The Company (Not the Developers) Needs to Reevaluate What They're Doing

BXR_Lonestar · September 2023

OP - this is a 10 year old game, what do you expect? Newer games are going to come out and players will leave the game to play them, but they always seem to come back to this game again at some point. That is just going to happen to every game out there. At some point, interest dwindles and people move on.

I actually think ESO has held up incredibly well over the years. This is the first game in at least the last decade that has promised a multi-year adventure, and then has ACTUALLY DELIVERED on that promise!

With that said, all good things come to an end, but I do not believe ESO's end is near. I look on the world map, and there is still so much they could fill in for us, and that doesn't even include daedric plains like the shivering isles, the soul cairn, or any of those places that would be "off map" so to speak.

I haven't even gotten through the most recent storylines of Necrom, but I guarantee you that I will be buying the next chapter just to see where they take us next.

Jierdanit · September 2023

Blood_again wrote: »

What is better in my eyes. I can see that team listens to community more or less. I hear that you feel ignored and abandoned. But I look back to the changes in time and I see that community got many things we asked for.
New class - huge amount of work. Taunt removed from ice heavy, which was pain. Newcomers are less overwelmed by quest givers. It is only few things that come to my mind in a second. ZoS even once tried to organize class replesentative system to make communication better.
I feel that PvP community took less than other parts too. But we can remember nonCP campaigns, volendrung, anti-permablock sets, restructuring the item drop - the answers to community request. Also we have 3 PvP events per year and many BG weekends, new PvP sets each chapter. It is not abandoned, if you ask me.

Just because ZOS listens to the occasional thing the community says doesn't mean the communication is good.
With good communication we wouldn't have an entire PTS cycle where tons of people told ZOS they need to make more adjustments and they didn't change anything.

The nonproc campaigns for PvP were introduced to help with absolutely atrocious performance in PvP and barely helped in that regard.
Volendrung was released over 4 years ago and from what I feel like a lot of people really dislike the addition of it in the first place.
Not sure which anti permablock sets you are talking about, if there are any they really aren't doing a great job.
Also pretty sure at least the last 2 years we only had 2 PvP events, while PvE players get at least 5 times as many.
The BG weekends are unless it's a Deathmatch weekend very likely to make actual BG players do less of them because the other modes suck.
And PvP sets first of all can be used by everyone playing the game, not just PvPers and secondly are usually absolutely useless.

So no I wouldn't consider the addition of 5 sets a year and the occasional event actual support for PvP, especially when problems like the horrible performance in PvP have remained unfixed for years.

Freelancer_ESO · September 2023

Aka_ wrote: »

I don't have much to say on this as the forums bring it up quite often in general. But, ESO is on a downward trajectory and it's more and more obvious.

Content creators and the stream team are leaving the game or shifting it from being a main focus to a side one. As they often base their livelihoods off of the interest and content ESO puts out, this is a very bad sign.

Player count continues to fall. Steam, although limited in its data given that it is one of several ways to access ESO, shows this consistent trend.

The last update was kind of a failure. A quality of life update did not really show noticable improvements to a LOT of aspects of the game that players have specifically requested for months or even years.

Poor communication. The communication between players and developers and the company is abysmal. Everyone here can attest to the disrespect or lack of trust it feels there is between the creators and ourselves, especially between the company itself and us. We can see through the shallow PR messages that say that you "hear" us and you're "wanting to move forward to improve communication". It's bad, and it's been bad for years. You don't trust us. At least, that's the impression I get from the censoring, vague language, sporadic updates on issues, or nearly complete ignoring of PTS feedback. The profit is king. And if the people in charge of the agenda keep this up, they'll realize their short term focus will suck this game's soul dry.

I believe the developers still hold passion for this game and are held back by upper management. I also believe I'm speaking to the void when I write this. Being wanted as a customer has never felt so laborious in general these days with the gaming industry. And that sucks, because people really find joy and friends through games like these. To see that falter, and to witness the cracks in the foundations deepen is sad. It's not too late for the game if the upper echelon of this company let the developers do what they want to do in tandem with what the players have been begging for without response for years. The game has a special skeleton of history, beauty, and passion. And to see it like this is sad. I want the best for this game. But to have no communication, no trust from the people steering the experience is just sad.

To try to get this somewhat back on track, I'd like to note some things regarding the PTS Feedback:

Many of the people making the responses to the PTS forums haven't actually been on the PTS or tested the changes fully.

For example, on a recent PTS we had changes to death messages in PvP areas.

