Long-time players are leaving due to performance

gariondavey · November 2022

Many players I know who have played this game for years, have subscribed to eso+ and have bought each chapter at release, are leaving due to the poor performance.

Please, turn this around before all my friends leave.

Kappachi · November 2022

MMOs are games that are always evolving, after 8 years is it not normal to have to invest into a new computer? I have no performance issues with an RTX 3090, i9-12900KF, 64 GB RAM and running the game on an SSD.

dmnqwk · November 2022

Kappachi wrote: »

MMOs are games that are always evolving, after 8 years is it not normal to have to invest into a new computer? I have no performance issues with an RTX 3090, i9-12900KF, 64 GB RAM and running the game on an SSD.

No, it's not.

MMOs are usually designed to keep of a similar level so that you don't suddenly lose all your players who don't upgrade their Pcs because they have families or global emergencies to worry about.

But the performance is less about their PCs and requirements, and more about the fact ESO updates everything so often people don't know if they're coming or going.
Most MMOs leave you alone to play a similar build/style for 18 months. ESO changes things every 3, often for no discernable reason. It's frustrating to have to re-learn skills constantly and change everything up.

It would be like the political party in charge of your country changing cabinets every week - it wouldn't actually accomplish anything and would just annoy everybody involved.

gariondavey · November 2022

Kappachi wrote: »

MMOs are games that are always evolving, after 8 years is it not normal to have to invest into a new computer? I have no performance issues with an RTX 3090, i9-12900KF, 64 GB RAM and running the game on an SSD.

The players I know all have good gaming pcs.
The issue is bugs in game, server performance, disconnects, game direction, lack of pvp content/support from devs (in a game that was initially marketed AS a pvp game, and as dekrypted has pointed out, whiplash changes.

robwolf666 · November 2022

I've been playing the game since it released on Xbox, and while I haven't "left", I am taking a break for a bit - I've done all the soloable stuff with 5 different characters now, and know it so well it's gotten a bit boring, because I know what will happen and where. I have zero interest in group activities or PvP.

So, I'm on a break until my ESO battery has recharged - thankfully, I have a lot of things I can replay, or new things recently bought to play for the first time.

CrashTest · November 2022

Dekrypted wrote: »

Can't forget about their "balance". It's always fun to play a game where instead of every 3 months you have to rebuild your toon/play another class to now every 6 months.

It doesn't have to be this way.

That is what makes me stop playing ESO and I go on long break which is getting longer every time I stop playing. Just when I've completed my builds and am trying them out in different things, ZOS does a rug pull and I have start all over again.

Not only that but my inv, banks, and storage are stuffed to the brim with old irrelevant sets that I don't want to decon bc I don't know what the next ZOS change will bring. Also, most of my gear is gold and reconstructing them is stupidly expensive especially the jewels.

The curated set drops have lessened the farming time whenever I return, but still. After years of this, I just got very weary of it all.

markulrich1966 · November 2022

I have 2 accounts, an older with ESO+ (cp1800), and a newer without (cp850).

I think about cancelling ESO+ on the older, as I barely play it anymore. Because I had to respec almost all 36 characters there. Too expensive, I give up.

On the new account, it is not such an issue, as most of the 36 toons there just reached level 50, so I had stored mats for their cp160 gear already.
With the correct setup, they are even better to play than my toons optimized on my old account before U35.

Even if the "fresh" gaming experience is better now, there are still a lot of inconsistencies.
A Dragonknight or Templar gets Empower from a class skill for 20-36 seconds.
A necro gets it only for 10 secs, a sorcerer not at all, so he relies on sets like Elegance, Rage of Ursauk (DLC-locked), or Oakensoul (Antiquity-locked). If you use elegance as I do, you "waste" a 5 piece set bonus just to get empower, on a class (sorcerer) that is literally the incarnation of heavy lightning staff attacks.

So despite some new positive gaming experience, I also feel tired and burned out, hence no more interest in playing my ESO+ account, hence cancelling the sub.

BlakMarket · November 2022

Even though performance is fixed on PC/NA players are leaving in troves, the game has become stale/stagnant & it's clear ZOS has checked out of ESO and focusing on other things, the latest patch is case in point.

I've always been motivated to log into ESO, but at this point I have to muster every bit of strength I have just to log in - you shouldn't feel this way about a game.

