In time people are bored of repetitive content and similar quests so it's perfectly normal that amount of players is decreasing. ZOS doesn't help to stop this process. Example in payments, for eso+ they still force everyone to use the inconvenient Recurring instead of One-Off Payments or don't give the latter as a choice. Instead of evolution I see stagnation.

Gargath wrote: »

In time people are bored of repetitive content and similar quests so it's perfectly normal that amount of players is decreasing. ZOS doesn't help to stop this process. Example in payments, for eso+ they still force everyone to use the inconvenient Recurring instead of One-Off Payments or don't give the latter as a choice. Instead of evolution I see stagnation.

If you want to make a one-off payment then subscribe for one month and immediately cancel the recurring subscription.

I can’t really speak on the pve side of things too much but for pvp population has plummeted. It feels like 80% of the real end game players have quit or barely play now. The last few expansions/dlcs have been super lack luster. Pvpers really didn’t care for companions , and I doubt many will care for the card game. It’s been a lot of continuous patches of unfun mechanics ; dark convergence , acuity gankers before change etc. that for whatever reason only get changed at the start of the next patch. My suggestion to zos; if a set like dark convergence comes out and 95% of the community hate it or makes them not want to play ... CHANGE IT. Don’t wait an entire patch to do so.


While I haven’t done much pve in a while I did so in the past , I have completed plenty of dungeon / trial HM (stone garden / vAS) etc. from my experience something I found is that the game doesn’t do a lot to retain the end game players.

Trials are suppose to be the end game but at least from my experience , HMs of the newest dungeons are actually a lot more difficult for dps. Trial HMs You can just burn and skip so much of the mechanics. I think I’m the future going forward there should be more of an emphasis on making mechanics for dps (which represents the largest % of a raid party). The second boss of vHF where some of the dps have to spit up and go somewhere else for instance.


Take my comments about pve with a grain of salt as I haven’t kept up with it.

Last I like this game a lot , but lately I haven’t seen any reason to log on. I’ve just been enjoy other games and doing other things. Not hyped about next patch either

Kessra 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

There's a big ammount of problems related to global achivs currently.

Vast vastt majority of players didn't play pts or read feedbacks and might quit eso forever the moment it drops.

Amottica wrote: »

ElvenOverlord wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

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.

Most of the criticism actually comes from many who support AWA we just don't like the asinine way it is being implemented. Having my fresh level 1 character treated like a hero who saved the world is ridiculous and breaks my immersion and plus it completely strips away identity for my alts by having everything even titles be account wide. There could have been a healthy balance between individual character-specific achievements and account wide ones. The negative feedback has been staggering, vast majority don't like these changes and it may be reflected one way or the other in the player population before long.

It may be the case, it may not. It would mean those that do not support AWA, which there are many, are pretty much being quiet about this. That is something I seriously doubt is what is really happening.

In the end, I doubt this has much impact on the health of the player base as it is a great change overall. It will be amazing.

There are people leaving over AWA as the continuity of the game world and its ambiance are being shatterd. Amazing is not the word many would use to describe it. Rather than being the QOL people wanted, it's being regarded as a downgrade even by those who wanted it. It's a pretty poor implementation and I don't doubt it's effects will ripple through the game and create issues.

Poor game performance, lackluster chapters and rushed content, total neglect of PvP. Players did try and warn Zos for years about all the above issues and they did nothing.

A big new game released and others are on the horizon, Zos maybe acting now but it is too little too late.

ghost_bg_ESO wrote: »

Part of EU based players either don't have internet access(and not only) or are restricted... there is war going on. Internet access is disturbed even at neighborhood countries not directly involved.

Lolz, I live in Poland which is neighbouring Ukraine, no internet problems whatsoever and also In Romania, the country I was born. It has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Mesite wrote: »

I once mentioned the time during the Summerset event where a guild member was asking for help to do the indrik boss. I went to the boss but couldn't see her at the boss. After she invited me to group, I got the message that she was in another instance and would I like to join her. Perhaps people are there but you just can't see them because they are in another instance. It might have just been because if the event?

No, I think that's normal even outside of events-- although the number of instances of a given zone might be increased during an event involving that zone; I'm not sure how it works. Usually you won't even see things that other players type in chat if you and they are in different instances, but the other player was talking in guild chat so you were able to see her request for help.

pretty sure that's always active and scales dynamically, it wouldn't make much sense if a developer would have to put in a new number every time before and after.

once a zone is full enough a new instance gets opened, which most people don't notice unless they group with someone from another instance (bit more details involved but that's the gist of it).