Needless to say, lots of people including myself were not exactly excited by the change. But, if you look at the threads you'll notice that next to nobody actually tested it. I eventually got to at least see the message and post it so other people could see it by asking someone from Craglorn to come kill me and then finding a bug that gave you death messages when you got killed by Slaughterfish or Imperial Law. I was never actually able to test if a range limitation was present because I couldn't find anyone else to come test to see if the death messages showed and by the time I could use my Epic Game Store account on the PTS the developers had fixed the Slaughterfish/Imperial Law bug we had reported so I couldn't get a death message from killing myself.

In the same PTS cycle, they tested an upcoming event (as it's upcoming I'll be a bit vague). I saw next to no feedback besides mine about the event on forums. My post mentioned instances of clipping, instances of abrupt pop-in, and instances of the quest potentially having things incorrectly occurring.

The pop-in I mentioned was fixed in 9.1.4.

The clipping and things incorrectly occurring was fixed in 9.1.3.

FayJolyn · September 2023

I more than agree with OP it sums up my feelings exactly also. .
Yesterday I canceled my sub for the time being, as my playtime was lower and I couldn't justify the sub anymore. I don't like the state the game is in now, which is a shame because ESO also does so many things right. I enjoy questing, companions, pvp, dungeons. However this game is worse than your average EA game with the amount of crownstore/lootcrates/fomo/etc, compared to exciting ingame rewards. I don't have anything new to add, the devs know what changes players want, I remember when they had a sat down with all those content creators and the message was clear. More pvp love, better rewards for longtime players, less reliance on the crownstore/lootcrates.

I think they did try, like for example with the server upgrades, shame the results just didn't improve as we all had hoped for. But other aspects like the lack of rewards and QoL upgrade... just crickets... I'm still holding out hope for Q4 but Q3 was really disappointing to me. The fact that crown store prices have only steadily increased and also the dumb loot bundles is really disheartening to see. I'm a gamer, I'm here to have fun, not to be milked dry from every euro I own.

I'm back to good ol' Skyrim for now. Not gone completely, but ESO is on the back burner now. At least Ralof doesn't shove a store in my face every time I enter Tamriel on a cart.

NerfSeige · September 2023

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I think ESO would actually be better off without some of the streamers and elite players....

If there are really so many players that want to clear endgame without getting good then they should just branch out and create their own teams instead. Blaming people who play how they want (high dps for easier clears) is a bad take IMO

Blood_again · September 2023

Jierdanit wrote: »

Just because ZOS listens to the occasional thing the community says doesn't mean the communication is good.
With good communication we wouldn't have an entire PTS cycle where tons of people told ZOS they need to make more adjustments and they didn't change anything.

The nonproc campaigns for PvP were introduced to help with absolutely atrocious performance in PvP and barely helped in that regard.
Volendrung was released over 4 years ago and from what I feel like a lot of people really dislike the addition of it in the first place.
Not sure which anti permablock sets you are talking about, if there are any they really aren't doing a great job.
Also pretty sure at least the last 2 years we only had 2 PvP events, while PvE players get at least 5 times as many.
The BG weekends are unless it's a Deathmatch weekend very likely to make actual BG players do less of them because the other modes suck.
And PvP sets first of all can be used by everyone playing the game, not just PvPers and secondly are usually absolutely useless.

I can't see major contradiction here.
As you can see I said that communication is bad and PvP part of the community got less than others.

Meanwhile I said that devs make changes. You said lots of people don't like it.
I said we have events. You said that you like just one type of weekends and PvE have more than that.
Just to remind, my main point was that devs do make changes. They respond to community requests. They work on solving problems. They do it good or bad, but even the part who got way less attention is not ignored or abandoned.
Is your point of view the opposite?

Jierdanit wrote: »

So no I wouldn't consider the addition of 5 sets a year and the occasional event actual support for PvP, especially when problems like the horrible performance in PvP have remained unfixed for years.

I would focus on perfomance, just to refresh some memory. How long ago was the last moment you got disconnected in more than one ball group presence? How long ago was your last time when you got booted from Cyro near massively sieged keep and couldn't log back until the siege ends?
For me it was in winter 2018-2019. If you ask me if the perfomance became ideal after that - no, not at all. Now ask me if it became better - yes, way better. Devs have done major changes, including very expensive no-proc experiments, unpopular group size changes, skill targeting changes and many more. They worked to solve this problems for years step by step. Just check patchnotes.
Anyway you wouldn't consider it actual support, because perfomance is not perfect... That's actually back side of the communication medal. A part of the community just ignores or devalues lots of changes after those changes have been delivered to them. Really, why not, if we can just ask more?

