Collection of Critical Failures in 2022 #3

MetallicMonk · December 2022

Please remain on topic and civil when commenting on this post. Please do not discuss forum moderation on this post.

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.
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.

React · December 2022

Account wide achievements seem to be another point that many players identify as a "critical failure". There were pages of feedback about why this was bad and how it could be implemented in a way that wasn't harmful, but these were completely ignored.

gariondavey · December 2022

Here to say I agree with the op.
Also, that templar, especially backlash and jabs/sweeps are in dire need of buffing/reworking.

CaperGuy · December 2022

I like that someone brought up in the other thread that there remains no official list of sets provided by ZOS for No Proc Cyrodiil, and no in game mechanics to indicate whether a set works in Ravenwatch or not.

The defacto source of this info is pretty much my forum thread on the PTS where I've tried to keep up and use my own transmute crystals to create/test stuff, along with info from the community, or Alcast's site which ... references my thread pretty much. - https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580810/no-proc-no-cp-set-list/p1

I'm now in culinary school and super busy....I have not had as much in game time to put in to keep testing 5 piece bonuses of new sets in the last little bit but to be honest, we've seen ZOS post on the forums to suggest that they will give us a list at some point. I hope that's true, or I hope that they end up like...turning 5 piece lines red in game if they're disabled or something like that.

gariondavey · December 2022

Good luck with the culinary school @CaperGuy!

@ZOS_Kevin there have been many people who have posted in the 1st and 2nd versions of this thread, as well as in the "worst year in retrospect" thread, with many legitimate concerns. Do you know if there will be a "year in review" or "end of year wrap up" this year like there usually is? Thanks, Kevin!

RupertVandy · December 2022

CaperGuy wrote: »

I hope that's true, or I hope that they end up like...turning 5 piece lines red in game if they're disabled or something like that.

Thats a good idea.

React · December 2022

CaperGuy wrote: »

I like that someone brought up in the other thread that there remains no official list of sets provided by ZOS for No Proc Cyrodiil, and no in game mechanics to indicate whether a set works in Ravenwatch or not.

The defacto source of this info is pretty much my forum thread on the PTS where I've tried to keep up and use my own transmute crystals to create/test stuff, along with info from the community, or Alcast's site which ... references my thread pretty much. - https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580810/no-proc-no-cp-set-list/p1

I'm now in culinary school and super busy....I have not had as much in game time to put in to keep testing 5 piece bonuses of new sets in the last little bit but to be honest, we've seen ZOS post on the forums to suggest that they will give us a list at some point. I hope that's true, or I hope that they end up like...turning 5 piece lines red in game if they're disabled or something like that.

That is a great point. Even further than never providing us with a list though, many people aren't even sure why the no proc environment exists still.

It undeniably killed the ravenwatch population on PC NA, which has never really recovered. People are just tired of using the same basic sets. If they were going to do a special ruleset, I'd much rather see it be something where only sets that deal damage/heal you outside of your abilities are disabled. Would make for a much more diverse environment where we can enjoy no-cp without the procs that actually are problematic there (damage dealing/heal procs).

It's been so long since this ruleset was implemented, I would definitely agree that the lack of a list from zenimax or lack of a revision to the ruleset is a critical failure.

dinokstrunz · December 2022

React wrote: »

CaperGuy wrote: »

I like that someone brought up in the other thread that there remains no official list of sets provided by ZOS for No Proc Cyrodiil, and no in game mechanics to indicate whether a set works in Ravenwatch or not.

The defacto source of this info is pretty much my forum thread on the PTS where I've tried to keep up and use my own transmute crystals to create/test stuff, along with info from the community, or Alcast's site which ... references my thread pretty much. - https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580810/no-proc-no-cp-set-list/p1

I'm now in culinary school and super busy....I have not had as much in game time to put in to keep testing 5 piece bonuses of new sets in the last little bit but to be honest, we've seen ZOS post on the forums to suggest that they will give us a list at some point. I hope that's true, or I hope that they end up like...turning 5 piece lines red in game if they're disabled or something like that.

