Collection of Critical Failures in 2022

cave_troll · December 2022

Thanks for this thread! Finally someone pointing out this mess 😓

BahometZ · December 2022

Great post.

I would add the large number of long term bugs or issues that have gone unregarded, and unfixed, making many achievements impossible or unlikely. Just a few examples:

Castle thorn last boss aoe freezing or becoming invisible.

Stone garden last boss synergy not appearing so unable to free teammates.

Fang Lair dragon breath hitting people nowhere near the visible aoe.

Many doors in many dungeons not opening and many bosses not spawning apparently due to a bug with occult overload.

Rune mechanic in twins vdsr hm not working. Not to mention the months of randomly invisible orbs and train tracks since launch.

On top of that many many instances of certain animations not showing on screen, despite the mechanic operating. Guard beam disappearing despite being on, heavy attack cues not visible, interrupt cues not visible.

Barswap lag being a thing since Blackwood, mentioned countless times, never acknowledged.

There are so many more bugs that players encounter on a day-to-day that we have to simply shrug off because we know they'll never get the attention they deserve. I've gone through phases of reporting bugs on a daily basis but I gave up.

MetallicMonk · December 2022

What about how they were talking about working on PvP "events" at the start of the year and then after waiting 8-9 months they release awful BG weekends with +25% AP on the worst game modes to exist.

Surely it takes 8-9 months to think of that idea and implement it, more AP is so insanely useful, creative, and fun after all.

hondelink · December 2022

Playstation users not having refreshing path morph work for months due to the massive drop of frames it caused

BlakMarket · December 2022

Dekrypted wrote: »

A clear and concise write up.

I'd like to add that backlash being over nerfed to the point where templars have no burst ability nor is another area where zos has failed. It is a perfect representation on top of the many other examples of how players go out of their way to go onto the pts and provide cleat feedback and it is ignored.

Hope the thread doesn't get closed, but I will take any chance I can get to plug that backlash and it's respective morphs does nothing in pvp

"Skill description
Summon an expanding beam of pure sunlight to doom an enemy, dealing 1161 Magic Damage immediately and marking them for 6 seconds. After the duration ends, the sunlight bursts, dealing 1284 Magic Damage to the enemy, which increases based on the amount of damage you dealt to them over the duration, up to 200%. You can have only one Backlash active at a time."

I think they miscalculated the damage, its only doing double the damage when 200% is three times the damage - if I'm not mistaken. If corrected it would be viable again in pvp and balanced - not completely useless as it stands now.

Can someone confirm my math please. GG

FluffWit · December 2022

Great well thought out, intuitive post that deserves a response from the devs. And they're not going to get one, are they?

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Stamicka · December 2022

Yea it’s been a bad year for so many reasons. [snip] This stuff needs attention ZOS, don’t censor negative sentiment by shutting down criticisms of the game.

[edited for discussing moderation]

maxjapank · December 2022

Stamicka wrote: »

Yea it’s been a bad year for so many reasons. [snip] This stuff needs attention ZOS, don’t censor negative sentiment by shutting down criticisms of the game.

[edited for discussing moderation]

Yep, just saw that. What a shame! And zero communication as well.

gariondavey · December 2022

React wrote: »

It is my opinion that zenimax is completely failing us. These failures are not just limited to combat bugs; they include failures to communicate, failures to make good on promises they've made, failure to listen to community feedback on massive balance changes, failure to properly QA their content, etc. Feel free to add to this list if there are other things that have occurred in 2022 which you'd identify as "critical failures". Hopefully this post will serve as a point of reference for things that NEED improvement going forward, and as a reminder of how the community has been treated over the past year.
Simple things like mask drops keep releasing broken, in the exact same manner. Takes them weeks to push a patch out just to enable the drop.

Cosmetics like the rune priests weapons and soulrazer weapons, which are crown gem specific and not cheap to get, release with the VFX completely bugged - meaning that not a single person even bothered to equip them after designing them.

