I would personally like to see coop play being more friendly. By that I mean if your quest tells you to free 5 prisoners, if one player rescues one, it should count for the party, not just the player who has done the work. Another possible option is to scale the quest length higher depending on how many players are in a party. for example using the same scenario as above. Alone, you must rescue 3 prisoners, in a party of 2, you must rescue 5, etc. There are a few quests that I've seen where such objectives weren't updated across the party but instead acted as a solo objective. For an MMORPG, I'm finding quite a lack of coop based play. Even though I chose to cancel my current subscription, I may decide to come back at a later time to see how things have changed and if they are for the better.

Keep up the good work!

Khuul99 wrote: »

Ok, this latest "fix" for the bosses are just ridiculous.

Having the timer being global (as in not boss specific) just makes it silly. You go in and kill a group challenge in a public dungeon (the one in cold harbour) and killed the little sub boss and then killed the masin boss and noone gets anything from it because we already killed a "boss".

This timer can't be there if it's so lazyily coded so it's global. I can't understand how that didn't get caught before it got implemented.

The timer as it has been implemented just punishes people that want to play the game.

The biggest problem with this timer "fix" they came up with is it will trigger even when you dont do enough damage to the boss to get any loot. It took me 9 kills on a low level instance on the boss to actualy get ANY LOOT from its corpse. Instead of this poorly designed workaround they should simply make the completion achievement award the loot (that blue unqique and whatever) and make the boss itself to drop same junk and experience as a normal monster. Heck..every player suggestion i seen so far is ways better then what they choose to implement...bad decision after bad decision...

Dear diary.. er developers.
I am here to offer constructive criticism and offer some suggestions for implementing or adjusting game content. I do pray these ideas are at least noted, as well as some of the other interesting ideas people are putting forward admist the incessant whine of forum trolls. A lot of people like me want this already promising mmo to succeed. Let's proceed...

Subs tend to sink
It was perhaps the biggest fault of your marketing staff to steer the game into a subscription model. I am unsure of what research led them to this decision but every MMO that has gone from subscription to f2p with a cash shop model has succeeded where it was otherwise failing. And conversely, I have personally watched the failure of over 20 mmos due to launching with a subscription model. Your average gamer is not happy to pay a sub even if they can easily afford it.

F2P generates an insanely higher player base in comparison to subscription model, and with this largely increased player base you are going to generate far more revenue. I can give several examples to this, but the most notable and perhaps relevant (due to its immersive quest-driven structure akin to ESO) is DDO.

Server populations in ESO are already dwindling rapidly. In Alliance War, most campaigns remain at 1 bar of population, forums are empty and group finder takes too long. Remaining subscribers are becoming less satisfied simply due to lack of people to enjoy content with and releasing more endgame content won't attract new customers either.

ESO needs to be free to play with a well-constructed cash shop that offers cosmetics and items which provide convenience (things that do not alter pvp balance). Things that might provide convenience include a personal banker summon for example. I've known players to spend over $100 a month in a cash shop for an MMO they enjoy. And players will enjoy the MMO if there's more content and enough people playing it. It's really a simple decision. You do it soon or you do it a year down the track when ESO is a ghost town.

When all's said and done
Finishing the primary quest line for my first faction, Daggerfall, was fantastic. I was so excited to see what was next and what it would take to rise to VR10... Only to be thoroughly disappointed upon being forced to go and be a level 1 Aldmeri Dominion player... per se. Now, while a lot of players might not mind excessively that they are now completing quests to aid the opposing faction, I for one found it offensive that I wasn't just stabbing all these people instead. And I say forced on a technicality, I will happily return to Cyrodiil to increase my VR when Deadly Bash is fixed, but I would still like to enjoy PVE content too. Especially since its much easier to farm for VR gear in a VR zone; farming for VR gear in Cyrodiil is impractical.

So what else could be added?

