts.com/app/306130
The numbers will shoot right back up when the expansion comes out.
And then right back down when people realize they can't get achievements any more on their alts, when random NPCs comment about their new characters already being the Heroes of Tamriel or all the other things they haven't done, when they are locked out of quests because the quest givers tell them they have already done it, when they look at the map of a new zone they've never entered and see everything already marked as complete, or when they see level 2 characters that are too low to even enter Cyrodiil wearing Former Emperor and Grand Overlord titles, or Flawless Conqueror, Godslayer, Master Angler, or what have you.
No, this time things will be different. Tamriel One was fun and engaging, Tamriel Once .... not so much.
Maybe. But I think more will like the new AWA vs having to re-do everything on a new character. That was very much a drag and now we will be able to see our real progress overall. I thought the repetitiveness was a poor design but we all are entitled to our own opinions.
Being able to see account wide progress in addition to individual achievements would have been an upgrade, but ZOS stated they were doing this primarily to free up data for the future, so adding something without taking something away isn't on their agenda. And while I understand that some folks would like all achievements conglomerated so they don't have to do content again, there are many of us who have already achieved everything we wanted to on our main, or multiple characters. So removing the ability redo the game from scratch on our alts is basically telling us there's nothing more left for us to do. And many of us will respond accordingly, and go find something else to do.
I have not seen where Zenimax said they were doing this primarily to free up data space. I have seen where they said it will do that and that players have been requesting this.
I do agree that having both account-wide and character-based would be an upgrade but it is very much a matter of perspective as to what opinion someone would have about character-based achievements vs account-wide.
Regardless, this change does not prevent us from playing through everything again on a new character. Plenty there.
It was said in their official Q&A about Account Wide Achievements that it was being done to free up database space. And yes, you can replay "most" content on alts if you don't care about details like how NPC dialogue trees or random NPC encounters treat alts as you the player and not as an individual character, and you don't mind being locked out of a few achievement only quests which will never be repeatable again (screenshot that epilogue with Count Ravenwatch now, next update, you will never see that ending again on any alt).
Again, their answer clearly stated that players have requested this feature as well as this change will help with server-side data. Nowhere in that Q&A does it say this is primarily to free up data space.Q: Why switch to Account Wide Achievements?
A: We decided to move to Account Wide Achievements for two main reasons. First, this has been a requested feature by players for years and is a nice quality of life improvement. It gives players a lot more freedom to explore the world on any character, without the fear of missing out on getting achievements or making incremental progress on their “main” character. Second, as mentioned in the intro, this change will result long term maintainable database stability and performance. By reducing the amount of data we have to store, the database doesn’t have to work as hard so the time it takes to search, load and save data will be sped up, leading to a more consistent user experience as the years go by and more data is added to the database.
Yes, they start off talking about player-generated data, but this is their specific answer to why they are making this change. So my comment is 100% accurate and correctly pointed out the full picture instead of just focusing on data.
I for one am in favor of account-wide achievements and seriously doubt it will have a negative effect on the size of the player base. I am looking forward to this going live as it will be amazing.
My honest opinion, who cares about account wide achievements and tiltes anyway? If so, a skin for clearing vet content is way cooler than a title and those skins can be used on toons that never did that content.
I think people just need a ventile to moan about things and while I'm not a big fan of that card-game thing they add, I will also have to try it out first to give honest opinion on that. At least IMO ZOS could have spent their time on other, more important parts of the game instead, but let's give those new systems a fair chance first now that they have spent time and resources into them.
In regards to the actual topic of this thread: In almost any MMO out there the number of players variies throughout expansions. I.e. beofre and short after new content is released, numbers usually go up significantly and go down once all of the new content is done. That is natural. And not everyone values certain content the same. Some want to see more love for PvP, some don't like the darkwood/deadland stories, some joined ESO because of the dragons and their connection to ES5: Skyrim and some joined ESO as WoW was trending downward heavily. There are various reason why people join and leave a game
This is where I don't think people are understanding why many are upset with Account Wide Achievements. We are NOT against Account Wide Achievements (most of us wanted them in addition to our individual character tracking). We are against the implementation that is coming with a LOT of bugs (all of which are unacknowledged as being bugs at this time). Lack of narrative coherence as many NPC reactions and dialogue trees are tied to achievements, being locked out of achievement only quests on alts (anyone replaying Markarth on an alt will never be able to speak to Count Ravenwatch on any alts again for his epilogue if one character got the Of House Ravenwatch title), tracking which delves and world bosses alts have not yet done will be impossible, and more.
People simply don't read the feedback and bugs on PTS, and they don't know what's coming. Those of us who do know have been working very hard to get ZOS to address and fix these things to no avail, and we've been trying to warn the wider community of what's coming. We want to hold ZOS accountable to keep the game world intact and coherent for alts and fix this mess.
ElvenOverlord wrote: »My honest opinion, who cares about account wide achievements and tiltes anyway? If so, a skin for clearing vet content is way cooler than a title and those skins can be used on toons that never did that content.