Leads for multiple mythics being bugged on launch across multiple patches, which have then taken weeks/months to fix. This is a basic addition to the game and absolutely should have been tested and caught by QA before launch.

Amidst probably one of the worst years in history for PVP, zenimax cancelled the double tel var event for 2022. This event was seemingly replaced with a "bonus double exp event" awarded for extra completion of the pathfinder community achievement.

With U35, somehow the "stuck in combat" bug in cyrodiil became exponentially worse. It had been insignificant for the year prior, but is so prevalent now that I often need to run across the map on foot multiple times each evening that I play.

U35 changes hit the PTS, and the community informs zenimax that they have absolutely missed their intended goal of "increasing accessibility" through lowering the ceiling/raising the floor. They barely respond to any of this feedback, and the patch goes live with most of the failed changes included, which results in a huge number of endgame players leaving the game. They promise us a Q&A about their reasoning behind these combat changes, which still has not materialized four months and an entire patch later.

They bugfix the "bashes clearing inputs" bug, which causes the "block drop" bug. After a month of having the block drop bug, stating multiple times that they needed to properly test the fix and that is why it took a month, they release a patch where they revert the fix to the "bashes clearing inputs" bug in order to fix the "block drop bug". However, they introduce a new bug to PC simultaneously which fully disables block in certain instances. This bug has apparently been on console since the patch launched, so they undeniably ignored multiple bug report threads from console players about this bug. Now they are saying it will be at least 2-3 more weeks until they can fix a core function like block, resulting in 6-8 weeks where block was unreliable. Meanwhile the "bashes clearing inputs bugs" has been reintroduced on purpose.

They release U36, and several main quests are bugged and cannot be progressed. There is a world boss in the new zone that has an attack that instantly crashes everyone nearby and rolls their game back.

U36 also brings some of the most consistent and widespread crashing we've seen in years, resulting in @ZOS_RichLambert 's "apology" where he claims that they'll do better, while giving us a free guar pet for our troubles.

They try to fix siroria with a patch included in the U36 launch, but this causes siege to break and never despawn, fully breaking cyrodiil. This also causes the dragonknight 500k+ dps standard bug, and the warden exponentially healing budding seeds bug.

They promise us a code rewrite that will take "most of 2022", which they claim will fix performance in cyrodiil and also allow them to make changes without breaking other things, while also specifically claiming that they'd update us periodically on the project throughout the year. They say that this code work will prevent them from adding any PVP content at all until it is complete. On November 17th, GinaBruno gives us our first update on the code rewrite in 11 months. This update says that the code rewrite "is ongoing", and will be released "in pieces across multiple patches in 2023", but that replacing the servers is their first priority. The current ETA for console servers being replaced is "sometime after the EU server", which means sometime after march/april 2023. If this is accurate and they cannot release any part of the code rewrite before replacing all severs, it means the earliest we can see a part of this code rewrite will be Q2/Q3 2023, 6-9 months later than the initial speculative date of Q1 2023. This also means that assuming they still intend to add no PVP content while this is in progress, by Q1 2023 there will have been four years since the last PVP content was added in the form of one BG map.

They replaced the PCNA servers in 2022, which resulted in an astronomical cyrodiil performance increase, despite the developers specifically stating that it would not help the performance whatsoever. One developer even stated live on stream that "the issue isn't the servers, or we would have replaced them years ago". Now about 6-7 months have passed, and the server performance on PCNA has degraded back to nearly pre-replacement levels, and is nearly unplayable each night in the pop-locked PVP campaigns. They have not acknowledged that the performance is degrading even once.

There is no developer or studio head accountability whatsoever, anywhere. The only public facing zenimax employees that speak with us at all are @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_Kevin , who both are wonderful and greatly appreciated, but who also cannot give us any substantial information about the BTS stuff that actually matters at this point. The forums are patrolled by ban/censor happy moderators, who delete anything even slightly critical or controversial about the game or it's management, which furthers the general opinion that the players are resented by zenimax.