Well, every map in ESO is designed so beautifully it is simply as a shame that there is no reason to return once you have finished quests located there. So how about veteran instances for our home faction and, instead of repeating the quests, we are given a randomized bounty board to hunt named mobs or complete unique tasks in each zone. Also maybe zone bosses that take a large number of players to kill and spawn periodically like an anchor.

Give us reasons to go back through our own faction's zones

Hey you, get out of my head
ESO is a quest-driven and highly immersive game. But why are there others players running around in this dream sequence I'm having with a pivotal quest NPC? Please implement a function to allow a unique solo instance for such areas where there is no logical reason for other players to be there, or by players being there it stifles immersion. This will also prevent mobs of players farming solo dungeon bosses. Group members could be allowed in these instances but it should be unique to the party leader.

Stacks on
Campaign stacking is occurring in a very noticable way. Auriel's Bow is stacked by Alderi, Wabbajack by Ebonheart and Bloodthorn by Daggerfall. While the other servers are too underpopulated to be truly enjoyable. I'm not entirely sure how to go around correcting the population imbalances but this is evidently a problem because most players do not wants to play on a faction with zero elder scrolls and no hope of gaining any because they are out-numbered 3:1.

The loner mmo?
There is no rewards for grouping unless everyone is doing the same quest, which makes playing with friends a lot harder.

Not sure how feasible this may be to change now, but GW2 nailed it by allowing any player level to scale down to a zones level to do the content- this meant that you could play with friends no matter the level difference and still progress due to flat xp scaling and level-scaled rewards.

---

TL;DR CONCLUSION...

1. Free to play
2. More logical VR 1-10 content
3. Solo quest instances
4. Fix/balance alliance war pops
5. Make it worth our while to group with lower level friends.

Thanks for your time ! ESO to me is the spiritual successor to DaoC and I truly hope this game grows and succeeds for years to come.

Valfodr wrote: »

TL;DR CONCLUSION...

1. Free to play
2. More logical VR 1-10 content
3. Solo quest instances
4. Fix/balance alliance war pops
5. Make it worth our while to group with lower level friends.

World of Warcraft and EvE Online (as well as even Everquest 1 and Ultima Online, which are both hitting record numbers) are both pay-to-play subscription models which are incredibly successful. Dark Age of Camelot was also a subscription that saw it's peak. Subscription models bring content updates and patches faster than free-to-play, which is a proven fact. They also tend to last longer, time wise.

Plus, the number of F2P champions that are reporting consumer losses due to the tendency for power gear to creep into a promised 'vanity only' marketplace is rather staggering. The company doesn't make enough money off of vanity, they introduce a pack of potions or a set of armor, and people start leaving.

And while they obviously have fewer players than free-to-play, this means that fewer server assets and bot headaches to manage. More players don't mean better, unless those players all spend money.



Agree with the VR1-10 concern. While I personally LOVE the ability to play all sides, I also wish it was somehow from the perspective of a player loyal to my alliance. Some creative quest dialogue could do it better than the band-aid we have.

That said, I'm actually really enjoying the veteran zones.



I agree with solo content, but I also agree with public content. There needs to be a careful balance, and right now as far as dungeons go, that balance is in favor of public.

All that said, I do not support removing content from one to make it available for both. Much like a PvP-only Cyrodiil, I like that there are 'requirements' to enter. Want to visit Cyrodiil? Accept that you may PvP. Want to do that one public dungeon? Accept it is public. But in that same vein, if there is a private solo/duo dungeon, players should not try to make it public. Individual, specialized content that is unique to a playstyle.


Alliance Campaigns are exactly what many of us predicted they would be in Beta. PvP competitors are very much team oriented, and will pit themselves in favorable circumstances because very few players want to be the underdog. Take Horde versus Alliance in World of Warcraft. Once it was determined that Horde would represent the 'competitive PvP' angle, battlegrounds remained uniquely unbalanced. This always happens.

