Its not end game pvp or pve. Its their overland casuals who typically buy pretty mounts, usually buy eso+ like most people but since there are so many of them thats their target.

Its numbers... thats why u35 is almost seemingly targeted to make overland harder at the expense of end game pve. Even pvp is getting effected with DoT nerf.

It's a single player game with most rewards stuck behind a paywall and mmorpg content.
It's perfect for who wants a medieval game that feels like a ubsft game.

That's mostly it.

can someone define "Overland content" for me?

bridgetrose wrote: »

can someone define "Overland content" for me?

Any zone / story based content intended to be completed by a single player with exception of single player arenas. Things not part of "overland" include: 4 player Dungeons, 12 player Trials, 4 player arenas, 1 player arenas, and actual Player vs Player fights (duels, battlegrounds, and fights within Cyrodiil and Imperial City.

Despite including delves and other "underground" locations, the term "overland" is used to reference it all. Primarily because the large bulk of such content takes place above ground or "overland".

Yeah. U35 was the last straw for me as a main pvp player. Many end game pve players have left as well. End game pve guilds are falling apart left and right during pts cycle and especially after week 5

Ive finally just accepted this game is for casuals and casuals only. So be it.

I kind of feel bad for casuals though. Theres only so much you can do as a casual through progression before you feel the need to either want to try end game pve or end game pvp as a challenge. That population is rapidly leaving the game for better options.

For myself, started doing PVP on GW2 last 3 days. I wouldnt say its better. But its a lot of fun. Best part is i dont need to do any PVE at all. Dont need to obsess on forums over patch notes. Dont need to endure 3 month patch cycles with sets completely ruining balance.

Not sure if im done with the game forever. Gave 5 years of my life on and off to this game. A lot of good memories and good fun. A lot of awful experiences, especially around patch cycles. Never been burned this bad over and over by developers even when they promise to stop burning you. Can safely say for u35 im done. Easily could see myself never looking back since im getting older with more responsibilities, nd with AOC on the horizon.

Also, without developers treating their end game with respect and dignity and with us leaving for better options, many other aspects of the game will fall apart. The economy will be hugely effected. Many sets and overland items will be worth less. Its going to have effects i cant even forsee.

The health of a game is based on balance just like anything in life. You cant have all farmers in your society and expect it to function properly. Sadly, seems ZOS has chose that exact path for how they want to proceed with the game.

I don't say any of this scorn, resentment or fallaciousness.

There is simply less ways to monetize players that have been here since the begining. This is an irrefutable truth.

The target demographic are newer players that still havent experienced the bulk of the game and still find reasons to spend money in the crown store or on chapters (non begrudgingly), while being able to enjoy overland and normal mode content.

I mean... look at the last 2 "major" core additions to the game. Companions and a card game.

I have long since conceded to the fact that players like myself who have been here since the start are simply not the ones zos is making the game for anymore. Part of me doesnt fault them for that but it is disappointing nonetheless.

EldritchSun wrote: »

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Ive finally just accepted this game is for casuals and casuals only. So be it.

A fun thing, though, is that we still need to use that meta DPS build and gear setup with some adjustments to do casual overland stuff.

It seems for me, the game tries to be everything for everyone, but fails to do so in every aspect. Just like an attempt to make 'play what you want' build.

Eh. Maybe with u35. But right now all you need to do for overland is slap on some hundings coupled with orders wrath and you can melt all overland. If you cant make the sets yourself, just join a guild and theyll make it for you.

Overland is where meta doesnt really matter the most. End game pve and pvp is where meta does matter. You can get by in overland with your fantasy build nd barely suffer.

I took a two year break before u34. I was BLOWN away by how easy the game had become. Overland was definitely suffering. I just dont agree with how they addressed it. I feel like there are ways they could have made some content harder without making other content not fun to do anymore.

Rather than a blanket nerf to all dmg, then later reverting and doing 10% nerf to end game content difficulty, they could have made a 20% nerf while in overland.

Just one example.