We have the creative lead who has made multiple snarky/dismissive tweets about community concerns over the years, and who was the subject of a massive controversy that resulted in the "January PVP update" post from @ZOS_MattFiror , which has failed to materialize into any changes or improvements in 11 months.

100 percent agreed.

mandricus wrote: »

I would add to the list the new jabs animation with the vampiric motif reskin used as spear model (forgotting in the meantime to update the companion's animation accordingly) and the new flurry animation, and the overnerf to jabs, burning light proc and power of the light that completely killed the Templar class.

Also on the money.

Reverb · December 2022

dragonlord500 wrote: »

I agree that Zos has failed its player base on many levels and we should get a proper compensation for tolerating all this.

the Compensation I think should be is about 8000 seals of endeavors total for everyone. the reason being because this was the year of hell for elder scrolls online and this caused a massive up and down with the player base and many have left the game for obvious reasons.

Zos has entirely failed to communicate that absolute fact and have made great strides to even so much as to cover it up.

right now Elder scrolls online is suffering so I hope the next DLC will blow all our frustrations out of the ocean entirely.

I don’t want compensation, I want the game to live up to its potential, and I want a development team who wants it to happen as much as I do.

And I want the old jabs animation and functionality back. Take this new garbage back to whatever plane of oblivion spawned it.

Ariordin · December 2022

I am not sure if this really fits with the purpose of this conversation but reading this well thought-out thread has me thinking.

I think part of the frustration of all these issues mounting up is this is an Elder Scrolls game. This IP is supposed to be top of the line AAA gaming experience. Until TES6 releases sometime around the heat death of the universe, this is the flagship game from an important franchise. Both for the industry and for Microsoft's bottom-line. You can repackage Skyrim as many times as you like for an easy buck but this is the game moving the franchise forward. Just, increasingly it feels like Zos, Bethesda, Microsoft is not treating it like such. The quality of the content they release shows the care and the resources the company that owns it puts into it. If they want people to continue to see Elder Scrolls as a standout video game series, rather then a series that has turned into a run of the mill nickel & dime MMO, they need to produce content that shows it.

ESO was a risk when it came out. When a francise goes MMO it may not work out. And it had some ugly growing pains early on, but they recovered and hit their stride. From the Morrowind - Elsweyr releases (your opinion may vary) ESO released interesting new content, classes, and interesting stories. There was energy behind it and I think the right move was then to go to Skyrim to draw gamers to that energy using the franchises most famous game as the draw. But since then, each release has felt increasingly skimmed down, increasingly buggy. The game and the series is now at risk of losing their prestige, and they need to start thinking big again, and acting like it.

SilverBride · December 2022

If things were really as bad as they're being made out to be there wouldn't be anyone left to post about it.

kind_hero · December 2022

Stamicka wrote: »

Yea it’s been a bad year for so many reasons. [snip] This stuff needs attention ZOS, don’t censor negative sentiment by shutting down criticisms of the game.

[edited for discussing moderation]

They clearly don't like to be criticized by players, even though the issues are real. Very unfortunate. I don't think anything will change next year, might be even more stale.

Wolfkeks · December 2022

Spot on @React especially the PvP part. Really hope ZOS will do better next year...

Also like to add AwA which many people disliked.

And also that one week in April (?) were the NA server was down for a week or so and we got 1000 endeavors and a lion mount. Not playing on NA but we had many peeps player over on EU that time (reminded me of 2019 when it was the other way around).

FluffyBird · December 2022

SilverBride wrote: »

If things were really as bad as they're being made out to be there wouldn't be anyone left to post about it.

We seem to be somewhere right before that moment, don't worry

Katheriah · December 2022

Stamicka wrote: »

Yea it’s been a bad year for so many reasons. [snip] This stuff needs attention ZOS, don’t censor negative sentiment by shutting down criticisms of the game.