While balancing via rewards and assets would be nice, I don't know how you would stop the tendency of players to want to choose the 'winning team'. I haven't seen a game yet, outside of first person shooters and quick matches, that can really find that balance.



The grouping mechanics are awful. Grouping outside of questing (world bosses, public dungeons, even regular dungeons) is fine. Questing is simply a clusterfrack.

Luckily, they seem to admit to a problem and are debating fixing it. But until ZOS does fix it, they must realize many players like myself are simply not making the social connections that we would, connections needed to survive in a game like this. It really is that bad.

Larira wrote: »

Valfodr wrote: »

1. Free to play

OMG, no. Do you really want that the most new content will be new items for the item shop? Look at the other F2P-games and their patch notes.

Indeed, history shows no matter how vocal the developer is that the 'store' will only contain 'fluff' it never stays like that as 'fluff' doesn't pay the bills.

LOTRO to my mind is the most egregious I have played. Turbine were ADAMANT that the Store wouldn't affect game design, yet Helm's Deep shows just how much the game design is now used to 'drive' Store revenues.

Turbine parroted an nauseum that there would be nothing vital to playing the game which would be Store-exclusive and as far as I know that's still true .. what is also true though that now some very important items such as buff pots are only acquirable in-game for barter tokens that are rarer than hen's teeth as drops.

Trion are in the same state with Rift, the 'fluff' is still there and I'll be honest I've bought a couple of 'fun' things, but in spite of Trion's endless protestations there are now BiS items for sale.

I can't find it now but there was a blog written recently explaining the economic realities that mean 'fluff only' isn't a viable business model. If God forbid ZOS ever do take this game 'hybrid' like LOTRO, Rift and SW:TOR (those I have played that didn't abandon subscriptions entirely) you can expect the same claims .. and the same failure to adhere to promises made at the time will follow as surely as night follows day.

Xaei wrote: »

It can be done. The cash shop in GW1 and at least to the extent of the cash shop itself in GW2 (ie, you can trade gems for gold), it was pure fluff. There are a few 'non-fluff' things in them but they are so trivial no one really spends gems in them.

But I guess it works because the whole game was about fluff. The endgame gearing is about making your character look badass in both games, so the fluff in the cash shop is actually very attractive to their players.

I played GW1 only briefly so the 'shop' never came up as an issue. I have played GW2 a lot, I have 5 level 80s and enjoyed getting them there and certainly bought basic things like inventory and bank expansions.

I view GW2 as fundamentally different from games that started out as a subscription game that failed in that mode and had to switch to a hybrid.

When you play GW2 you are under no illusion that you'll probably have to pay out some cash in order to get round blocks of some sort. There's nothing wrong with that, it's their business model and they're 100% up-front about their intentions.

However, neither LOTRO nor Rift not SW:TOR were released like that, but morphed into MT-driven games and thus 'nickel and diming' came in via the back-door, and as I laid out in the case of LOTRO the whole ethos of the game designers clearly changed or the worse.

I play Runescape as well and am quite happy with the MT model, I knew what I was getting into and it's fine. Turbine OTOH sold their integrity to WB and then opened the Store and the game degenerated as a result.

KerinKor wrote: »

LOTRO to my mind is the most egregious I have played. Turbine were ADAMANT that the Store wouldn't affect game design, yet Helm's Deep shows just how much the game design is now used to 'drive' Store revenues.

Turbine parroted an nauseum that there would be nothing vital to playing the game which would be Store-exclusive and as far as I know that's still true .. what is also true though that now some very important items such as buff pots are only acquirable in-game for barter tokens that are rarer than hen's teeth as drops.

Yea. LOTRO. The Store with a Game Attached. Turbine specialise now in removing gameplay elements and selling them back to you. The mechanics are driven to force you to take Store short-cuts.

That's what happens with FTP, as sure as night follows day.

It was insane to release ESO in the state they did. They practically doomed it to be FTP in 12 months.