Im sure theres many better ways to address the situation. Just tired of trying to make good points for developers, then be ignored entirely. Not worth my time anymore lol.

Im not an end game pver in this game. Ive always been of the belief there are better games for that.

But i did fall in love with the pvp. Felt very action orientated and took more muscle memory than most pvp games ive played. Unfortunately, pvp has been neglected in this game much longer than end game pve has.

EldritchSun wrote: »

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Eh. Maybe with u35. But right now all you need to do for overland is slap on some hundings coupled with orders wrath and you can melt all overland. If you cant make the sets yourself, just join a guild and theyll make it for you.

Overland is where meta doesnt really matter the most. End game pve and pvp is where meta does matter. You can get by in overland with your fantasy build nd barely suffer.

I took a two year break before u34. I was BLOWN away by how easy the game had become. Overland was definitely suffering. I just dont agree with how they addressed it. I feel like there are ways they could have made some content harder without making other content not fun to do anymore.

Rather than a blanket nerf to all dmg, then later reverting and doing 10% nerf to end game content difficulty, they could have made a 20% nerf while in overland.

Just one example.

Im sure theres many better ways to address the situation. Just tired of trying to make good points for developers, then be ignored entirely. Not worth my time anymore lol.

Im not an end game pver in this game. Ive always been of the belief there are better games for that.

But i did fall in love with the pvp. Felt very action orientated and took more muscle memory than most pvp games ive played. Unfortunately, pvp has been neglected in this game much longer than end game pve has.

I'm a master crafter, so no problem with the set crafting. Yes, anything is viable for solo, but mentioned meta build can do stuff way better, especially in the new DLC public dungeons and against the new World bosses. Also, it's not all about the gear, the same skill formula matters, too.

Agreed. I also enjoy playing games efficiently and not simply for fantasy. That too, i feel other games do a much better job at.

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

Agreed. I also enjoy playing games efficiently and not simply for fantasy. That too, i feel other games do a much better job at.

They do, indeed. I tried another one, heavy solo focused, but an MMO, actually. I regretted I spent so much time and money on this one, after that game allowed me to farm gear better for just my classand play a necromancer class, by actually summoning minions and build my playstyle and skills around this, for example. And many other things.

I think originally the target audience was Elder Scrolls players, specifically getting the massive Skyrim fans into a MMO game (which should be easy given their hunger for anything to bridge the absurdly long gap until ES6, seriously who waits more than a decade to make a sequel to one of the most popular games).

These days it seems like the target audience is whales. Expansions are just filler and fluff, combat is watered down and classes all feel the same, and anything interesting goes straight into the crown store or casino crates (remember when good rewards came from completing hard content? Dro-m'athra skin, Clockwork polymorph, Godslayer senche).

Vylaera wrote: »

I don't know if I would really say that questing TES fans are who the game is designed around. If it is then the devs might be a bit out of touch with what TES fans actually like.

In the single player games we have ultimate freedom. I expect some of this freedom to be curbed in order for the game to be an MMO with millions (lol, thousands) of people running around doing the same quests in the same world instances. However, the choices that we should have still are not present.

Where is player agency?
In TES games of old, you were the driving force of the questlines. You made your own choices and those choices had an impact on what happened along the way. In Daggerfall in particular, you decided how the game ended and there were 15 different endings depending on how you played the game. In recent titles, the ending is still the same for continuity purposes, but how you get to the end changed depending on your choices, Morrowind in particular being the exemplary model for this freedom in a modern TES title.

In ESO, however, all of the questlines are on rails. You are not the driving force and you do not make your own choices. You are the errand boy/girl who does the dirty work for the guy who's actually in charge. You can't make any game altering decisions and you can't even find your own way through the questline. Everything is preprepared for you, everything is scripted to happen a particular way, and everything is being done for you. The agency of the player is totally gone in ESO. You're watching a movie unfold but you have to do all the work to progress the movie. Which is in many ways worse because there's no feeling of accomplishment because you didn't actually solve the riddle and get the bad guy, the questline did, you just did the objectives to get to the next phase.

