Why is ESO Unpopular?

gariondavey · October 2023

If eso had competitive pvp or even had a pvp dev, there would be more interest in streams.
Zos has essentially abandoned pvp.

Gray_howling_parrot · October 2023

I think it’s a tough question, but we can say one thing for sure:

You’re going to get some skewed opinions on the forums, typically there seems to be more negativity on the forums than other places like Reddit, Youtube polls, etc. (subjective opinion, but what I believe nonetheless)

ALSO:

Let’s compare to another MMO (the most popular on Twitch - WoW). What are people doing in WoW?

- Mythic plus dungeons which are competitive, difficult scaling dungeons. Imagine if there was vet dungeons, but you could do veteran 2, veteran 3, etc scaling up and making it even more difficult
- They’re playing a classic version of the game to foster the nostalgia from early 2000s WoW
- They’re playing WoW Classic Hardcore - another element of gameplay where if you die your character is done. Very entertaining to watch because there’s so much risk the entire time. Hundreds of hours can go away for one mistake. Very fun/funny/intense
- ALSO there is just a much larger player base for the other MMOs like FF14 and WoW.

I think the twitch directory is fine for ESO. You’ll see a lot of people on forums saying,
“Why would I watch when I can play”
“I DONT CARE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA RAWR!!!l

That’s common for every MMO. But it’s also an MMO. The games that generally have the largest directories are competitive FPS games. There’s no a lot of competitive stuff in ESO that’s REWARDING - sure it can be fun to watch but there’s not a ton of people streaming it because not a lot of people do the competitive stuff currently. Think about how many PvP players have left over the years and what % of the population actually does leaderboard stuff. Not a ton.

That’s my 2 cents

Freilauftomate · October 2023

When i started playing ESO i was shocked how hard it was to find reliable information about the game. Compared to other MMOs, official information is extremely superficial and kind of hard to find for new players. We don't even have game masters who could answer questions. And it's just getting worse. Because almost all the "content creators" stopped testing stuff and making guides. So a lot of their websites and videos are outdated somehow. Plenty of self proclaimed "veteran players" don't even understand the basic combat mechanics (when blocking makes sense, when you have to dodge roll, how jumping works, what different types of crowd control there are, how synergies work...). Some pretentious elitist wannabe pro gamers i have met don't even know how their sets, skills, buffs and debuffs work, or have extremely outdated information from 20 patches ago... At the same time people who know almost everything about the game (including all the secrets, cheats and bug exploits) don't bother making guides and sharing their knowledge with anyone but a few friends.

I used to watch videos and streams, read guides, forum posts, patch notes etc. for information, not for entertainment purposes. But in ESO even the official patch notes and tooltips are misleading and just wrong sometimes.

My guess: there is no need for this kind of detailed information anymore. Like someone else already mentioned here, the competitive scene (PvE scorepushing, PvP...) is as good as dead. Questers and flower pickers rarely need help with what they are doing... So content creators and twitch streamers don't get enough views for providing tested and up to date information and move on to other games.

What's left are a few people who stream for fun, or just trying to find out how streaming works for the first time in their lives.

Cazador · October 2023

I don't know about anyone else but for me some games are fun to play but not fun to watch. Personally I'm not interested in watching someone else play mmos. Don't get me wrong, I do watch a reasonably large number of streamers but the ones I watch are variety streamers who don't play mmos.

GooGa592 · October 2023

Ask the old big name streamers why they don't stream ESO anymore.

Most of them have posted publicly why they have moved on.

DreamyLu · October 2023

No matter what game, I don't watch. I feel no need. I prefer to live the fun myself with my friends in game.

fizl101 · October 2023

I tried for a while but stopped. In general they are just too slow, lots of standing around trying to get the next bit of engagement with the watchers, occasionally running to somewhere, maybe do a daily mages guild or something, then try another giveaway. I wouldn't mind watching people playing if they played at a normal speed to play the game, but the long periods of standing around not doing much turn me off.

If I catch one doing trials or dungeons I happily watch as they aren't standing about doing nothing

Araneae6537 · October 2023

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

Why don’t more people watch ESO on Twitch? Unless there is a drop, typically only a few hundred viewers across all the streams.

Other competing MMORPG category games easily get 50-100 times more viewers on a daily basis. Why?