Jierdanit · September 2023

Blood_again wrote: »

I can't see major contradiction here.
As you can see I said that communication is bad and PvP part of the community got less than others.

Meanwhile I said that devs make changes. You said lots of people don't like it.
I said we have events. You said that you like just one type of weekends and PvE have more than that.
Just to remind, my main point was that devs do make changes. They respond to community requests. They work on solving problems. They do it good or bad, but even the part who got way less attention is not ignored or abandoned.
Is your point of view the opposite?

If you compare the amount of content PvP has gotten to the amount of content PvE has gotten then in my opinion you have to say that it has been ignored. Maybe not quite completely abandoned yet, but its not far off.

Blood_again wrote: »

I would focus on perfomance, just to refresh some memory. How long ago was the last moment you got disconnected in more than one ball group presence? How long ago was your last time when you got booted from Cyro near massively sieged keep and couldn't log back until the siege ends?
For me it was in winter 2018-2019. If you ask me if the perfomance became ideal after that - no, not at all. Now ask me if it became better - yes, way better. Devs have done major changes, including very expensive no-proc experiments, unpopular group size changes, skill targeting changes and many more. They worked to solve this problems for years step by step. Just check patchnotes.
Anyway you wouldn't consider it actual support, because perfomance is not perfect... That's actually back side of the communication medal. A part of the community just ignores or devalues lots of changes after those changes have been delivered to them. Really, why not, if we can just ask more?

I am not going to praise ZOS for doing less than the bare minimum.

Working performance is the absolute minimum. Something like crashes or serious lag spikes (if not on the client side) are basically the same as not having a finished product.

Yes the performance is better now than it used to be, not going to deny that. But it still isnt good enough to warrant ZOS any praise.
The "changes" ZOS has done so far are not worth being recognized because the same issues that existed 5 years ago still exist today.
We are absolutely entitled to ask for more if the current state is a not working product.

blktauna · September 2023

Blood_again wrote: »

I would focus on perfomance, just to refresh some memory. How long ago was the last moment you got disconnected in more than one ball group presence? How long ago was your last time when you got booted from Cyro near massively sieged keep and couldn't log back until the siege ends?

Two weeks ago on EU PC and middle of last week on PCNA. That's not counting the lag spikes now following me into overland now.

They need to attend to this deficiency and give us a real timeline of how they plan to tackle it.

Blood_again · September 2023

Jierdanit wrote: »

Blood_again wrote: »

They do it good or bad, but even the part who got way less attention is not ignored or abandoned.
Is your point of view the opposite?

If you compare the amount of content PvP has gotten to the amount of content PvE has gotten then in my opinion you have to say that it has been ignored. Maybe not quite completely abandoned yet, but its not far off.

False scaling? Nice choice! Let me repeat it in other terms.
I have 100 millions, but in comparison with Microsoft capitalisation it is less that 0.1%, almost nothing. See, I have nothing, not a pound actually.
Close enough?

If you want to play with words this way, it is OK

Jierdanit wrote: »

I am not going to praise ZOS for doing less than the bare minimum.

Working performance is the absolute minimum. Something like crashes or serious lag spikes (if not on the client side) are basically the same as not having a finished product.

Yes the performance is better now than it used to be, not going to deny that. But it still isnt good enough to warrant ZOS any praise.
The "changes" ZOS has done so far are not worth being recognized because the same issues that existed 5 years ago still exist today.
We are absolutely entitled to ask for more if the current state is a not working product.

It is not about praising, but communication.
It is supposed to be a dialog. When you refuse to see changes or lower them, you can't give equal feedback. When you make the same while posing entitled, it affects your feedback too.
ZoS have real problems with communication that they need to address.
But if we require "talk to us" with closed eyes and plugged ears, if we tell them "you did nothing", that makes nothing better.
Thank you for accepting perfomance changes. Please, don't praise, just see what really have been done, for communication purposes.

Blood_again · September 2023

blktauna wrote: »

Blood_again wrote: »

I would focus on perfomance, just to refresh some memory. How long ago was the last moment you got disconnected in more than one ball group presence? How long ago was your last time when you got booted from Cyro near massively sieged keep and couldn't log back until the siege ends?

Two weeks ago on EU PC and middle of last week on PCNA. That's not counting the lag spikes now following me into overland now.

They need to attend to this deficiency and give us a real timeline of how they plan to tackle it.