I really want this to be a quality sub based game.

Valfodr wrote: »

WoW, Eve, EQ and UO are all over a decade old. They were produced in the dawn of MMOs and had/have a loyal player base to justify the sub. New sub-based MMOs cannot compete against the staggering amount of f2p options available.

Some points you say are valid, like the increase in numbers resulting in increased server constraints and more prevalent botting. But this is far outweighed by the increased revenue from sheer numbers. Yes, there will be a high percentage of players who don't spend a cent on a cash shop, but there is also a large amount that spend well in excess of $15 per month. The box cost doesn't have to be removed, only the subscription. General consumers don't like being pigeon-holed into a subscription model. I would happily stake my career in marketing to prove that a f2p model would generate more revenue in this instance.

As Xaei mentioned, look at GW2 for an example of a pure cosmetic/convenience cash shop model that functions perfectly. Or DDO, as it is the most recent and relevant example of a dying mmo transformed into a thriving mmo.

Guild Wars 2, as other players here have mentioned, is a game build entirely around it's cash shop. The actual gear-drive of the game is moot because players are artificially 'leveled' by the system, meaning in the end the only important factor IS fluff and vanity.

And while GW2 is a success in it's own rights, much like it's predecessor, it's fairly unique in the free-to-play world because of it's basic premise. It was designed free-to-play and intended to be free-to-play, and it's unique server system, single-player co-op sharding, and the gameplay mechanics themselves were all designed to handle massive server load and spread it out by separating the players out.

And even GW2 starts to lose it's fanbase. So many other F2P games out there don't cost a dime, and the complaint I've seen so much of is dedicated to that box cost. Whereas GW1 brought F2P to MMO's, F2P is evolving and many feel GW2 isn't keeping up.



DDO, and SWTOR, and many other games that contain a cash shop as an afterthought, are such parodies of game design because it's so blaringly obvious their games weren't capable of standing on their own. Add in that a game like DDO or Star Trek Online are run by larger MMO managing houses, and it becomes obvious that development resources are shared between the various MMO's under that house, giving less content and less dedicated feedback to any individual product.

This changes in the single-product MMO companies. I feel that Zenimax was ambitious with their game design, and their aggressive content will be interesting to watch. They will be putting out major updates and simple fixes far faster than any other company out there. But of course, they will be paid to do so.

The headaches involved with bringing the F2P customer base (which has become very unique in MMO's, very separated from that of the subscriber) into this MMO would be horrendous.

What you are calling for, is essentially a ruining of the game, so that someone who cannot afford $15 a month of leisure money (but somehow has time to still play games) would be given a chance to play an MMO that already cost them $60 just to buy the box. Those players, with all that time and no money? What do they bring in for the company?

If the vaunted 'nickle and dime' cash shop items are so much more worthy, we'll probably still see them added into this game. I know that I would probably buy from it.

WhiskeyRiver.AZub17_ESO wrote: »

I am not sure this is the place to put this,but I could find no other place. I have found that for solo players,it is quite rough going. Everything is priced very high,and the amount of gold or items,armor,etc,you get from quests are slim. Many quests,you just get a furtherance of the quest itself,and no reward.Also,most everything I check,wardrobes,desk,crates,backpacks,etc,..
have only a few ingredients,or lockpicks. In Morrowind,you had hope of finding random bits of real good armor,or weapons.Not so in TESO.Why did you make it this rough for solo players? I love the game,dont get me wrong,but,Jeez is it rough. And a mount? Forget that.What with repairing armor,and weapons,one can never afford one.Unles you pay more money,..$15.00. Wasnt $59.00 enough?

Welcome to the mmo world. Farming is your best friend!

Oceanic players are good customers. Their population share may very well be more profitable to provide for than ten times as many call-of-duty players full of gripes and discontent. Most folks posting around here make me ashamed of American culture.

Needs more smaller scale pvp options...