Smh ZOS, you had all the potential in the world to be beyond amazing but you settled for below average.

gariondavey · November 2022

BlakMarket wrote: »

Even though performance is fixed on PC/NA players are leaving in troves, the game has become stale/stagnant & it's clear ZOS has checked out of ESO and focusing on other things, the latest patch is case in point.

I've always been motivated to log into ESO, but at this point I have to muster every bit of strength I have just to log in - you shouldn't feel this way about a game.

Smh ZOS, you had all the potential in the world to be beyond amazing but you settled for below average.

That last paragraph hits hard.

DigiAngel · November 2022

BlakMarket wrote: »

Even though performance is fixed on PC/NA players are leaving in troves, the game has become stale/stagnant & it's clear ZOS has checked out of ESO and focusing on other things, the latest patch is case in point.

I've always been motivated to log into ESO, but at this point I have to muster every bit of strength I have just to log in - you shouldn't feel this way about a game.

Smh ZOS, you had all the potential in the world to be beyond amazing but you settled for below average.

Exactly the same way. Have only sparsely logged in to upgrade the horse speed on one toon and that's it. U35 nuked my desire to do any dps, overland stuff always seemed to take too long, wasn't very interesting, and had sparse rewards, and the PVP tank meta since U35 made PVP a boring chore. Add all them up...moved to a different game. Have been monitoring to see if the state got better, but obviously it got worse. Hope it turns around soon.

eovogtb16_ESO · November 2022

Long time players are also leaving because they have to wait weeks for core components of the game to be addressed (like blocking), issues with trials (militants being stuck in walls (past 2 years), brands not working, purge not working, a lot of other issues that have never been addressed), and even then there is no guarantee to know or communication that these things are even going to be fixed. It's been like a guessing game for the last 8 years.

BahometZ · November 2022

I'm honestly curious if the developers of this game understand just how broken it is. Progressing trifecta trials for the last year or so, one of the major issues to contend with is the game performance itself. Many animations and mechanics don't work, are invisible or don't appear. Of course these things have been reported but there is no indication that they will do anything about it. Gotta pump out the next content, keep butts in seats.

SPR_of_HA_community · November 2022

In PVP some players have no problems, but some players skill stop pressing.

You get hits by invisible attacks, all works really bad in prime time.

And in not prime time - it is not interesting to play - because than more players are on sieges than better !

fizzylu · November 2022

ESO has always been a rocky game when it came to it's server and engine.... but the fact that recent patches have been beyond huge fails and even flat out game breaking, well, I'm not surprised to hear that some players are finally taking their time/money elsewhere. I really think a lot of players have been burnt out for a while; whether it's because of no obvious improvement performance wise (if anything it seems to have gotten worse), questionable combat changes, the same old same old yearly adventures, all the excuses for why they won't be releasing content people actually want/ask for, or no regular QoL updates (that's a big one for me).
Funnily enough, the real deal breaker for me isn't any of those things haha it's simply Zenimax. I started participating on the forums when U35 was announced; seeing the way they handle player feedback (especially the negative kind) and as they further seem to ignore the fact that the game is lowkey going up in flames.... yeah idk, I just really haven't been seeing anything except red flags lately when I think of ESO.

hrothbern · November 2022

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I have 2 accounts, an older with ESO+ (cp1800), and a newer without (cp850).

I think about cancelling ESO+ on the older, as I barely play it anymore. Because I had to respec almost all 36 characters there. Too expensive, I give up.

On the new account, it is not such an issue, as most of the 36 toons there just reached level 50, so I had stored mats for their cp160 gear already.
With the correct setup, they are even better to play than my toons optimized on my old account before U35.

Even if the "fresh" gaming experience is better now, there are still a lot of inconsistencies.
A Dragonknight or Templar gets Empower from a class skill for 20-36 seconds.
A necro gets it only for 10 secs, a sorcerer not at all, so he relies on sets like Elegance, Rage of Ursauk (DLC-locked), or Oakensoul (Antiquity-locked). If you use elegance as I do, you "waste" a 5 piece set bonus just to get empower, on a class (sorcerer) that is literally the incarnation of heavy lightning staff attacks.