[edited for discussing moderation]

I literally cannot believe they did that over 'going off topic' about the QA department news which literally explains so much about the state of the game.

I find it hard to word my disapppointment in ZOS without using inappropriate words.

Umbro100 · December 2022

SilverBride wrote: »

If things were really as bad as they're being made out to be there wouldn't be anyone left to post about it.

ESO is a fantastic game, DESPITE the people managing it. Imagine what the right people could do with it ...

blktauna · December 2022

Might also want to mention we've still not got an actual list from ZOS of what sets actually work in no proc. The only information we have is the thread compiled in this forum by community members.

FelisCatus · December 2022

Couldn't of said it better myself. Thanks for the write up OP. I think this is relevant:

https://youtu.be/0-w6UJw3CH8

corrosivechains · December 2022

Spot on point by point analysis, OP.

gariondavey · December 2022

Stamicka wrote: »

Yea it’s been a bad year for so many reasons. [snip] This stuff needs attention ZOS, don’t censor negative sentiment by shutting down criticisms of the game.

[edited for discussing moderation]

I saw that it was closed, too.

400+ replies, 20k+ views.

Wouldn't surprise me if something similar happened here.

Vulsahdaal · December 2022

Well as we can see here, there were more than a few failures this past year.

However, to me? There was only one I would call critical. Like most, I dont care for nerfs or even more so, the animation changes, and bugs either.

But we adapt and persevere, with at least a small hope that things will change either by going back to the way they were, or that we'll be given something better, and that bugs will eventually be fixed.

It can be frustrating, but the hope for change is still there as evidenced by all the complaints we still see on U35. They know things could still go the way they want them to, and they hang around hoping that day comes soon.

Again, to me, these are failures on ZOS' part, but not critical. IMO the only critical failure of 2022 was in U33, that is the account wide achievements.

Unlike almost everything else listed there, awa can not be reverted, changed or fixed. My characters' histories, identities and skills have been destroyed and that can never be fixed even if ZOS wanted to. There is absolutely no hope at all, and thats what makes it critical to me.

Many who contributed to that 90+ pages of players begging ZOS not to go through with AWA have just moved on to other games. No point in complaining about something that cant be fixed.

Me? I tried to 'adapt and persevere' as I had done with nerfs and bugs in the past. But I slowly realized this time I couldnt.

AWA hit at a bad time for me. I had already pre-ordered High Isle and had just re-subbed for a year (wont be doing that again). I decided I would just sign on to my main and never touch the others again, this way their achievements and histories wouldnt become muddled up together.

So I went from 14 characters to just one. But the problem is, there was nothing for the character to do, other than the card game. Which I did, and hes pretty much done with that.

I cant PvP, that was a different character. Same with dungeons and trials, a different character had earned all those achievements. I figured housing would be good, as Ive enjoyed that and there really isnt many achievements attached to it. This thought quickly vanished as I realized my main is an alchemist and provisioner. Not too many furnishings can be made with those skills.

So too often I found myself signing in, collecting my mail then immediately signing out because theres nothing for me to do. If Im really bored I may stick around and do the card game dailies.

Lately Im just not signing in much at all. Ive kinda moved on to a couple other games. My sub is up at New Years. Im not planning to renew. Nor buy any of the crown packs that I know will be on sale around then (I usually buy 4 of the 21000 packs).

Strange, a year ago today if someone had suggested to me that ZOS would make a change that would cause me to feel this way, I would never have believed it.

But to me, thats the difference between just a failure and a critical failure. The critical one is when people realize that there is no hope at all, that it can not ever be fixed so after 90+ pages of begging that fall on deaf ears, they just stop complaining and quietly leave.

