CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Trobaka wrote: »

Trancejet wrote: »

Recently there are fewer and fewer old players in the dungeon.
And recently, fewer and fewer old players from our guild are online.
What is the reason for this?

It's not "recently", this has been going on for years.

This game does NOT try to make players stay. It doesn't try to keep players happy. It gets new players to spend as much money as possible, and makes them leave after realizing some facts that i don't know how to tell you without violating the "terms of service" and "code of conduct" of this forum.

ESO had the potential to be one of the best video games ever, but because of reasons we are not allowed to discuss here, it will never be more than it is right now.

I'll cite a reason: how about the fact that one of the most prominent devs openly mocked a large portion of the playerbase, not once, but twice?

Calling players whiners because they're bringing up genuine, valid concerns is a good way to annihilate the relationship with said players.

It wasn't that dev's view, though: he'd stated many times that his wife's views were her own, and it was clear he didn't always agree with her opinions. I feel like she was speaking from the position of a wife who watches her husband cop crap regularly about things that are beyond his control. She had spoken several times about this- speaking from the perspective of someone who'd experienced similar things from other games.

As someone who regularly watched the stream, I saw the process whereby I feel like Rich started out super candid and open about any topic broached, and slowly had to become more careful about what he said, because more people learned 2nd hand about the stream and thought it would be appropriate to jump in and just start drilling him for hating PvP or the endgame community, with loaded or disingenuous questions. He got defensive. As did the community around him. People were literally celebrating Rich's wife's filter-lacking tell-it-like-it-is attitude.

Does that make it cool? Probably not, but I think the accusations need more context. People tend to just swallow it wholesale without critical thinking or relevant context.

For the first time in years I'm off the game half the nights because of the new single player, and likely the next one coming out soon. The grinding aspects of the game never were all that interesting to me, but I still log in sometimes for a trifecta group and an RP guild.

It's a weird turn of events from past years, where now you can hop onto a character and play with a somewhat casual group to effectively work on things like Dawnbreaker, Godslayer, and the newest hard modes using the newer builds that don't require loads of practice, or 200 actions per minute, or razor sharp attention to mechanics. I still get a lot of fun out of the game, probably just the right amount since now I'm splitting time with other things.

I haven't left, I am just taking an extended break. Reason; I no longer.like any of the classes in their current state.

Sorcerer is, afaik, still forced into being a pet build.

Templar jabs got deleted from the game and were replaced by... whatever that thing is.

I never liked DK, just not my thing. Same for NB. Especially ranged magblade, which is pretty mediocre from what I could see.

Warden has become a copium-fueled ice mage.

Necromancer is broken. It literally does not function properly.

I'm not a Hermaeus Mora fanboy, so Arcanist is off the table.

That's all of em. The playstyles and aesthetics I liked are gone or are no longer viable. As much as I love the theme of Necro, there is only so much clunkiness, useless and broken skills and indirect nerfs I can take. And direct nerfs lol. Its honestly like they're pointedly avoiding fixing necromancer.

So, whilst I WANT to play the game, there are no classes in the game I can currently enjoy.

[snip]

Every new game that comes out, it is questioned, will this be the death of ESO and each time its not and we find ourselves coming back to play in this world despite the problems with it. Each Event or new content numbers go back up for a short time and then numbers go down, its just the way now.

ESO is just THAT game we have in our library and will always play between other games.

[edited for baiting]

diablo iv, baldur's gate 3 and soon starfield. lotta good games coming out this year that directly are in competition with ESO

Just speaking for myself: BG3 is way more entertaining. I will probably return as the BG3 content is vast but still limited.

U35 really took a lot of fun out of the game for me. Levelling up a new char and gearing it just isn't fun in ESO because they constantly rebalance or release broken gear that change classes completely.

Raids are really getting boring, especially visually. Dungeons are still impressive IMO but you can only do them so often.

PvP is my main endgame but with no update to IC and Cyro it is getting boring.

Housing added a lot of fun for me, but due to the limitations of slots there is only so much you can do. If I cannot add more stuff then what is the point of farming blueprints?

The last fun feature they added was Antiquities. Companions were a complete miss for me. I mean SWTOR came out ages ago and did companions so much better.

Overall the ESO bug still bites me and I play it exculsively for a few months. But the time I go back to it seems to get smaller every year. The DLCs and the storytelling just lack urgency and overall purpose. Yes, the quests are nice, the NPCs are nice, the visuals are nice ... but at some point nice is just not good enough, especially if every DLC essentially feels the same. Not like an actual addition but just more quests. I miss having an epic main storyline keeping me engaged. There is much more excitement when a DLC/expansion releases for literally every other MMO out there.

Unless they release an actual DLC/expansion with actual new mechanics and systems then the game will just slowly fade for me. But that is fine, I had fun.

dont worry - more will leave soon after [snip] u39 changes from Monday

[edited for bashing]

Change fatigue, brutal RNG and monetization. The game doesn't respect your time or your wallet.

What does ESO offer to the veteran game community? What does ZOS do to encourage player retention?

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

BG3...

Just wait till Starfield launches...

Interesting to see what impact that has.

Without manual landing on the planets anywhere we like, Starfield can soon reach a level of playability and content repeatability similar to Parkan2.

And regarding original question, ESO gets very boring over time. For me personally when ZOS has made my favourite PvE Plaguebreak set stricly a PvP set, my interest in ESO dropped significantly. With every their illogical decision about balance or any decision they make without asking community, this interest drops even more. Ultimately I will stop playing and move to other games.

Where is the proof that a lot of veteran players left the game?

LukosCreyden wrote: »

Templar jabs got deleted from the game and were replaced by... whatever that thing is.

This is my favorite comment in the forums for a very long time. 😁

I would imagine that most in this thread (like I) were responding from our own perspectives and what we see in our own guild / friend groups.

While I can't definitively say that "veteran players are leaving", I can definitively say that the veteran players among my friends and guilds have left or substantially reduced their playtime, primarily for the reasons I listed earlier in this thread. And the overall perception among these groups is that the game population is currently down, based on rapidly falling sales and lack of players showing up for events / difficulty filling trial rosters / high numbers of players logging in less than once a week / fewer paying guild dues / fewer guild apps, etc.

And at least for me, that's really that's all I intended to say, I certainly won't claim that I have some deeper insight into the overall population of the game that would rise to the level of proof.

*EDIT: I should also add that I'm on PC/NA, as there could be differences between the servers.

That doesn't mean that a lot of veteran players have left the game recently. Maybe the veteran players are in organized groups and aren't pugging.