So despite some new positive gaming experience, I also feel tired and burned out, hence no more interest in playing my ESO+ account, hence cancelling the sub.

Increasing duration of the Mage Guild passive Might of the Guild from 10 seconds to 20 seconds would help Sorcerers.

DinoZavr · November 2022

@Kappachi, this is about server performance, not a client one.
i run a bit cheaper config than yours: i5-9500KF (heavily overclocked to 4.7GHz), 64GB fast RAM, GTX 1660 Super, 512GB NVMe disk. No problems with the most of contemporary single-player games. My internet connection is fast stable 100MBpS.
What is wrong win ESO is Cyrodiil performance: high lag and lag spikes on PC EU, the spikes also harm PVE - i solo 4-man most of time for the challenge: of system goes unresponsive for 400..700 mS - i have problems in PVE and normally my toon dies in PVP, as PVP requires the excellent reflexes and being too late to respond to your foe's bursts is fatal. Also because of lag my toon receives several attacks which are not registered at client until my toon dies and "preventive healing" does not help either as i have very little idea about the actual HP of my characters in Cyro (so i tend to avoid Cyrodiil, not only because i am bad at PVP, but also because of the issues: it is hard to learn to play the guessing game. IC is better as it is separated to relatively small instances, but, still the lag also rules there).

TL/DR; PC EU requires hardware upgrades severely.

dsalter · November 2022

hrothbern wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I have 2 accounts, an older with ESO+ (cp1800), and a newer without (cp850).

I think about cancelling ESO+ on the older, as I barely play it anymore. Because I had to respec almost all 36 characters there. Too expensive, I give up.

On the new account, it is not such an issue, as most of the 36 toons there just reached level 50, so I had stored mats for their cp160 gear already.
With the correct setup, they are even better to play than my toons optimized on my old account before U35.

Even if the "fresh" gaming experience is better now, there are still a lot of inconsistencies.
A Dragonknight or Templar gets Empower from a class skill for 20-36 seconds.
A necro gets it only for 10 secs, a sorcerer not at all, so he relies on sets like Elegance, Rage of Ursauk (DLC-locked), or Oakensoul (Antiquity-locked). If you use elegance as I do, you "waste" a 5 piece set bonus just to get empower, on a class (sorcerer) that is literally the incarnation of heavy lightning staff attacks.

So despite some new positive gaming experience, I also feel tired and burned out, hence no more interest in playing my ESO+ account, hence cancelling the sub.

Increasing duration of the Mage Guild passive Might of the Guild from 10 seconds to 20 seconds would help Sorcerers.

tbh all long duration buffs for empower should be standardized 30seconds so it flows better with things like surge, that one nightblade click damage buff, etc
on that note add the buff into the fighters guild or undaunted passive (make it activate when someone else activates YOUR synergies rewarding cooperation)

Sarannah · November 2022

BlakMarket wrote: »

Smh ZOS, you had all the potential in the world to be beyond amazing but you settled for below average.

Have to agree with this. Where I see ESO more as a glass half full, rather than half empty like most of you.

Even though I do not have performance issues, and even though I feel most players themselves are responsible for most of their crashings, I do feel for those who are having issues. But the server itself seems very stable to me, no lag no performance issues or anything of the sort. Today the server actually felt smoother than usual, not sure why. Maybe because many players can't/don't play right now, or maybe because many players disabled their addons.

Not talking about performance the game does have such huge potential, it is sad to not see it all come to fruition. Yet I do feel ESO keeps improving a lot, and I hope this will stay that way for years to come.

So ESO is a glass half full for me.

PS: As I know how tough software can be, I always give ZOS a pass on smaller bugs. And as long as they fix the gamebreaking ones right away, I'm fine with that. ( But they have to eventually fix them all! )

PrimusTiberius · November 2022

This is a common perspective whenever ZOS does a hard across the board nerf but after 8000 hours into ESO, I find myself not playing my favorite game as much as I used to. I have weathered many of the hard and upsetting changes to the game but the latest changes to our characters was in my opinion, one of the worst. I don't see the reason far a one in all heavy nerf sledge hammer to compensate for the power creep, why not just do small, incremental changes?