Why watch someone play a game??? If it’s instructions for mechanics, a build, etc., that makes sense, but is the type of thing that would be in a video (as on YouTube) rather than a livestream. I do enjoy watching ESO housing streams, but that’s to look at other players’ creations rather than watching someone play per se. I would guess people watch whatever streams they do for the personality regardless of the game? But Idk

ESO_CenturionPlayer · October 2023

What I am reading from your comments:

1. ESO PvE content, unlike other MMO’s, is mostly story based. Story based play style doesn’t stream well.
2. ESO PvP content is much more interesting to watch, but isn’t enjoyable to play and won’t be given the attention it needs.
3. ESO players are old and old folks don’t like streaming. Kids these days are always on their computers and phones! Who has time for that?!

SilverBride · October 2023

I don't get a thing out of watching someone do something I'd rather just log in and do myself.

Freilauftomate · October 2023

I thought this discussion was supposed to be about why ESO has a lot less streamers and viewers than comparable games. Not about what people think about life streams.

It's like someone is asking why nobody wants to read their book and you tell them "idk, i don't like reading, i prefer to do my own research".

SilverBride · October 2023

Freilauftomate wrote: »

I thought this discussion was supposed to be about why ESO has a lot less streamers and viewers than comparable games. Not about what people think about life streams.

What players think about live streams has a lot to do with why they do or do not watch them.

Freilauftomate · October 2023

SilverBride wrote: »

What players think about live streams has a lot to do with why they do or do not watch them.

Ok, makes sense. Sorry i said anything

menedhyn · October 2023

NettleCarrier wrote:

ESO is a story driven game, it's meant to be experienced not watched...

This sums up my own thoughts very well. I have tried to watch a few streams, but they weren’t particularly enjoyable.

Araneae6537 · October 2023

Freilauftomate wrote: »

I thought this discussion was supposed to be about why ESO has a lot less streamers and viewers than comparable games. Not about what people think about life streams.

It's like someone is asking why nobody wants to read their book and you tell them "idk, i don't like reading, i prefer to do my own research".

While I see your point, the title of this thread rather invites such posts as it is simply “Why is ESO unpopular?” instead of “Why is ESO unpopular on Twitch?” or similar. As is, the title of the thread seems to imply that because ESO is not popular on Twitch, therefore the game is unpopular.

But to the point of this thread, I think @ESO_CenturionPlayer summarized it best:

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

What I am reading from your comments:

1. ESO PvE content, unlike other MMO’s, is mostly story based. Story based play style doesn’t stream well.
2. ESO PvP content is much more interesting to watch, but isn’t enjoyable to play and won’t be given the attention it needs.
3. ESO players are old and old folks don’t like streaming. Kids these days are always on their computers and phones! Who has time for that?!

Stamicka · October 2023

In the early days of Twitch back with SypherPK and King Richard and Fengrush, ESO was doing pretty well on Twitch when you take into account how much younger Twitch was back then.

In general the content creator space around ESO has noticeably died down and shifted. I think this reflects the changing demographic of the game. The people that watch streams and Youtube videos tend to be the PvPers and the endgame PvErs. At this point there's hardly any PvPers or endgame PvErs left. ESO is practically a cozy game at this point and the playerbase now reflects that.

Starlight_Knight · October 2023

No pvp updates and a bizzare few years of random un-intersting updates have turned a lot of people off.

peacenote · October 2023

Danikat wrote: »

I don't think the popularity of streamers who happen to play ESO is an accurate representation of the popularity of the game itself. It's a different format and often targets a different audience. It's like saying live music doesn't seem very popular because cinemas don't show as many concerts as they do movies. There will be some cross-over but mostly it's a different format for a different audience.

Most the people I know who watch streamers do it for the streamer, whatever game they're playing is largely irrelevant, they find the person entertaining and want to listen to them. (A lot of them don't actually watch the stream either, they have it on while doing other things so they're listening to what the streamer is saying but not looking at the gameplay most of the time.)

I know people will scrabble around for any way to estimate ESO's popularity because we don't have accurate numbers and ZOS are never going to give them to us, but I don't think the popularity of a loosely related alternate form of entertainment is a good way of doing it.

I think this is a really important point. I'll add that for some (like myself) it's both - the streamer and the game. Kevduit was my favorite content creator, and while I am not a big Twitch person I did watch all his videos on YouTube. He was hilarious to me. When he largely moved on from ESO, I both lost track of him and stopped watching ESO videos. I didn't jump to a different streamer to fill the void. I was specifically a fan of Kevduit in ESO.

I think another big contributing factor is the lack of support for competitive gameplay, as already mentioned.

