Whatever the reason for the population and Trial PUG decline, we need to admit this about Zenimax...

BahometZ · July 2022

AwA changes rubbed a tonne of people the wrong way, add the lacklustre dlc, roller-coaster buff/nerfs, confusing hybridisation that complicated things for a lot of people, I can understand why a lot of people are on the edge of leaving with the u35 announcement.

kringled_1 · July 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Don't forget the recent-ish (apparently mass) banning of accounts for using exploits and cheats. If someone says that one of their groups "has been disbanded for months," and the combat changes weren't announced that far back, but there were bans handed out some months ago, I'd be more inclined to try to connect the disbanding of the group to the account bans rather than to changes which hadn't even been announced yet.

I have no idea why you would link that small amount of account bans to peoples disbanding of groups.
The last several updates have contained many sweeping changes that weren't uniformly popular - multiple stages of hybridization, account wide achievements, etc.
I've also had a few groups that have been disbanded for months and I am positive that bans have nothing to do with it...because all of the players in them still play. But many of them are playing far more intermittently now than they were before.

Wolfkeks · July 2022

Crag PC/EU def seems a bit quieter than usual...

Normally you have people asking for grp.
People trying to sell carries.
And one person getting extremely angry about the carry service people.

And now it's just... quiet. 😕

JanTanhide · July 2022

Agree 100%. I even made a short video in Belkarth on PC NA. I logged in and normally the place is booming with people. Especially on a Friday night or weekend.
But alas, not a single player to be seen. So I venture into every building including the Bank and find no one. I mount, ride around and finally find one other player. Zone chat was dead as well.

At first I thought I had mistakenly logged onto the PTS because I've been testing these exotic and fantastic changes coming in Update 35. (eh, that's sarcasm).

I know many I play ESO with are looking for another game to occupy their wallets and time. Me too. I no longer log in to play. I log in, do mount training and log out. I feel no reason to do dungeons or trials with the upcoming doom patch.

ZOS keeps doing these horrible changes no matter what the player base says. Tone deafness will only be removed by a huge loss of the player base which is a huge loss of ESO Plus subs.

starkerealm · July 2022

JanTanhide wrote: »

At first I thought I had mistakenly logged onto the PTS because I've been testing these exotic and fantastic changes coming in Update 35. (eh, that's sarcasm).

Hilariously on Tuesday, I lost track of which server I logged in on, went to log in on PTS to test my stamsorc (who was still sitting in Craglorn from the event)... was like, "okay, this is better, these changes aren't as bad as I was expecting..." then realized I was on live.

I'm slightly less confident about this statement, but, I've seen a marked decrease in Zone Chat activity over the last week. Now, that doesn't automatically mean anything. I haven't been online for long stretches, and that could just be odd timing, or a stray anomaly... it could also, certainly, be confirmation bias, but, it's got me a little worried.

etchedpixels · July 2022

Steam data is probably more useful. It shows a general decline (although that's from the highs of Covid and Greymoor) down to levels more in the Summerset/Elsweyr period and having picked up again since High Isle.

How much of that is new players versus returning, and the like is harder to tell.

Ragnarok0130 · July 2022

warabi wrote: »

Honestly, I think they could make a lot of people happier if they'd just separate pvp and pve. A good example of how to do is Guild Wars 1. You go into a pvp zone (they're instanced, just like ESO) and skills are tweaked just for pvp. If the skill is too over powered you simply can't use it in pvp. The other nice thing about GW1 is that you can make a new character from the get go just for roleplay or for pvp.

A lot of pvers don't want to do pvp content nor be affected by it and vice versa for pvpers. They aren't wrong for feeling that way. This method would improve the quality of life for the game overall since they wouldn't *constantly* be having to try and balance the game for both modes when they are inherently quite different. Each mode would get the care and fine tuning they deserve.

This would be a game changer. I think a good starting point would be to have each piece of set gear have separate PVE and PVP attributes and then you could balance those attributes separates and have them be active or inactive depending on if you're in a PVP instance or PVE instance. Have skills have the same functionality so a nerf or buff in PVP doens't affect its PVE counterpart.