Valfodr wrote: »

I want to see Zenimax / Bethesda reach the highest turnover possible to accelerate the development cycle and extend the lifespan of this game. I know they can't reach this potential with a subscription model.

Keep the box cost, remove the sub, implement a cash shop.

This is what I truly believe.

And do not fear the cash shop It can be catered to sell player content, convenience, cosmetic items and 'perhaps' content access (races etc) - These are things that do not sway pvp balance greatly and will definitely reach large sales amounts.

While a recognize turnover is an essential part of the business (the average player spends a maximum of three months in ANY game before moving on to newer content), I also point back to those 'Golden Era' MMO's you so quickly dismissed. Those MMO's are still around, while countless others (subscription or Free-to-Play) are gone.

Neither model has proven more successful than the other. Both sides have champions, and losers best left forgotten. Pay-to-play MMO's have a longer track record and the most overall success (World of Warcraft and EverQuest both broke and hold records). Free-to-play MMO's have shown more basic profitability, especially combined with managing house churn (Turbine, Perfect World) and must-have cash shops.


And I do fear cash shops. A cash shop, on it's own, cannot succeed as the sole means of keeping a company afloat, unless the items within are enough of a draw to keep players spending. Regretfully, roleplayers and 'digital barbie' types (of which I am both) don't make up the majority of online gamers. Competitive players drive the online marketplaces.

So as has been proven in any game with a cash shop (subscription or not), the methods to attract players WILL creep into the 'money equals competitive power' area.

EvE Online (which I have been playing since 2003) even had an outright player revolution over the introduction to it's cash shop. And while I'm not die hard against cash shops (I love to spend money on my hobbies, and I would immediately buy inventory bags or player housing in ESO if they added it), I recognize that it has an effect on the game.

A company can either develop more content to keep their subscribers entertained, or they can develop more content to keep their subscribers spending in their cash shop. Regretfully, I've yet to see any company do both simultaneously, successfully. And that's counting World of Warcraft (paid expansions and a low-level cash shop) or Guild Wars (paid expansions and a dedicated cash shop).

Kenboy5 wrote: »

id advise ANYONE reading this if you havnt already- cancel your sub- and wait about 2-3 more years for them to TRY to fix this massive letdown.

Because those still playing are incapable of figuring out for themselves whether or not they want to carry on an need you to tell then, right?

Of course, if everyone took your advice there'd be no game in 2-3 years time .. guess logic isn't a strong point of yours.

Kenboy5 wrote: »

Why is this game so antisocial? Grouping is pointless, slows you down; spawning is awkward, needs relogs to SOMETIMES work, and Armys invading citys while guards chill and are totally incompetent for a 2014 80$ game is kinda a letdown, id advise ANYONE reading this if you havnt already- cancel your sub- and wait about 2-3 more years for them to TRY to fix this massive letdown.

I'm going to cancel my sub just because you advised it.

wait no I'm not - you're an idiot.

It really stinks to see people so angry over a game that has been out for just about a month. No one has patience anymore. Give the company a break! No MMO has ever launched with all of the content they wanted at a launch. Everyone forgets the goal of a company is to make a game people will enjoy and pay for. If you pay attention in business classes ZOS has investors they have to answer too and sometimes you have to release a game before its fully ready to start a revenue stream. I am sure they wanted to have Craglorn and more end game content implemented before launch, but it wasn't in the cards. Try putting your feet in the shoes of a developer who has his own bosses telling him what to do even if he may not want to do it. If you bow out now and take away your support you could be missing out on something better. People who complain about content are the ones who post the most on these forums. I would imagine you represent a very small amount of the population. We have already seen polls on other forums about who will keep there subs after the first 30 days. Its a lot.

Relax! Breathe! Have a little confidence! If 15 bucks a month is to much for you to afford, then go find a job. Then you will play games slower cause you have to work and realize rushing through content sucks!