That is a great point. Even further than never providing us with a list though, many people aren't even sure why the no proc environment exists still.

It undeniably killed the ravenwatch population on PC NA, which has never really recovered. People are just tired of using the same basic sets. If they were going to do a special ruleset, I'd much rather see it be something where only sets that deal damage/heal you outside of your abilities are disabled. Would make for a much more diverse environment where we can enjoy no-cp without the procs that actually are problematic there (damage dealing/heal procs).

It's been so long since this ruleset was implemented, I would definitely agree that the lack of a list from zenimax or lack of a revision to the ruleset is a critical failure.

Personally it's too late for unique rule sets, the only logical solution would be to completely revert the no proc rule back to how it was before. Yeah there's a handful of proc sets (mara's balm) are absolutely awful to fight against right now but I'd rather deal with that then having nowhere else to play with my friends outside of BGs. Half the time I can't even play with my friends in BGs thanks to extreme wait times.

KKolly · December 2022

dinokstrunz wrote: »

Personally it's too late for unique rule sets, the only logical solution would be to completely revert the no proc rule back to how it was before. Yeah there's a handful of proc sets (mara's balm) are absolutely awful to fight against right now but I'd rather deal with that then having nowhere else to play with my friends outside of BGs. Half the time I can't even play with my friends in BGs thanks to extreme wait times.

Honestly, the RW Pariah + Vampire spam is no worse than Mara's. If anything ZOS should have looked at how their no-proc induced tank meta destroyed Raven and learned from it before turning all of PvP into that same BS.

MidniteOwl1913 · December 2022

MetallicMonk wrote: »

Please remain on topic and civil when commenting on this post. Please do not discuss forum moderation on this post.

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.

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.

All this yes. Having some more information won't make the problems go away, but it would help with the bitter feeling I have right now toward ZOS. I don't feel respected. I feel overlooked and dismissed. To quote another source, "The trust is gone."

K9002 · December 2022

I would add the initial sourcing of one of the Oakensoul Ring leads - the one from Murkmire safeboxes. While it was eventually improved, it absolutely soured the launch of the chapter and brought the worst out of the community. It wasn't without precedent either. The itemization team's biggest failure was not learning from the past mistakes in this case.

PingTheAwesome · December 2022

The addition of mythic items that are double edged swords without indepth discussions, so players go right for them without understanding the downsides. The wide, extensive variety of things that have been added, but are not taught to new players -- they're just expected to somehow be....intuitive?

The addition of "accessibility" without talking to their disabled community. Side note: Do not do things in our name without talking to us first. Actual accessibility implementation and design requires listening to the voices of those who are actually impacted. We will not be the scapegoats that ZoS or the devs hide behind. No thank you.

The block bug just...takes the cake. They tried to fix something, but didn't watch what the code was connected to, so they broke something else. Then in order to fix that something else they rebroke the bug they just "fixed" and then introduced a third or fourth.

Meanwhile, long standing bugs have gone completely unaddressed while forum posts about it have gone either unanswered [snip]

[edited for discussion of disciplinary action]

Wolfshade · December 2022

No no guys, i think you missunderstood there a lot. Matt promised to tell great storys. You remember:

"Looking ahead to 2022, we will continue to do what we do best: tell great stories and keep the ESO train running."
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/news/post/61335

Overall i think he got right in what ZOS is best about and what they did even in 2022, ...tell great story`s!

VaranisArano · December 2022

One concern I have going forward is whether the Dev team in charge of placing leads has learned from past incidents.

2021: Harpooner's Wading Kilt is a powerful, highly anticipated Mythic Item. The Tide Glass Beads lead drops from very limited water alchemy nodes in Shadowfen. Players swarm the zone, fighting over nodes for hours to get their lead.

In reaction, three months later, the Devs expand the leads drops to all alchemy nodes in Shadowfen.