Wow, didn't expect it.
I hope you created a ticket?

FoJul · September 2023

Blood_again wrote: »

ESO dies because a team of professionals want money for their job and do their job as they see it right.
I heard that before. Let me remember... in October 2015.

When you tell us about "downward trajectory and it's more and more obvious" 3 months after releasing new chapter with new trial, new class, new type of world event etc., less than a month after QoL update... I can guess you've never seen a state of MMO that really dies. Happy you

I won't comment speculations about bad company that don't allow good developers to give faithful players what they want. Nope.

If you see that everything is bad, the game don't satisfy you, patches are jokes and do nothing good, people are leaving and you think you're speaking to the void - it is a good idea to take a break. Get some rest. All the colors of Tamriel will meet you as bright as before when you get back.

They released a new Chapter and new class. Yet it still wasn't enough to bring people in. So what they did to bring people in, is make the game free to play all around with ESO plus free for a month as well.

Most likely they did this to increase the population and chart analysis, to make it feel like there is still people joining this game.

What did it actually do? It brought in MASSIVE amounts of bot/gold selling accounts. Which now they are overwhelmed with, so you best bet they are fixing to ignore the community so they can fix their income.

Money > QoL/Game life

That being said, they will stop everything they are doing when there is a Crown/IGC problem, but there is a CP exploit/bug that people have been abusing for over 6 months. It still hasn't been fixed. In a game where devs cared about gameplay or QoL, they would remove an actual combat EXPLOIT.

Another example, the new Warchief set could've been fixed in PTS but the devs didn't listen. So now we have a debuff set, they stays on you 99% of the fight unless your a templar or using the said exploit CP I mentioned earlier. It's a 35% healing reduced debuff which when in PvP your healing is already cut in half.

I can name probably 100 things off the top of my head. Some of which have needed fixed for years. But as long as they coming out with new content, and releasing crown items for you to buy as a distraction, they feel like their job is done.

On the same note, though, if they quit releasing content to fix all of these bugs, vets/edngamers' are going to leave cause it's to boring. So it's a double edged sword. Except, if they keep releasing content atleast people will stick around more or less if they are just fixing bugs/exploits.

I'm sure if Zos came out and said to us, "Going into this year, we are going to focus more on bugs/exploits. That being said there will be very minimal content release for this year."

They could still drop like a dungeon dlc IF THEY MUST. What im saying if they give everyone a heads up about less content more fixes. I think ESO community could live with that. As, ESO itself has a lot of content in it.

Another thing I might add. If PvP got more attention than it did, more pve'rs would most likely want to try it out. If it was more balanced, and maybe a few other game modes. A healthy balance between all the contents of endgame (PvE/PvP/RP/Housing/and others) would keep a decent population, and give you wiggle room when it comes to new content.

In conclusion, Zos and higher ups, do prioritize money over the game. Without the money they wouldn't have a payroll. But if they increase the quality of the game they would make more money than they are now.

Blood_again · September 2023

FoJul wrote: »

[...skipped...]
They could still drop like a dungeon dlc IF THEY MUST. What im saying if they give everyone a heads up about less content more fixes. I think ESO community could live with that. As, ESO itself has a lot of content in it.

Another thing I might add. If PvP got more attention than it did, more pve'rs would most likely want to try it out. If it was more balanced, and maybe a few other game modes. A healthy balance between all the contents of endgame (PvE/PvP/RP/Housing/and others) would keep a decent population, and give you wiggle room when it comes to new content.

In conclusion, Zos and higher ups, do prioritize money over the game. Without the money they wouldn't have a payroll. But if they increase the quality of the game they would make more money than they are now.

Oh, that's a lot. It looks like the company is in real trouble.
What are you going to do with all that? Do you have a plan?

magus.septim · September 2023

I agree 100% with OP, after ZOS was bought out by Microsoft, they put the game on life support and it just became a cash cow for Microsoft. PVP is the same map for 8 years now, and we are all still stuck in combat.

Destai · September 2023

Aka_ wrote: »

I don't have much to say on this as the forums bring it up quite often in general. But, ESO is on a downward trajectory and it's more and more obvious.

Content creators and the stream team are leaving the game or shifting it from being a main focus to a side one. As they often base their livelihoods off of the interest and content ESO puts out, this is a very bad sign.

Player count continues to fall. Steam, although limited in its data given that it is one of several ways to access ESO, shows this consistent trend.