I never believed the Developers to be out of touch with the community until update 35 dropped, how in anyone's mind in the offices at ZOS, thought this was a good move. It's a mystery to me, then you add the problems with performance as of late. Yes, I'm aware of there's has always been performance issues when new DLC's drop but they seems to be more problematic this year. It's like their eye is not focused on the game like it was before, something has changed within ZOS and it shows.

I'm hoping with things slowly getting back to normal, 2023 will be a better year for ESO.

jecks33 · November 2022

I played Eso every day for 6 years, I left the game when U35 came out because... everyone knows.

I logged tonight because I miss my tanks. I died 2 times in vet pledges because block doesn't work.

I left Eso Again.

DMuehlhausen · November 2022

I mean there are a couple add ons that try to track active players. Lately my active player numbers have just gone up. Was sitting around 651k for awhile the other day it hit just over 700k...so no hardly anybody is leaving.

dcam86b14_ESO · November 2022

Been here since Beta used to be a pvp'r but alot of my early friends fell off due to other games I am still around with my housing guilds and having fun. If you're not having fun then yea you should go.

markulrich1966 · November 2022

hrothbern wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I have 2 accounts, an older with ESO+ (cp1800), and a newer without (cp850).

I think about cancelling ESO+ on the older, as I barely play it anymore. Because I had to respec almost all 36 characters there. Too expensive, I give up.

On the new account, it is not such an issue, as most of the 36 toons there just reached level 50, so I had stored mats for their cp160 gear already.
With the correct setup, they are even better to play than my toons optimized on my old account before U35.

Even if the "fresh" gaming experience is better now, there are still a lot of inconsistencies.
A Dragonknight or Templar gets Empower from a class skill for 20-36 seconds.
A necro gets it only for 10 secs, a sorcerer not at all, so he relies on sets like Elegance, Rage of Ursauk (DLC-locked), or Oakensoul (Antiquity-locked). If you use elegance as I do, you "waste" a 5 piece set bonus just to get empower, on a class (sorcerer) that is literally the incarnation of heavy lightning staff attacks.

So despite some new positive gaming experience, I also feel tired and burned out, hence no more interest in playing my ESO+ account, hence cancelling the sub.

Increasing duration of the Mage Guild passive Might of the Guild from 10 seconds to 20 seconds would help Sorcerers.

Problem is, you need to reach Mages Guild rank 9 to access the passive.This is far too much grind just to get a basic buff. Without empower, a heavy staff attack hits like a wet noodle now, so empower should be available as class skill (minimum 20 seconds) just like on templars or DKs.
I have mages guild 10 on 1 character, but run 72, so grinding to MG9 on all sorcerers is out of discussion.

I concur, that 10 seconds is too short, I meanwhile also equip my necro with the elegance set, as gameply is too annoying casting empowering grasp every 10 seconds (beside the staff attacks, my necro also wants to cast other skills like blastbones, this gets too clumsy using empowering grasp in addition every 10 secs).

Everest_Lionheart · November 2022

Let’s not forget those of us who post on the forums are a vocal minority compared to the rest of the player base. Many of us are hardcore endgamers on either PvP or PvE. For sure we are experiencing change, bug and performance fatigue.

If you are playing ESO casually or even as a solo player the game is in a completely different spot right now. People in those categories are playing the game to be entertained and not for the challenge. Most won’t feel any of the combat changes, few will notice performance or bug problems because it doesn’t affect the outcome of their game.

As for me personally I tired of change fatigue quite a few patches ago and put the game down. I still ran with one raid team and grabbed a few dailys here and there but didn’t put much time into the game. I’ve always played another game along side ESO for this reason, to break the monotony of of this game.

I’m back playing more often after u35 that I was before, getting hard mode clears, clearing all the solo content I skipped, mostly just passing the time until something new comes along. Once I’ve got my full of whatever new game I dive into I will again come back to ESO to pass the time. That’s the thing about this game that being people back, it’s still simple even with all the combat shakeups, the grind to keep up with those shakeups is the only downside to it all. Not exactly the way I want to pass my time, grinding is my number 1 turnoff. I would much rather play the game.

FlopsyPrince · November 2022

Kappachi wrote: »

MMOs are games that are always evolving, after 8 years is it not normal to have to invest into a new computer? I have no performance issues with an RTX 3090, i9-12900KF, 64 GB RAM and running the game on an SSD.