2022: Oakensoul Ring is a powerful, highly anticipated Mythic Item. The Petrified Oak Loop lead drops from very limited safeboxes in Murkmire. Players swarm the zone, fighting over safeboxes for hours, yelling at each other in groups and zone for stealing leads and debating whether or not more than one person can get the lead per box. (I don't remember if even the Devs knew the answer to that one, I just remember a bunch of players asking ZOS to settle the debate.)

In reaction, the Devs doubled the safebox lead droprate and added thieves troves as an additional source.

I would have expected that the Dev team in charge of placing leads would've learned the lesson from 2021. From what I saw, apparently not. Two years in a row, ZOS has launched their powerful, highly anticipated Mythic Item with a painfully limited drop pool and players have spent hours fighting over nodes/boxes. Since the Devs were willing to make adjustments in reaction to player complaints, why not just be proactive and make those leads more reasonable to acquire in the first place?

I sincerely hope we don't repeat history in 2023.

evymyu233 · December 2022

i want free guar

rpa · December 2022

Well, I checked the forums of the new mmo I played early on this year while on break from ESO, and apparently they just had another dupe and turned trading and transactions between playes off again in an another doomed effort to sweep economy without rolling back. People also are still arguing if the Luck stat works properly. Oh dear. Some viable competition in mmo genre would be nice.

Wolfkeks · December 2022

The fact that this is the third talking about our concerns is a bit sad.

We all love ESO and just want it to do better going forward. Really hope these things will be addressed in the end of the year letter.

gariondavey · December 2022

Wolfkeks wrote: »

The fact that this is the third talking about our concerns is a bit sad.

We all love ESO and just want it to do better going forward. Really hope these things will be addressed in the end of the year letter.

Yeah for sure.
I pinged Kevin earlier. If anyone knows about if the year end letter will come, and what will be addressed, it'll be him.

virtus753 · December 2022

PingTheAwesome wrote: »

The addition of "accessibility" without talking to their disabled community. Side note: Do not do things in our name without talking to us first. Actual accessibility implementation and design requires listening to the voices of those who are actually impacted. We will not be the scapegoats that ZoS or the devs hide behind. No thank you.

ZOS has - and add this to the list of issues - never actually said what they mean by the term "accessibility." It is easy to assume that it is aimed at players with disabilities, as that is one of the most common meanings in general usage, but that often does not seem to be the way they're using it. Yes, they should be consulting such players, who ought to be included among the audience for accessibility changes, but the changes that ZOS has made in the name of accessibility seem aimed at a much, much larger audience in general. Meanwhile, many things are lacking that should have been addressed if they had been thinking of players with disabilities, such as ensuring that gamepad mode is as equal as possible to keyboard mode and that content mechanics are, e.g., colorblind friendly. (Gina's response to that question during a DSR live stream seemed to suggest that this had not really been considered in the development of the twins mechanic, for example.) So whatever this "accessibility" is that they're aiming for, they haven't explained their target audience and to what extent it is aimed at people with disabilities. This is very similar to how they often do not adequately explain their vision in terms of combat changes - they assure us they have a vision, but they rarely explain the specifics or how their implementation aligns with it. U35 represented a notable exception in that they mentioned several of their specific goals but also admitted that those goals were internally contradictory and that their attempts to reach those goals had not been successful.

On a related note, to return to the question of accessibility, enabling and encouraging broader access to dungeon/trial/arena content by raising the damage "floor" falls under "accessibility" without being aimed primarily, much less exclusively, at people with disabilities. There are very many players out there who are in the bottom quartile (or what have you) for dps who do not have disabilities but who might not know how to do more damage or who might not care to or who might not have the time to learn. Making it easier for low-APM players - regardless of disability status - to do more damage allows them to get into more content where currently they are running into a wall, as very low dps makes dungeons and trials a drag if it does not block progress outright (e.g. via dps checks or by dragging out mechanics to the point that the group cannot adequately perform them). It is not safe to assume that low dps is always or even usually due to a disability or handicap and therefore that "accessibility" in terms of balance changes (such as U35) has a specific audience within the group of players doing whatever ZOS considers to be the "floor" in terms of damage.