I think there's just so many factors - the game's age is a big factor of this. It's approaching 10 years old and the rewards aren't there for players to stick around. It has never had the streaming presence that other games has and I think the reward structure is a part of it. You can't make beginner tutorials for 10 years and make money off the same game. Aside from stickerbook and just needing a game to fill time, I'm not working towards much. I used to watch Sawman and Nefas on occasion because they were funny and poignant.

Aka_ wrote: »

The last update was kind of a failure. A quality of life update did not really show noticable improvements to a LOT of aspects of the game that players have specifically requested for months or even years.

I'm giving them a break on this one, because I recognize the effort being made and I'm sure there's years of technical debt they're working through. The scope for the update is still pretty large and I just think there's more QoL changes needed than one update can contain. I'd rather have an update with more contained scope and higher quality than making bad situations worse.

Aka_ wrote: »

Poor communication. The communication between players and developers and the company is abysmal. Everyone here can attest to the disrespect or lack of trust it feels there is between the creators and ourselves, especially between the company itself and us. We can see through the shallow PR messages that say that you "hear" us and you're "wanting to move forward to improve communication". It's bad, and it's been bad for years. You don't trust us. At least, that's the impression I get from the censoring, vague language, sporadic updates on issues, or nearly complete ignoring of PTS feedback. The profit is king. And if the people in charge of the agenda keep this up, they'll realize their short term focus will suck this game's soul dry.

Spot on. And I don't see their communication ever improving. I don't feel like it's in their culture or organization to actively participate here on the forums. They really give me an impression they're a loss for how to handle things. I don't know why they don't engage here more beyond patch notes.

I do believe they're seeing feedback because I see issues getting fixed. Even in U39, I see some things I myself have called out. However, the pace is a bit slower than many of us would like. PTS forum engagement could be a lot stronger and I think there's a few occurrences where the "fix" didn't measure up to expectations or what add-ons could do. Skyshards on the map is a great example.

Crisis management is where they could improve the most. Starting with a small list - U35, the Q&A, the server re-architecture, leadership's comments/action on streams, PVP performance, the seals of endeavors bug bans, the login queues, and last but not least, the crown store fiasco. All of these were forks in the road where @ZOS_GinaBruno and her team should have been far more visibly proactive here and I just don't see it.

Aka_ wrote: »

I believe the developers still hold passion for this game and are held back by upper management. I also believe I'm speaking to the void when I write this. Being wanted as a customer has never felt so laborious in general these days with the gaming industry. And that sucks, because people really find joy and friends through games like these. To see that falter, and to witness the cracks in the foundations deepen is sad. It's not too late for the game if the upper echelon of this company let the developers do what they want to do in tandem with what the players have been begging for without response for years. The game has a special skeleton of history, beauty, and passion. And to see it like this is sad. I want the best for this game. But to have no communication, no trust from the people steering the experience is just sad.

The top-down culture of "it'll blow over" to each crisis is what holds back progress. For whatever historical or ongoing reasons, this is chosen over actual engagement. Getting in the weeds, hearing players out, having tough conversations. I don't think I've ever seen it happen with these guys.

loveeso · September 2023

And now yet another example of a prominent member of the community being driven away by ZOS’s mismanagement of the game and its direction.

M00ny (known for the famous Hodor Reflexes add-on): "I’m not very happy with the current development of ESO. It seems like the changes ZOS does are not with players in mind".

Oh, Nefas has already made a video about it, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFhzpaatTrE

Warhawke_80 · September 2023

I'm sorta new here but is this how it always is?

One group demanding that the game is dying and needs to be all about their particular playstyle?

It just seems non constructive..it's just a silly game...not life and death.

loveeso · September 2023

Warhawke_80 wrote: »

I'm sorta new here but is this how it always is?

One group demanding that the game is dying and needs to be all about their particular playstyle?

It just seems non constructive..it's just a silly game...not life and death.

The powers that be love to use divide and conquer to achieve their nefarious goals

…

But it’s not about play styles this time (far from it). If you are interested, read the original post by M00ny or watch the video (if you don’t have access to the original post but would still like to read, you can just pause Nefas’s vid and read it there.