Where is class creation?
In the games of old, you had a dozen or more skills and attributes to spec into and you could create exactly the build you wanted to.


In ESO, you pick a predefined class with uninspired preset and predefined abilities that aren't really that different from any other abilities, but for whatever reason are class locked meaning if you want a battlemage summoner that also uses restoration and ice magic, too bad, go play a better game.

Where is the sense of exploration?
In TES games of old, the map was, using Skyrim for example, is 16 square miles, uninterrupted, no load screens or doors between the different areas of the world map. Free, open to explore. There was always some new cave or some new ruin off the beaten path, and lots and lots of off-beaten paths. Little quests in the nooks and crannies and a full compliment of daedric quests, multiple questlines like the Companions, Brotherhood, and College, all in the same world which you could seamlessly travel across.

In ESO, the world is segmented into tiny little zones which have no continuity with each other. They're segregated by arbitrary mountains and many zones don't even connect with each other. The questlines are self-contained in the individual zones and there's very little in the game that requires you to go to another zone to complete a quest you got in another zone. The sense of exploration is almost totally dead given the tiny size of the zones themselves, with Morrowind still being the largest zone to date which is essentially a long circular hallway around Red Mountain. There's not a lot off the beaten path and all the ruins are locked off because the devs didn't have time in their artifical chapter schedule to put in the time and care the zone deserved. Summerset is an even more horrendous example, being perhaps the worst designed game map I've ever seen. It's essentially 2 intersecting hallways that make an X pattern. Everything is along one of the two roads and the zone itself is only a fraction larger than Auridon, a base game zone, due to its ugly mountains eating up all the space that could have been playable. It was horribly handled, with entire ities missing or being made into dungeons or trials. The cities themselves were identical to each other and the zone lacked character overall and totally divorced the unique weirdness that the Pocket Guides and Morrowind had set up for the Altmer, relegating this race to be a generic High Germanic ripoff, since we didn't have enough of those already.


Given all this, I don't really see why this game is meant to cater to casual TES fans when everything that makes TES special and magical as a video game series is inexplicably missing from this game. Which leads me to believe the game doesn't know what it wants to be and is in an identity crisis it cannot resolve under its current design philosophy.

Single player RPGs and MMO RPGs are not the same game, despite the belief they are in a similar category. It's like comparing a Sports Management game to a Sports game, because they're both sports.

You mention player agency, yet how can you have effective player agency in a game designed for simultaneous decisions numbering in the thousands? If you play a single player TES game you make a decision and the world revolves around YOU. How do you get that effectively online in a game that has to cater to all players? Even something as simple as a faction gaining an advantage cannot occur because, simultaneously, people in all 3 factions would need to see it. You play a single player game and it's easy but joining others online, it's simply not possible.

You go on to mention class creation and, again, playing on your own you're free to make up rules as you go, nothing needs to be balanced because there's no winners, no losers, no cooperative spirit it's just you, alone, with no measurements. You come online and the rules change, hard. You have to consider everybody, again (notice a theme here). It's no good if Necromancer is 100% better than every other class because, suddenly, people only play necromancers due to peer pressure, ease of play, forum comments etc. Outliers may exist but there have been plenty of games publish figures over who plays what to show that people gravitate towards the strongest class (everybody always tries to be an exception, but, again, it's the 99.999% we're concerned with when making decisions).

Finally you suggest exploration.
This one is slightly different but does lend itself towards the overall theme in that it's your personal opinion that there is no sense of exploration. I don't explore for the fun of obsessive nature of exploration, I just do things if they seem good. You're obviously completely different and that's where this is a different rebuttal to the previous points in that it's specifically focused on how your opinion is one of thousands, tens of thouands even millions for some games. Trying to appeal to everybody is impossible because what's good for you is horrible for others.