Similarly, accessibility efforts regarding gamepad mode stand to help a lot more than just disabled players. Gamepad mode allows players to transfer from console more easily, whether they have already played ESO on another platform or whether they learned to play video games on console before switching to PC. It makes sense that ZOS would want to facilitate that. Currently, however, players on PC are de facto punished for using gamepad mode (for whatever reason) due to a variety of impaired or missing features that can be found in keyboard mode, some of which have absolutely no justification. Why should people in gamepad mode not being able to see the contents of a guild bank for which they do not have withdrawal permission, while switching to keyboard mode suddenly allows them to see it all? Why should a player in gamepad mode not be able to take a treasure chest that they have in the bank but not on their person when being in keyboard mode has no such limitation? Why should players in gamepad mode be shown a different population level in Cyrodiil compared to keyboard mode users at the exact same time? Why should players in gamepad mode be denied information like skill point and guild reputation progress and access to critical tooltips? These are all accessibility issues that have existed and been reported for years, without any acknowledgment and response, and they impact a lot more than just players who need to use gamepad due to disabilities, as there are many players out there using gamepad mode by choice or because there is no feasible opportunity to learn keyboard mode while doing high-pressure content like PvP and PvE HMs.

It would be very helpful for us to have any sort of indication from ZOS how they are using the term "accessibility" and what they are intending to accomplish, as well as hearing why they have not addressed longstanding critical accessibility issues that impact many players, both those with disabilities and those without.

NettleCarrier · December 2022

I just want to say, I agree with everything in the original post 100%. I have lost a LOT of motivation, and there are plenty that would call me a "shill".

spartaxoxo · December 2022

gariondavey wrote: »

Wolfkeks wrote: »

The fact that this is the third talking about our concerns is a bit sad.

We all love ESO and just want it to do better going forward. Really hope these things will be addressed in the end of the year letter.

Yeah for sure.
I pinged Kevin earlier. If anyone knows about if the year end letter will come, and what will be addressed, it'll be him.

They likely won't tell us what's in the end of the year letter until they publish it. And they probably have a date already in mind for it.

Hopefully, it will address things.

p4l4mu7 · December 2022

Elder Scrolls Online has been in beta since 2014 and it won't be releasing anytime soon. You'll be recieving free guars and you'll be hearing "we'll take our time to fix this issue" while they are introducing even more bugs for a long time.

MidniteOwl1913 · December 2022

PingTheAwesome wrote: »

The addition of mythic items that are double edged swords without indepth discussions, so players go right for them without understanding the downsides. The wide, extensive variety of things that have been added, but are not taught to new players -- they're just expected to somehow be....intuitive?

The addition of "accessibility" without talking to their disabled community. Side note: Do not do things in our name without talking to us first. Actual accessibility implementation and design requires listening to the voices of those who are actually impacted. We will not be the scapegoats that ZoS or the devs hide behind. No thank you.

The block bug just...takes the cake. They tried to fix something, but didn't watch what the code was connected to, so they broke something else. Then in order to fix that something else they rebroke the bug they just "fixed" and then introduced a third or fourth.

Meanwhile, long standing bugs have gone completely unaddressed while forum posts about it have gone either unanswered [snip]

[edited for discussion of disciplinary action]

At some point ZOS clarified that when they said "accessible" they weren't talking about the disabled. They meant making vet content accessible for the lower-tier player base. Bad that the clarification wasn't made earlier, but they did say that. I don't remember where exactly I saw that, but it stand out in my mind because being disabled myself I thought it was that they were talking about.