Xandreia_ · September 2023

some people say content creators are the worst of the community but in reality they have helped each and everyone one of us at some point, if its looking up an antiquity spot, looking for a furnishing, need a pvp build, want to learn a rotation, want some background noise while you play the game, want to download an addon, we have ALL at some point used content created by players.

the issue we have right now is that those content creators are leaving, and when i say leaving there is a haemorrhage of content creators leaving because of 1 thing as a whole. and that thing is the company AND developers.

while ZOS do see the feedback given, a solid 8/10 times they take the WRONG feedback, the feedback from the players that don't play the entirety of the game, the people that dont have a clue what repercussions will happen if their proposed changes go through. the tin foil hat conspiracy warriors making countless posts about things that dont need to be changed. all the while things that NEED to be changed are completely overlooked in favour of petting a dog in X location.

there are so many bugs in this game that have been there for years. but every single time there is a quality of life update, they get completely forgotten about.

as a company, i have to say, are possibly one of THE worst companies i have ever encountered. there is only so much "we are working on it" and "thanks for your patience" that can be given out without ever actually looking at it and actually having things be fixed.

one whole side of the community (PVP) has been neglected for years, another has been ran out by a plethora of bugs and down right disgusting changes in the past few updates making running trials near on impossible in some instances (please for the love of god bring back PTE) while questing, housing and other things have been completely lifted up to the point all Vet players have had enough.

things need to change, and the need to change quick before the game becomes worse off than it already is.

how can a company have such a gem of a game and steer it to ruin...

BHoth_ · September 2023

Thanks for the post, OP. I also find the lack of adequate communication and general direction of the game concerning.

hrothbern · September 2023

It would not hurt I think that part of that re-evaluation process would be to do nothing until it is clear how BG3 AND Starfield are being judged by the players community. And take that evaluation in the total equation.
Not the streamers or "experts" NOW giving opinions before playing it at least a hundred or several hundreds of hours.

Perhaps that leads to ZOS (as company) getting more freedom from Bethesda and MS shareholders to do what is needed.

Twohothardware · September 2023

When all your content creators leave it’s a pretty big sign that the game is crashing and needs a major update from the team to stabilize things.

peacenote · September 2023

Xandreia_ wrote: »

while ZOS do see the feedback given, a solid 8/10 times they take the WRONG feedback, the feedback from the players that don't play the entirety of the game, the people that dont have a clue what repercussions will happen if their proposed changes go through.

This. I truly believe that this is the root cause of a lot of problems. There is a lack of insight into the long term consequences of what is done to the game, and feedback is interpreted too literally without nuance or understanding. No one sees cause and effect, even though they often are things the player base can clearly see. Although, an additional part of the issue, I think, is that they often don't explain the real reasons why something is being done in the first place, either in a timely manner or at all, which makes the community response less useful to them.

One example is right here in this thread:

FoJul wrote: »

They released a new Chapter and new class. Yet it still wasn't enough to bring people in. So what they did to bring people in, is make the game free to play all around with ESO plus free for a month as well.

Most likely they did this to increase the population and chart analysis, to make it feel like there is still people joining this game.

What did it actually do? It brought in MASSIVE amounts of bot/gold selling accounts. Which now they are overwhelmed with, so you best bet they are fixing to ignore the community so they can fix their income.

And one of the reasons a new class was not enough to bring people in, or bring people back, was that before releasing the new class, they released AwA. Which ruined a lot of what was fun about having multiple characters for many people because of a bad implementation. Many, many people gave feedback as to how it could be improved. It was all ignored. When the new class was announced, the forum was flooded with unimpressed people who said a new class is of no interest; they wanted skill lines they could use on their current character. Never have I seen such a lack of enthusiasm for a new class in any MMO I have played. But this was because they chased away all of the people who enjoyed starting over!! They catered to the feedback of people who said achievements were a grind (while not actually removing the grindiest achievements like per character motifs, gee I wonder why that was), but instead of understanding what was underneath that feedback and addressing it thoughtfully, and separating achievements from character progress tracking, we got a sledgehammer approach to simplifying achievements which broke map progress, something that is still broken to this day.

Of course if you release a new class after you've essentially gutted a beautiful system for per character tracking, it's not going to go well.

Another smaller example is how no one listened to the PTS feedback about PTE.

I believe ZOS tries to read and address the feedback and a lot of people working on this game are trying to do a good job and care. But someone is missing that 360 view understanding how it all ties together.

wazzz56 · September 2023

Katheriah wrote: »

It's not other the players fault there's only a few ways to gain enough DPS to comfortly get through endgame content.

I know players that used to do weekly training runs with people. I have massive respect for them. Most people eventually get tired of spending 3-4 hours of their free time on players that refuse to want to get better gear or practice their rotation.

Let's be honest; if you want to finish endgame content, but you don't want to farm endgame gear or practice endgame rotations, then you just want to get carried.

