Feedback is feedback, I can't give positive feedback about something that is broken or worse than before. Their positive feedback is number of subs, sales and active players, they won't read us here.

Nor should they or anyone else with a job to do. You can’t listen to thousands of voices most of whom are ill informed, some willfully undermining your efforts for personal advantage and all requiring more than a work day to keep up with. The forums are the least productive way to have any impact on the game but the keyboard warriors are going to keep trying for their version of “flawless conqueror”.

React wrote: »

I'm glad that the parts of the game you enjoy are working well, and that your way of playing ESO has been unaffected by the things that many people are complaining about right now.

SilverBride wrote: »

And there have been a lot of bugs but these will be fixed.

However, I don't think you can realistically make this statement. They have not indicated that they are capable of resolving the bugs. Firesong was a minor bugfixing patch, which resulted in far more bugs being introduced than resolved. 2020 was dubbed "the year of performance", where they enacted numerous changes to increase the performance and only succeeded in making it worse.

There are numerous examples of them promising to fix things, and never making good on those promises. I'd love to remain optimistic that they are capable of fixing things, but every indication over the history of this game is that they are unable to.

Well said.

React wrote: »

I'm glad that the parts of the game you enjoy are working well, and that your way of playing ESO has been unaffected by the things that many people are complaining about right now.

SilverBride wrote: »

And there have been a lot of bugs but these will be fixed.

However, I don't think you can realistically make this statement. They have not indicated that they are capable of resolving the bugs. Firesong was a minor bugfixing patch, which resulted in far more bugs being introduced than resolved. 2020 was dubbed "the year of performance", where they enacted numerous changes to increase the performance and only succeeded in making it worse.

There are numerous examples of them promising to fix things, and never making good on those promises. I'd love to remain optimistic that they are capable of fixing things, but every indication over the history of this game is that they are unable to.

My game was affected negatively by Account Wide Achievements but I found a way to adapt. And as I mentioned I was not happy with the DLC as a gift or both new Companions being female. But I gave my feedback as did many others and hope they will take it into consideration.

I have played a lot of MMOs through the years... decades... and none of them were bug free. In my experience they do put out a real effort. Rich even made a pinned thread admitting they dropped the ball with the U36 launch and will do better in the future. I have faith that they will because I have no reason not to.

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't attribute any of this to ZoS doing anything but trying to make the game better for us all.

Players asked for a game and they asked for account wide achievements and they complained about power creep and that the game was too easy. Things may not have been implemented the way players envisioned but they were done in response to player feedback.

I see your point and I agree with you.

I personally recognize the good intentions and the will to listen to player's feedback in terms of general suggestions, on lot of forum feedbacks. I think, however, that most of the times, when players are giving negative feedback, they are not criticizing the intentions: they are talking about the outcomes.

And the outcomes were... well, may I say, "questionable", in some cases?

On week 2 PTS of U35 it was pretty clear that there were some unintended consequences. Stuff that needed some more attention. Heck, please do not forget that messing with light and heavy attacks, we had a medium attack weave meta for two weeks! We had animations changed with good intentions, but received in a mixed-and-mostly negative way from players (because of habits, because of questionable visuals, desynced audio cues, or simply because something changed after 8 years... everyone can have his good reasons). Mara's Balm absolutely broken. Empower changed in the last cycles in a hurry, trying to fix a bunch of stuff, with a whole set of new problems caused by this last minute change (e.g.: a good number of sets and builds obliterated overnight).

I followed lot of threads on PTS forum, saw a bunch of youtube videos from various streamers. Boy, what a mess.

A release date delay would have been the smartest and safest choice, in my humble opinion. A little delay, just the time needed to strip off and revert all the combat changes, leave the game as it was, and release the new content only (which, it turns out, it was really good). It would have been, in my opinion, a safest choice at that point in time, expecially after the AWA introduction and a pile of forum pages discussion that showed quite clearly that, despite the good intentions, a good number of unintentional outcomes were not fully considered or analyzed in depth, due to time constraints.

Looks like, however, we are on a running train that can't be stopped or delayed in any way by anyone.
Business is business, cash needs to flow. Release anyway, at any cost.

That is not the real problem however, in my opinion. The real problem is that this time, we got the impression that someone said "ok guys, let's call it a day, leave the game as it is, and start working on the next chapter pretending nothing happened".
We can't know for sure, because we are still waiting for a QA or a post, to better understand the ratio and the expected outcomes behind some of the changes.

That hurts on me, as I love this game. I don't like to see it like this. I've seen its former glory in its good patches, and I will never forget it. Best game ever.

It was pretty clear that U35 needed some additional tweaks (if not a complete 180° turnover in some cases). But this time they decided to stop with changes, because in u35's feedback lot of people complained about change fatigue. They listened to feedback.

May be another case of good intentions, questionable timing and outcome.

For me, is a disappointment to see the game in this state, and to know that it will stay like this for months.


Edited to better clarify

Sallymen wrote: »

What I enjoy in Elder Scrolls Online:
-Dungeons (When the queue works)
-Tanking in PvE (When block works)
-Farming for pages and leads (When the drops work)
-PvP in Cyrodill (When it doesn't lag or break)
-Achievement Hunting (When they work and give rewards that are not just titles)
-Tales of Tribute (When I do not crash during a game and immediately lose because of it)

I enjoy everything in this game... When it works as intended. This is not bashing or baiting in the slightest, this is a genuine coming from someone who has subbed to the game since 2016. I've seen the highs and lows of this game and this is definitely the lowest point this game has gotten in.