And the block bug, yes there really isn't any excuse for breaking one thing while trying to fix another. But with a large code base that isn't modular enough that unit test can be trusted to catch problems it happens. What is needed with code that's poorly organized and not well documented (in the code) is more intensive testing. For something like the block bug where just having a couple dozen people run through vet trials and dungeons would show the problems, well for that there really is no excuse. And I think that is more of a management failure, not something to blame the developers or QA for. As a retired software engineer sometimes you know what to do to solve a problem, but getting management to understand that can be difficult. Just my opinion.

FlopsyPrince · December 2022

Lack of communication and interaction with the players/customers

spartaxoxo wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

Wolfkeks wrote: »

The fact that this is the third talking about our concerns is a bit sad.

We all love ESO and just want it to do better going forward. Really hope these things will be addressed in the end of the year letter.

Yeah for sure.
I pinged Kevin earlier. If anyone knows about if the year end letter will come, and what will be addressed, it'll be him.

They likely won't tell us what's in the end of the year letter until they publish it. And they probably have a date already in mind for it.

Hopefully, it will address things.

He is greatly limited on what he can say. Tough position to hold.

LukosCreyden · December 2022

I feel as if 2023 is a very, very important year for ESO. I'm hoping for the very best.

SimonThesis · December 2022

MetallicMonk 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

[*]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

[*]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.

[*]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.
[*]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 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_Kevin
[*]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.

I want to thank those with the courage to speak truth to power!

Everything OP mentioned has happened and is exactly how many of us feel.

Lets take a look, right now PVE and PVP are broken for another 2 weeks due to the block bug. Sorry can't do a trial when your tank can't block, sorry can't block siege or ultimates in PVP either. They would prefer us to all be happy we can log in and pick a flower.

Bugs haven't been fixed in years, every update brings more crippling bugs than the last with no obvious testing. How do you miss siege not despawning when you have an entire test server??? Almost every bug that gets reported in week 1 of the PTS does not get fixed by live.

We are still stuck in combat in cyrodiil 5 years later, we can't even log out of cyrodiil when we want because we are stuck at the gate!!! Performance was finally fixed week 1 of the new servers but has degraded to their old state since.

We are tired of [snip] and sold Doritos and Tshirts on the Twitch streams, Kevin is the only one who actually tries to listen to us.

Btw a lot of us have saved OP's post in case we need thread #4+...

[edited for bashing]

Zezin · December 2022

rpa wrote: »

Well, I checked the forums of the new mmo I played early on this year while on break from ESO, and apparently they just had another dupe and turned trading and transactions between playes off again in an another doomed effort to sweep economy without rolling back. People also are still arguing if the Luck stat works properly. Oh dear. Some viable competition in mmo genre would be nice.

Luck does work, it's just that it works in a very dumb way.

Oakenaxe · December 2022

LukosCreyden wrote: »

I feel as if 2023 is a very, very important year for ESO. I'm hoping for the very best.

I feel the same, I hope they acknowledge their mistakes and work to improve both the game and the communication with their customers. Let's see, maybe I'll return to Tamriel someday.

gariondavey · December 2022

Oakenaxe wrote: »

LukosCreyden wrote: »

I feel as if 2023 is a very, very important year for ESO. I'm hoping for the very best.

I feel the same, I hope they acknowledge their mistakes and work to improve both the game and the communication with their customers. Let's see, maybe I'll return to Tamriel someday.

Agreed

blktauna · December 2022

Just adding that location seems to be nebulous at best. Nothing is where you think it is even when nothing is moving. Sometimes I can hit the dremora at range, sometimes everything is lit as good to go but nothing happens, sometimes the message says out of range. All with the same toon in the same place with the same equipment, same skill setup etc.

it gets more erratic every day.

f047ys3v3n · December 2022

I think it's safe to say that 2022 was ESO's worst year.

Worst at least since launch from a basic bugs standpoint.
Worst from a combat mechanics updates standpoint
Worst from a dev communication standpoint
Worst from a player base loss standpoint both in general base, PVE endgame, and even in PVP endgame from what I can see