I don't blame anyone that doesn't want to be a free carrier in their free time.

bingo

CameraBeardThePirate · September 2023

I love how many people decided to turn a post criticizing the devs into an Us VS Them about "elitists" and "casuals" and PvE vs PvP.

The community isn't just dying because of bad decisions from ZOS guys. Probably also something to do with how much toxicity some players have against entire portions of the playerbase. Or even how some players see toxicity and attribute it to entire portions of the playerbase unfairly.

Nezyr_Jezz · September 2023

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I love how many people decided to turn a post criticizing the devs into an Us VS Them about "elitists" and "casuals" and PvE vs PvP.

The community isn't just dying because of bad decisions from ZOS guys. Probably also something to do with how much toxicity some players have against entire portions of the playerbase. Or even how some players see toxicity and attribute it to entire portions of the playerbase unfairly.

Let me introduce you to a not so commonly known fact. Zenimax doesn't care how much you play since at least 2020. The fact is they are leading with predatory monetization on store because they are banking on people starting the game now, then droping it before they even got to 50 realizing how much work it is selling crown store items in the process.

0-6 months thats how much they want you to play. After that your on your own paying that sub.

The company had been critized over:
1) the lack of reward systems both in pve and pvp alike (the current system is lackluster which had been brought by Cheeky, Nefas, Hack and many others)
2) the disregard toward experienced players including livestream banning for polite but important questions regarding game future
3) Introducing predatory store practices selling thigs like vamp bites etc for new players.
4) introducing earthshaking gear and class changes every Q just to force players into more grind
5) not changing core game mechanics like

mount training,
crafting (including jewelery which impacts negatively the trade since the introdcution) especially for new players
dungeon gear being BoP

There is no difference if your an experienced player or not. The fact that you have nothing but wall of grind in front of you every single play session makes the game much worse than it should. Add to the fact that studio disregarded most experienced players concern about "card game" which, neglecting communities and experienced gamers oppinions alike.

It is sad, because under many categories eso has supremacy imho over any other mmo released so far. It's vast, its amazingly acted and scripted, boss mechanics are at least rudementary but the newest are very interesting and unique to each other. You had 3 endgames you could follow not even including guilding and roleplaying etc, but most of all - a vast ammount of experienced players that you could learn from.

LittlePinkDot · September 2023

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I think ESO would actually be better off without some of the streamers and elite players. They are holding the game back by forcing the barswapping LA weaving playstyle upon everyone. If everyone could reach endgame, with any number of playstyles(no more DPS gap), more players would stick around and the endgame would be much more lively. Which would also allow for the endgame to keep growing. Right now noone really flows into the endgame, which makes it hard for players to stick with an MMO. As endgame is where you want to be at as a player, regardless of skilllevel. And if you can't get there, there is no point in playing the game.

This makes it so players only flow out of the game, instead of into the game and endgame. Causing the playerbase to dwindle bit by bit.

And I do agree ZOS should look at PTS criticism more, as that is where they can still change important issues before implementing them on the live servers. Other than that I feel ZOS's communication is alright for an MMO company. (Keep in mind, they have to get greenlit for any communication they do, and there are behind-the-scene things they can't tell us)

There are issues with the game, some even important/major issues. These important/major issues should be fixed ASAP, so the game's foundation will pull even more players in. But ZOS is still releasing quite a bit of content, and are releasing new systems every now and then. So from where I'm sitting, the game looks like it will only get better.

PS: I play through the standalone client.

I don't know what the big deal is about bar swapping, it's not rocket science.

And to me end game is PvP and we haven't had a PvP update in 5 years.

Nezyr_Jezz · September 2023

BTW. the mentality of not not performing in dps (or any other type of role/activity) because "you will not force specific sets on me" or "i will play my own build" is fine unless your playing with a team. Noone wants to carry you unless you pay gold for it. Period.

No proper raid guild or team pvp guild will ever accept your inability to learn and listen. In highly competitive environments every bit of advantage works and your only a liability if your unwilling to accept that your build is insuficient to do a specific content. It's like wanting to join special forces but being 50 kg and no endurance to run a mile. It's a team effort. Act the part

LittlePinkDot · September 2023

Kiyonami wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

RaikaNA wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I think ESO would actually be better off without some of the streamers and elite players. They are holding the game back by forcing the barswapping LA weaving playstyle upon everyone. If everyone could reach endgame, with any number of playstyles(no more DPS gap), more players would stick around and the endgame would be much more lively. Which would also allow for the endgame to keep growing. Right now noone really flows into the endgame, which makes it hard for players to stick with an MMO. As endgame is where you want to be at as a player, regardless of skilllevel. And if you can't get there, there is no point in playing the game.