I think people just need a ventile to moan about things and while I'm not a big fan of that card-game thing they add, I will also have to try it out first to give honest opinion on that. At least IMO ZOS could have spent their time on other, more important parts of the game instead, but let's give those new systems a fair chance first now that they have spent time and resources into them.
In regards to the actual topic of this thread: In almost any MMO out there the number of players variies throughout expansions. I.e. beofre and short after new content is released, numbers usually go up significantly and go down once all of the new content is done. That is natural. And not everyone values certain content the same. Some want to see more love for PvP, some don't like the darkwood/deadland stories, some joined ESO because of the dragons and their connection to ES5: Skyrim and some joined ESO as WoW was trending downward heavily. There are various reason why people join and leave a game
This is where I don't think people are understanding why many are upset with Account Wide Achievements. We are NOT against Account Wide Achievements (most of us wanted them in addition to our individual character tracking). We are against the implementation that is coming with a LOT of bugs (all of which are unacknowledged as being bugs at this time). Lack of narrative coherence as many NPC reactions and dialogue trees are tied to achievements, being locked out of achievement only quests on alts (anyone replaying Markarth on an alt will never be able to speak to Count Ravenwatch on any alts again for his epilogue if one character got the Of House Ravenwatch title), tracking which delves and world bosses alts have not yet done will be impossible, and more.
People simply don't read the feedback and bugs on PTS, and they don't know what's coming. Those of us who do know have been working very hard to get ZOS to address and fix these things to no avail, and we've been trying to warn the wider community of what's coming. We want to hold ZOS accountable to keep the game world intact and coherent for alts and fix this mess.
This here sums it up perfectly. Some people may not care much for small things like dialogue and npc interactions, etc. But its a big deal for a lot of players.
The game now presents a cycle that can be defined as redundant, far from being natural as someone wrote at the beginning.
The game needs a change of course, a real expansion, which teleports the players to a new area with new levels and new gear, the leveling that all mmo players and RPG players in general want has been lost by now!
The game needs a change of course, a real expansion, which teleports the players to a new area with new levels and new gear, the leveling that all mmo players and RPG players in general want has been lost by now!
Sylvermynx wrote: »The game needs a change of course, a real expansion, which teleports the players to a new area with new levels and new gear, the leveling that all mmo players and RPG players in general want has been lost by now!
Ew. When I found ESO I was SO GLAD - because reaching CP 160 meant no more chasing gear, unlike WoW and RIFT (because the gear/level chase was one of the reasons I quit playing those games).
So no, not all of us want "the leveling"....
Sylvermynx wrote: »The game needs a change of course, a real expansion, which teleports the players to a new area with new levels and new gear, the leveling that all mmo players and RPG players in general want has been lost by now!
Ew. When I found ESO I was SO GLAD - because reaching CP 160 meant no more chasing gear, unlike WoW and RIFT (because the gear/level chase was one of the reasons I quit playing those games).
So no, not all of us want "the leveling"....
Also, let's not forget that eso is a game that is much easier to get back in than a game like WoW. With the sticker book and the item level not increasing, you could come back in two years and not have to worry about levelling and get geared through 3-4 tiers of equipments to get to late game.
Sylvermynx wrote: »Sorry, WoW was AWFUL. Raiding got old real fast.... I stuck it out with family and friends for 6 years, and then I canceled 7 annual subs, quit completely, haven't ever been back. I've got just over 3.5 years here, doubt I'll ever leave. TES has been my real home since Arena released in 1994. I'm still playing Skyrim and Oblivion as well as ESO.
That's why they make chocolate and vanilla ice cream - a choice of flavors. If you left though, why still posting?
Leftover_Pizza wrote: »Also, let's not forget that eso is a game that is much easier to get back in than a game like WoW. With the sticker book and the item level not increasing, you could come back in two years and not have to worry about levelling and get geared through 3-4 tiers of equipments to get to late game.
This is actually a bad thing. Coming back to a game and have no need to keep playing it to progress and with very few new content to explore, gets you back to the point of quitting again real fast.
Sylvermynx wrote: »Well, no - I never "loved" Wow. I enjoyed it some for a year or so, but then it was just being there because of family and friends who wanted to raid. The grind for levels and gear was actually soul destroying. Had I really loved the game, I might have gone back at some point - but I haven't and won't.
I DO love Elder Scrolls though! I'd even love to replay the first 2 games but I'd have to hunt up a really old machine - they just don't work very well on today's machines.... Arena for instance - you have to run it in DosBox, and it refuses to stick to a larger resolution than 680 x 400 or whatever it is natively - which on a 34 inch 4k screen is so tiny you really can't play.... though what's wrong with Daggerfall is the first person view - messes with my vertigo. Morrowind I can play, but it's so dated. I did get about halfway into it after Greymoor (because I didn't do anything with that zone but grab skyshards and antiquities), but then Blackwood came out so I got too busy here for MW plus Skyrim and Oblivion. I might get back to it eventually.