This definitely doesn't speak to ESO's popularity (or lack of it) overall, but might speak to ZOS's strategy for recruiting and retaining gamers. They aren't focusing on content that will increase streaming... although typing this out makes me wonder if they thought the Endless Archive might lend itself to that.

Ra'Shtar · October 2023

Every time I go to twitch, all I see is people doing PvP, personally I despise PvP in MMOs and even more so in such a story rich one, how many times haven't they nerfed something cool for PvE for the sake of PvP, anyways as long as the streams are lacking in charismatic streamers that do something that is not PvP I will personally never watch one unless there is a drop.

Rohamad_Ali · October 2023

ESO is unpopular? No. Twitch is unpopular.

Elsonso · October 2023

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

ESO is unpopular? No. Twitch is unpopular.

I think Twitch is fine. Twitch plus the interrupting ads turns me off, though. I'm not a big fan of paying to remove ads, either. Seems like a deal for them, not so much for me.

Priyasekarssk · November 2023

Workplace Politics. I am not sure why gaming company spends so much on voice acting rather than on gameplay development. Pages and pages of menu driven voice acting rather than real interesting crisp cutscenes and dialog. All successful games focus on gameplay. ESO voice acting is gone overboard without any content. [Snip]. ESO voice is definably one of the advantage. Its way overused rather than fixing gameplay and new features. Other games are miles ahead. 50 percent of budget spent on voice acting which almost most the people skip in this [Snip] menu driven dialogs. Make story lines dialog crisp. Instead focus on story telling and gameplay development. There are so many things can be added to gameplay.
ESO is boring and buggy. Highly outdated loading screens everywhere except cyrodil. No able to immerse into the ESO world similar to skyrim. Depth is shallow. Gameplay is very outdated.

[Edited for bashing]

TaSheen · November 2023

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

Workplace Politics. I am not sure why gaming company spends so much on voice acting rather than on gameplay development. Pages and pages of menu driven voice acting rather than real interesting crisp cutscenes and dialog. All successful games focus on gameplay. ESO voice acting is gone overboard without any content. [Snip]. ESO voice is definably one of the advantage. Its way overused rather than fixing gameplay and new features. Other games are miles ahead. 50 percent of budget spent on voice acting which almost most the people skip in this [Snip] menu driven dialogs. Make story lines dialog crisp. Instead focus on story telling and gameplay development. There are so many things can be added to gameplay.
ESO is boring and buggy. Highly outdated loading screens everywhere except cyrodil. No able to immerse into the ESO world similar to skyrim. Depth is shallow. Gameplay is very outdated.

Have to agree mostly. I really.... don't have any use for VA.... But, well - truthfully, I haven't any use for cutscenes either. I have turned off any voice, music, etc. It's not my idea of "fun gameplay". I prefer to read quest commentary in a mental voice which fits the scenario.

[Edited quote]

gronoxvx · November 2023

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp). Before u35 there were way more streamers and a decent size population but now most have moved onto other games for various reasons

ESO_CenturionPlayer · November 2023

gronoxvx wrote: »

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp).

Interesting!

Also something I have seen a lot regarding this post.

What made U35 so game ending for most of the ESO players? Why did most of the player base leave other than those committed to the IP of Tamriel?

How can it be corrected?

Araneae6537 · November 2023

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

gronoxvx wrote: »

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp).

Interesting!

Also something I have seen a lot regard this post.

What made U35 so game ending for most of the ESO players? Why did most of the player base leave other than those committed to the IP of Tamriel?

How can it be corrected?

I was wondering this too, actually. I think there were some major nerfs with U35 but I could be wrong. I took a longer break from the game after AWA was implemented (U33 I think) so I wasn’t active at the time.

gronoxvx · November 2023

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

gronoxvx wrote: »

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp).

Interesting!

Also something I have seen a lot regarding this post.

What made U35 so game ending for most of the ESO players? Why did most of the player base leave other than those committed to the IP of Tamriel?

How can it be corrected?

Tbh, it cant really be corrected. It was the final straw for a lot of people who were disheartened by the lack of communication from zos and drastic changes every patch. As well as disregarding feedback provided on the PTS over the many years.

Its hard to really put it all into 1 comment on the forum, but if you search "u35" you will come across a crazy amount of posts that will inform you better than i ever could.

TaSheen · November 2023

I believe that U35 hit high-output end game players in ways that I personally don't have any experience of. IIRC, many forum posters were.... "gleeful" that endgame players seemed to take a major hit. I am not now or ever was one of those "endgame magnates" so the whole foofaraw passed me by.