And this leads us back to the point of how this MMO does what all MMOs do and that is try to make money so the company can make more games that make more money. The MMO model hasn't changed much in over 20 years in terms of initial vision, but they all have to adapt to the customers desire for casual approach to gameplay.
20 years ago, society was completely different to how it is now. Back then you didn't have youtube videos on how to play (since it didn't begin until 2005) but rather than bore you with an explanation of the changes, I'd rather point out how MMOs have started to appeal to the casual gamer simply because the 'hardcore' gamers are either getting old, or have a Call of Duty/Fortnite style game available to use that doesn't require them to suffer the ignomy of PvE to accomplish their goal of fighting with other people.

When it comes down to it, The Elder Scrolls lore is always going to be something you view in your own way as to how much it matters, what it is, why it should be how you say it should be because in your head that's how it is but ultimately if Star Trek can re-write itself (a franchise of over 50 years) then surely a small gaming series with no other media outlet for the lore is free to do the same thing?

Now as to the target audience, this is where it doesn't adapt very successfully in all aspects.
Originally, MMOs were designed to appeal to the gamer who will spend a lot of time playing games. 20 years ago, it was not the same as it is today (where people play games instead of watching tv).
With the advent of Mobas and other Pvp-centric titles (like league of legends, which my sister complained to me about yesterday because her partner didn't block samira and they had trouble in mid... whatever that means) you get the situation where MMOs no longer focus on PVP player retention and focus, instead, on casual gamer acquisition. This leads to a dilution of difficulty and a structure where perhaps the entire genre is not adapting successfully to the change in potential player pool.
The PvP players have somewhere else to go why struggle to keep them here? If someone does pvp AND pve then they'd stay whether pvp was bad here or not but if pvp destroys pve quality (like it does in most mmos at some point during their life cycle) then maybe it's about time pvp players accept that the MMO genre cannot target them AND casual players (20 years ago, 10 years ago it didn't have to) because they are too far apart in what they want.

I could go on but it'd be boring, suffice to say that I think the target audience for the MMO genre is the casual player and, while the pvp player is seen as money left on the table if they don't pay lip service to them - there is no legitimate reason to keep pve and pvp players together now that games like Apex Legends or Fortnite exist to give pvp players their daily kick of adrenaline fighting other people. However, if MMOs focus entirely on pve then the next group of people who'd end up leaving are the hardcore pve gamers (the puzzle solvers) who don't really have anywhere else to go in terms of new game styles popping up to offer them the same hit.

IsharaMeradin wrote: »

bridgetrose wrote: »

can someone define "Overland content" for me?

Any zone / story based content intended to be completed by a single player with exception of single player arenas. Things not part of "overland" include: 4 player Dungeons, 12 player Trials, 4 player arenas, 1 player arenas, and actual Player vs Player fights (duels, battlegrounds, and fights within Cyrodiil and Imperial City.

Despite including delves and other "underground" locations, the term "overland" is used to reference it all. Primarily because the large bulk of such content takes place above ground or "overland".

Thank you.

Vylaera wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

It's in this really weird halfway point that no one is actually satisfied with, and I think that this is why the population is increasingly disgruntled and dissatisfied with the game.

Some players may not be satisfied with the game but many of us are. That is why the game is still successful.

I wouldn't call the entire community, competitive and casual, literally imploding over the course of this pts cycle with multiple guilds leaving the game forever, "successful"

The entire community isn't imploding over this. Only one person in the guild I'm in has mentioned dissatisfaction with the upcoming changes and none of my friends have. We are all playing as we always have.

I don't doubt that some players may leave, but there is not going to be a mass exodus.

A lot of "MMO players" just like exploring, harvesting materials and dressing up their characters/companions/houses. I think ESO does fairly well at providing for that crowd, albeit with lots of cosmetics locked behind crowns/crates.

Slightly related, but even in games like Genshin Impact there are lots of players who spend money simply to collect characters regardless of their place in the meta.

It's for the casual TES enjoyer.

Not those who are hung up on any particular mechanic or lore, but those that think dragons are cool and talking cats are funny.
It's the complete commodification of these more superficial aspects of the TES IP.
And that makes it "successful" in the same way mobile games are successful.

If the single player games were a masterful oil painting, ESO is a meme you share on facebook.