But it's not the lowest point for everyone. I think it's important to acknowledge that many of us still enjoy ESO.

SilverBride wrote: »

But it's not the lowest point for everyone. I think it's important to acknowledge that many of us still enjoy ESO.

That's true but that doesn't make it okay for all these issues to continue. If you enjoy this game you should advocate for it to be better. And it starts with making sure the game works as intended. It's hard to ignore the issues when they affect you everytime you log in.

Sallymen wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

But it's not the lowest point for everyone. I think it's important to acknowledge that many of us still enjoy ESO.

That's true but that doesn't make it okay for all these issues to continue. If you enjoy this game you should advocate for it to be better. And it starts with making sure the game works as intended. It's hard to ignore the issues when they affect you everytime you log in.

I have given feedback, negative as well as positive. That is advocating for the game to get better in my opinion. But I am still playing without issue every day just as I did before. For me, the game is not broken.

It's not much different than negative reviews for products, restaurants, etc. Very often the only reviews left will be negative because people are more likely to leave feedback if they have a less than expected experience. I think a lot of the problem is not only are there some major issues at times, but the players have to wait quite a while for it to be fixed by a patch, sometimes longer than one patch cycle.

I've read quite a lot of positive feedback on these very forums over the years. It feels like they can't handle criticism from some players who are very frustrated with the quality of experience they are having right now with the game in a very important part of combat. It would be different if they would give some sort of feedback and maybe try to reassure the players but instead all that seems to happen is suppression of the opinion of their customers.

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't attribute any of this to ZoS doing anything but trying to make the game better for us all.

Players asked for a game and they asked for account wide achievements and they complained about power creep and that the game was too easy. Things may not have been implemented the way players envisioned but they were done in response to player feedback.

Even the part of the playerbase that asked for AwA, didn't ask for the way it was implemented, and ZOS didn't listen to feedback on the PTS as we saw with all the issues afterwards. Mostly people wanted account-wide titles, not the complete deflation of repeatable content on alts. Also, ZOS didn't introduce AwA just because players asked for it, but to help with performance, let's not forget that.

No one doubts that being a dev is hard work and that they have good intentions. It's their product, it'd be illogical for them to let it go to ruin willingly. And for a lot of issues there are workarounds and adaptation (even though ideally it shouldn't have to be that way), but for others, there's simply nothing to do. Take the blog bug for example, I've been playing in Cyrodiil these past few days and it's catastrophic not to be able to block incoming attacks and siege damage. We have to wait two weeks for the fix, if it will get fixed on that patch maintenance. I think problems like these are what players are mostly critical about, and with good reason. They are not negative just to bum out the players who enjoy the game, they are negative because they can't enjoy their own game, and can't play with these problems unresolved. I do think the majority of people who are critical usually give informative accounts of current issues, often with extensive testing either on live or on the PTS, and they do so exactly because they love the game and wish to play it to its fullest potential. Of course we should be reminded in the forums of how wonderful the game is and hear from the players who are enjoying it, but when a company fails so pervasively, turning a blind eye is helping no one, especially not the future and health of the game.

Positive Feedback comes generously via players paying subscriptions, buying things and giving them monies.

Negative Feedback comes from Forum Posting.

Of course you can have the flipside for each, but this is how most feedback occurs. (since people don't feel their feedback is listened to as much by stopping giving the monies).

I love this game & I am just so grateful that I have good friends to hang out with in-game. As a casual PvE player who just wants to sit down in the evening and chill with some good friends, this is so perfect. I don't raid, I don't pvp, I mostly just do open-world PvE and dungeons. For someone like me, this is all I need to forget about my realities for just few hours every evening.

Every patch will break something and whatever happens going forward is not up to us. I see ESO as a train ride chugging along in the darkness, and your only choices are to stay on or jump off. I see no point in struggling to change anything and every time I see posts asking for changes ingame I can't help but sigh. At the end of the day, ZOS will do what ZOS does, and no amount of feedback will change that. We're just here for the ride.

When ZOS added AwA, I remember seeing posts from previously stanch ESO supporters venting their frustrations. I realized then that nothing is off limits. Anything and everything can and will be drastically altered. Players who thought the devs only targeted endgame and PvP players were in for a shock. And that to me is a positive. The devs now target everyone.

And all the "Us vs Them" going on is getting old (Yes, "Us vs Them" exists here, and no amount of gaslighting will hide it).

Cadbury wrote: »

When ZOS added AwA, I remember seeing posts from previously stanch ESO supporters venting their frustrations.

I was very upset by how AWA was implemented because I love to clear every zone map individually on each character and this made it hard to track what I had or hadn't completed, and I was very vocal about my unhappiness. So while I have been supportive of ZoS I don't agree with everything they do. I just don't think the game is anywhere near broken.

I enjoy ESO as well. I enjoy questing, WBs, world events, dungeons, housing, cosmetics, exploring, NPCs, the ESO community etc etc. I also enjoy fluid, effective combat (combat and cosmetics are the two major things ESO does so much better than SP TES games). I appreciate that they are trying to improve the game, and, as a mediocre player, appreciate the sentiment that was behind U35.

I'm glad there are experienced players around to give feedback on combat changes, and I hope ZOS will continue to do something with the feedback that was provided.