This makes it so players only flow out of the game, instead of into the game and endgame. Causing the playerbase to dwindle bit by bit.

And I do agree ZOS should look at PTS criticism more, as that is where they can still change important issues before implementing them on the live servers. Other than that I feel ZOS's communication is alright for an MMO company. (Keep in mind, they have to get greenlit for any communication they do, and there are behind-the-scene things they can't tell us)

There are issues with the game, some even important/major issues. These important/major issues should be fixed ASAP, so the game's foundation will pull even more players in. But ZOS is still releasing quite a bit of content, and are releasing new systems every now and then. So from where I'm sitting, the game looks like it will only get better.

PS: I play through the standalone client.

Blaming the streamers and "elite" players for bad patches and holding the game back is so unfair. They're not the developers who make the decisions of adding stuff in the game... they're players just like you and I. As far as animation canceling and LA weaving... this is caused by a broken combat system that ZOS still hasn't fixed yet.

There is nothing holding back anyone from playing end gaming content... however, you do need to work on your rotation and improving yourself and your gear... If you have bad DPS... It's all on you... not the streamer's fault, not the elite player's fault.. its your fault for not understanding your class. Instead of hiring people to do XP/power level runs in skyreach/ ‎Blackrose Prison arena... level up your character in a normal sense.

You contradict yourself. You are saying not to blame the elite players and streamers, and immediately state everyone needs to work on their rotation for the highest DPS.

The game needs more playstyles, like the original oakensoul and HA builds, but every time ZOS releases a new playstyle.... guess who wants it nerfed for reasons. So yes, it is the elite and streamers holding this game back, especially if you consider most of the playerbase does not perform the barswapping LA weaving playstyle. Whatever their reasons for not wanting to do the barswapping LA weaving playstyle, they do not do it. (personally I find it buttonsmashing and looks stupid)

Completely agree with everything said. The game really lacks playstyles, for most LA weaving is a meta, the benchmark by which players are judged... And everything would be fine if both categories of players would not be separated because of this. After all, those who successfully use LA weaving think other players are sucks. That's why game needs more playstyles. This will allow more players to be involved in the gameplay. Then the "Elitists" will stop measuring people with DPS numbers (every month more and more often I saw how players are labeled as an outsider because they do not use LA weaving and meta sets and this is a terrible and toxic attitude...)

I've been playing since the beta test. But I don't know how to use LA weaving, and I don't like the whole concept of such a playstyle, it doesn't bring me fun and pleasure (Oh yeah, trying to use weaving with ~300ms ping is already hurting yourself). I really love ESO, but a couple of months ago I stopped playing and uninstalled the game... When the game starts to become work and no longer fun, it's time to stop to keep the brightest and most pleasant memories.

Those who like LA weaving - great, play and enjoy, I'm not asking to take away this feature from the game, but please stop telling other players that they are playing "wrong", saying "go learn" or "delete the game".

Why dont you be a tank or a Healer? You don't need to worry about weaving as much and the queue's are much shorter. Im never a DD either and I only pug. After I started tanking all of a sudden I'm getting all kinds of invites. Tanks are in high demand.

Im on console so I don't have add ons. I'm wondering if PC people have more pressure on them because everybody can see their DPS.

You might have less toxicity if PC was as blind as console.

This being said, PvP is still the pinnacle of end game to me, and without it I wouldn't be here.

Muizer · September 2023

So, it's kind of easy to write "ZOS need to reevaluate what they're doing". Lots of people will agree as long as they can project their own personal angle on what needs changing. I'm not convinced there's much consensus among players about what they expect from ZoS. Better performance, yes. A dislike of the crown store perhaps. Apart from that .....

Panderbander · September 2023

Muizer wrote: »

So, it's kind of easy to write "ZOS need to reevaluate what they're doing". Lots of people will agree as long as they can project their own personal angle on what needs changing. I'm not convinced there's much consensus among players about what they expect from ZoS. Better performance, yes. A dislike of the crown store perhaps. Apart from that .....

The simple fact there's so many personal angles indicates the problems are systemic and not specific to one or two modes of the game. I don't particularly enjoy PvE so what I suggest isn't going to necessarily be PvE oriented, but that doesn't mean the problems don't exist and aren't part of the overall problem.

I would prefer a game where everyone is moderately happy to a game where everyone is seemingly miserable, even if not every facet applies to me, and I'm sure many of the folks here share that sentiment.