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

There are people leaving over AWA as the continuity of the game world and its ambiance are being shatterd. Amazing is not the word many would use to describe it. Rather than being the QOL people wanted, it's being regarded as a downgrade even by those who wanted it. It's a pretty poor implementation and I don't doubt it's effects will ripple through the game and create issues.

like what? with a prediction like that you have a solid foundation for those assumptions, right?

because so far:
cosmetics are part of collections, a lvl1 can have a worm wizard personality. I don't remember much whining or quitting over this.
continuity flew right out of the window when new characters got dumped in the latest chapter zone, and that happened the first time in 2017 with morrowind, so if they want to complain about "continuity" they are 6 years too late (and while I personally disagree, one of the reasons ZOS did it was to curb any "WTF I just bought this expansion why can't I play it immediately" questions which would've inevitably come up)

so right here "continuity" was always the responsibility of the player mostly in which cosmetics to use (and yes, this includes dyes) and which order to do the quests in.

as for "ambiance being shattered", which is the most baffling to me: do people honestly believe zenimax is gonna put a new NPC in khenarthi's roost that greets every lvl1 with "HAIL VICTOR OVER MOLAG BAL! HAIL SAVIOR OF MORROWIND! HAIL asf..."?
that's not how it works, that's not how it ever worked.
hardly anything is the game checks for achievements, if it does at all (feel free to prove me wrong, because I've haven't seen anything doing it so far). what does get checked is quest progression (this affects which dialogs appear, for example), and while it might look the same to a lot of people, under the hood those are two different things. which means unless people want to imply zenimax is autocompleting every quest for every char and future ones, claiming "new chars can't do quests anymore!!1!" is outright stupid (and last I checked zos went out of their way to keep it for stuff like museum achievements instead of going "lolsucks").

all achievements do is showing it to the player (not the character) and other players. tamriel doesn't care if you are a gryphon heart or not, same way it doesn't care if you complete the whole instance several times to get to the point. otherwise we would have to start a discussion how people's "ambiance is shattered" when they can defeat the same world ending thread over and over....
"but it's an MMO, of course that's how it works!1!" - yes, and for the same reasons AwA are a thing, and long overdue imo.

to get on topic again, the point is different people like different things. you might be fine with grinding for random blue trophies to complete collection achievements on every char, I think this is absolutely pointless and worse keeps you playing from several different chars since it splits achievement progression - something this updates fixes for example.
furthermore, even the achievements people like to point out like imperator or godslayer: what's the difference between you as a player doing it and you as a character? the account name is still the same in case people haven't noticed.
I also highly suspect none of those people complaining over this ever got those achievements in the first place, because I can guarantee you, on that level it doesn't really matter if you did it with X class/role combination, you can most likely do it with another one was well, if not better.
and besides all that, carry runs are a thing too, so most of those achievements are completely pointless besides some personal satisfaction already.

if people really want to keep their character progression separate, I expect them to use only dyes and armor they have already unlocked as well, or if we're going all the way not even use the gear from the sticker book, because that most of the time comes from other characters too! otherwise "AwA made me quit" is a poor excuse.

After last campaign of GH, I will be one of them, tomorrow is the last of mine.

I will be missed old days, but...

Krym wrote: »

as for "ambiance being shattered", which is the most baffling to me: do people honestly believe zenimax is gonna put a new NPC in khenarthi's roost that greets every lvl1 with "HAIL VICTOR OVER MOLAG BAL! HAIL SAVIOR OF MORROWIND! HAIL asf..."?
that's not how it works, that's not how it ever worked.
hardly anything is the game checks for achievements, if it does at all (feel free to prove me wrong, because I've haven't seen anything doing it so far). what does get checked is quest progression (this affects which dialogs appear, for example), and while it might look the same to a lot of people, under the hood those are two different things. which means unless people want to imply zenimax is autocompleting every quest for every char and future ones, claiming "new chars can't do quests anymore!!1!" is outright stupid (and last I checked zos went out of their way to keep it for stuff like museum achievements instead of going "lolsucks").

There are definitely counter examples, they're just not a huge part of the game.
Clivia Tharn in WGT has separate dialog if the player has the emperor achievement. This is not trackable to quest progression because there is no associated quest.
The adoring admirer in Blackwood (content that is less than a year old) has your series of interactions tracked with him only via achievement - there are no associated quests. This is not mentioned as character specific in this mornings patch notes, so my assumption is that this is now a once per account thing, as are the interactions with some NPCs in earlier content (Melina Cassell, Choixth).
The PTS had (hopefully fixed with the real update) an issue where both Euraxia Tharn and Khamira were on the throne in Rimmen because it was looking at the achievement instead of quest progression; this should be fixable.
The game was developed for many years with quest achievements and quest progression being in lockstep. It doesn't surprise me if there's content that looks at one vs. the other.

Northwold wrote: »

All other points aside, most of the world was trapped at home for a large part of the last two years. Basically, I'm not sure what you can read into player numbers, if anything, at this particular point.

Yah, I was going to say this too. Better to check stats against 2019 levels, not 2020, since many people playing in 2020 are now going back to the office and would have less playtime.

I think all around games are showing fewer players because the pandemic is “easing off.”

Developers can only do so much to their games. It’s people’s choice if they can play or not and this choice is often dictated by life such as work and even government policy.

I think the developers are doing an excellent job with keeping the game up to date and also churning out quality expansions and content, but you know, life gets in the way. I really wish life were more like ESO though lol that would be great and I would just do writs all day and craft armor for people 😅