U35 was, for me, a redefining experience. I'm a..... "marginal" player: I have issues with high ping (satellite connection only), and aging reflexes. So when that update landed, I had to find a different way forward.

For me, U35 required that I change almost everything regarding my former playstyle. Which I did, after sufficient research. And the upshot for me was that I am since then much more able to play without worrying about living over things that prior to that update had caused me a lot of situational issues.

For me, U35 was nothing like the cataclysm I expected from what others were saying. Which means, one more time, that I'm a minority of one.....

gronoxvx · November 2023

Araneae6537 wrote: »

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

gronoxvx wrote: »

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp).

Interesting!

Also something I have seen a lot regard this post.

What made U35 so game ending for most of the ESO players? Why did most of the player base leave other than those committed to the IP of Tamriel?

How can it be corrected?

I was wondering this too, actually. I think there were some major ne

TaSheen wrote: »

I believe that U35 hit high-output end game players in ways that I personally don't have any experience of. IIRC, many forum posters were.... "gleeful" that endgame players seemed to take a major hit. I am not now or ever was one of those "endgame magnates" so the whole foofaraw passed me by.

U35 was, for me, a redefining experience. I'm a..... "marginal" player: I have issues with high ping (satellite connection only), and aging reflexes. So when that update landed, I had to find a different way forward.

For me, U35 required that I change almost everything regarding my former playstyle. Which I did, after sufficient research. And the upshot for me was that I am since then much more able to play without worrying about living over things that prior to that update had caused me a lot of situational issues.

For me, U35 was nothing like the cataclysm I expected from what others were saying. Which means, one more time, that I'm a minority of one.....

The weird thing about it is it didnt really effect the top tier groups. More the mid and lower tier groups. This is what was mentioned to zos as feedback even from the top tier creators and theorycrafters in these groups such as nefas etc, but they ignored it and decided to proceed with a drastic change 8 years into a game.

Also the promised QA on the direction of the game that they never delivered was a sore point for a majority of people who felt they had no desire to invest in a game that has such drastic changes all the time.

Destai · November 2023

ESO_CenturionPlayer wrote: »

gronoxvx wrote: »

Majority of the big content creators who would stream regularly have quit the game along with a large chunk of the community after u35 and constant bs from zos as a company (both pve and pvp).

Interesting!

Also something I have seen a lot regarding this post.

What made U35 so game ending for most of the ESO players? Why did most of the player base leave other than those committed to the IP of Tamriel?

How can it be corrected?

When it first dropped on PTS, there was nearly unanimous consensus that the initial changes were not going to be well received. The initial stated goal was to increase accessibility to endgame content, which was at that time already seeing increased engagement. The changes felt drastic and, even after several PTS cycles, didn’t appear to be accomplishing their stated goal. It fundamentally changed how a lot of skills worked and many felt it widened the skill gap instead of bridging it.

In addition to that, there were some communication issues between ZOS and the community. There was a tweet from the creative director that didn’t land well with a lot of people. But I feel like the biggest problem in all of it was the Q&A fiasco. ZOS had initially proposed one following the patch’s poor reception. Months went on and we didn’t get one; the thread requesting updates turned into a meme.

Players asked for updates and were told we were “getting something to address the sentiment” by Kevin. When players reached back out, worried we were not getting the Q&A, no response was given. Then months later we were given something different than a Q&A, as speculated. It was a high level statement about designs goals that didn’t address any of the concerns amply voiced by the community.

None of the CMs engaged the forums on the feedback provided at any of these moments. Ultimately that year ended with Gina reaching out to stream team members, asking what went wrong. They provided much of the same feedback that they had and the rest of us had throughout the year. Only this time, it seems like the impact had been truly felt by ZOS.

Can it be corrected?

I’m not sure. I hope they never handle an issue like that again. They’re trying to improve communication, which they've been saying for years. Until they can clearly communicate - and ultimately resolve - the longstanding issues with performance, I don’t think it’s going to turn around for them. Even if they do, it might be too little too late for some. They've cemented their perception for a lot of folks over the last 10 years and that doesn't change easily.

The game is in a better place, and I think the last few patches have been helping. I think they’re being more deliberate with their changes and I see folks like Kevin being more active here. There’s been a few controversies this year but I see them trying to communicate better. It’s just not on the big picture stuff like where combat is heading and performance. There is a recent thread about communication with some generous attention from Kevin. It seems promising, but time will tell what comes from it. I hope they get there, but I think U35 was the final straw for many and it was noticeably felt on the streaming front.