My prior computer was slow, but lasted more than 10 years, so that is not completely true. I have much better performance (loading especially) in the game now with my recently built system, but I could play with the old one. This would be especially true if they would do things like let us go from on alt to another without going to the character select screen. Having that stopping point means I need to pay attention to that or I will quickly get bounced back to the login screen.

Doing a quality of life change to allow me to jump directly to another character would do wonders! They could still do all the unload/reload steps, just avoid the "stop" at someplace that I may miss if I get distracted.

FlopsyPrince · November 2022

gariondavey wrote: »

Kappachi wrote: »

MMOs are games that are always evolving, after 8 years is it not normal to have to invest into a new computer? I have no performance issues with an RTX 3090, i9-12900KF, 64 GB RAM and running the game on an SSD.

The players I know all have good gaming pcs.
The issue is bugs in game, server performance, disconnects, game direction, lack of pvp content/support from devs (in a game that was initially marketed AS a pvp game, and as dekrypted has pointed out, whiplash changes.

That is true for me as well. I had to figure out which set of addons I can safely run for a MINIMUM of 2 weeks, perhaps longer. That didn't help my motivation for playing.

These are the kind of things good testing should get.

Also note that if a bug got double something valuable you would find them fix it much faster than the 2 week cycle.

We are not talking a minor bug here, but a major play issue.

FlopsyPrince · November 2022

dcam86b14_ESO wrote: »

Been here since Beta used to be a pvp'r but alot of my early friends fell off due to other games I am still around with my housing guilds and having fun. If you're not having fun then yea you should go.

That is certainly true, but it is bad for the overall health of the game if too many do that.

Jammy420 · November 2022

I have been suffering in overland worse than ever.

I have never had it this bad in overland.

Dr_Con · November 2022

Interesting loophole around the "no quitting posts" rule.

Amottica · November 2022

Long-time players, and players in general, leave MMORPGs all the time for many reasons.

Also, Zenimax has two different projects for improving performance, from replacing hardware and re-architecting the server-side code of the game to make it more efficient. Zenimax has updated us on both of these projects not that long ago.

Auldwulfe · November 2022

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

Let’s not forget those of us who post on the forums are a vocal minority compared to the rest of the player base. Many of us are hardcore endgamers on either PvP or PvE. For sure we are experiencing change, bug and performance fatigue.

If you are playing ESO casually or even as a solo player the game is in a completely different spot right now. People in those categories are playing the game to be entertained and not for the challenge. Most won’t feel any of the combat changes, few will notice performance or bug problems because it doesn’t affect the outcome of their game.

As for me personally I tired of change fatigue quite a few patches ago and put the game down. I still ran with one raid team and grabbed a few dailys here and there but didn’t put much time into the game. I’ve always played another game along side ESO for this reason, to break the monotony of of this game.

I’m back playing more often after u35 that I was before, getting hard mode clears, clearing all the solo content I skipped, mostly just passing the time until something new comes along. Once I’ve got my full of whatever new game I dive into I will again come back to ESO to pass the time. That’s the thing about this game that being people back, it’s still simple even with all the combat shakeups, the grind to keep up with those shakeups is the only downside to it all. Not exactly the way I want to pass my time, grinding is my number 1 turnoff. I would much rather play the game.

Depends, I am one of those casual players --- been here a year, and this last weekend, for the first time, did Spindleclutch II, and then Fungal Grotto II ....

However, the big issue is the fact that blocking is no longer working, as I tend to tank or heal during dungeons, and we are not super experienced players ... Spindleclutch II was an exercise in soul stone usage ... mind you, we are older, and arthritis is a factor..... hoping they fix things soon, as the current cycle of "some people figure things out, so everyone gets nerfed, and those same people figure it out, so everyone gets nerfed again" is starting to hurt, and it is making the game less and less fun to play.

I am, honestly, starting to feel like a collateral damage victim in a fight between a small group of players, and the Devs.
And, due to a glitch, I am locked in for a year --- Steam says ZOS charged them twice, while ZOS says Steam submitted it twice ... but I got charged twice for a 6 month renewal .... only good thing is that the time shows both, so I am not losing money if I play the whole year..... but I am slowly reaching the conclusion that writing off the money and going elsewhere might mean more fun, and a better gaming experience.

Auldwulfe