KrawatteKamm961 · December 2022

FluffyBird wrote: »

An impressive compilation, which, honestly, prompted me to try and remember things ZOS did right this year. You know, to balance the disappointment a bit.

Did you find something?

ADarklore · December 2022

People also fail to mention the increasingly heavy-handed moderation on the forums, where simple discussions get marked as 'conspiracy theory' and closed or accounts actioned. I've played many games, been on many forums, and have NEVER seen a forum so heavily moderated to the point of removing almost all negative comments; this all seemed to get worse after Rich's comments a couple months ago on Twitter and the overwhelmingly negative response across the internet about U35. I keep hoping that higher ups at Microsoft see what's going on here and step in to make some management changes; I doubt they want to see one of their IPs going further down the drain.

FluffyBird · December 2022

KrawatteKamm961 wrote: »

FluffyBird wrote: »

An impressive compilation, which, honestly, prompted me to try and remember things ZOS did right this year. You know, to balance the disappointment a bit.

Did you find something?

Dungeons were good. Music and visuals are still very good. I also enjoyed Ember's quest.
Zeal of Zenithar event was fun. Not perfect (wtf was that Naryu's dialogue?) but overall a pretty solid event.

That's it, I think. I really would want to add Oakensoul to the list, as something that freshened up my gameplay a bit, but obnoxious grind and immediate nerf won't let me do that, sadly.

Sir_Gentleman777 · December 2022

React wrote: »

[*] U36 also brings some of the most consistent and widespread crashing we've seen in years, resulting in @ZOS_RichLambert 's "apology" where he claims that they'll do better, while giving us a free guar pet for our troubles.

This will be the meme not only for 2022, but for years to come. On every discord, every forum ZOS is ridiculed for this. They seem just to not notice nor to care.

You can read daily threads about the issues and the reaction from ZOS. It seems that ZOS wants to ride it out ala "One day all this will vanish, we just don't react at all". ZOS, this won't go away. Your playerbase is not on the way to get Peed off, the playerbase IS already peed off. The playerbase is declining, noticable and ZOS needs to work extremely hard now to turn this around. Much harder than if there would have been some meaningful communication and actual progress in adressing the issues. It is not about to blow up, the explosion already took place, they just haven't heard it yet. But even if ZOS reacts now in the right way, people will have serious trust issues as they were kicked too many times in their backside.

The game is not declining because of it's age, old technology, old graphics and whatever. It is declining because of the way ZOS treats their customers.No communication, broken promises since 3 years, declining content, lazy chapters and DLCs. ZOS should be aware that the playerbase stuck with them for 3 years, 3 long years because they believed in ZOS being able to handle the issues. Honestly, if my girlfriend would do that for just 3 months i would ask her already if she is right in her mind.

Grizzbeorn · December 2022

gariondavey wrote: »

I saw that it was closed, too.

400+ replies, 20k+ views.

And four warnings about keeping things civil (five if you count the closing statement), which is a lot more than most threads get before being closed.

Ragnarok0130 · December 2022

SilverBride wrote: »

If things were really as bad as they're being made out to be there wouldn't be anyone left to post about it.

You seriously underestimate people's’ ability to overlook glaring bugs and dedication to bad or broken games in a franchise they have strong personal attachment to.

K3ntaaa · December 2022

Good Summary @React

FluffyBird · December 2022

Sir_Gentleman777 wrote: »

The playerbase is declining, noticable

May I ask where one could notice that?
I won't be surprised if it's actually declining, but mmo-population is BS, steamcharts are around pre-pandemic levels (which does look like a decline, but I think that's because of 2020 spike), crowded-ness of in-game instances doesn't really mean much, and then I'm out of ideas. The most convincing were things like "my guild's online is at all-times low and my prog group has disbanded", but I'm curious if there's some real evidence.

I really, really suspect, that biggest part of the playerbase are too casual for "prog groups", some barely know how to block and mostly they are very much fine with the game's state.

Edit: forgot to level speechcraft