ESO+ Subscribers are now getting less content each year than what they used to get (-1 Dungeon DLC, -1 Zone DLC), but are still paying the same price for their subscriptions.

That doesn't seem right to me...

I'm still subbing - because I believe in supporting a game I truly enjoy. I would have preferred this was a sub only game, but since it's not, well.... I'm subbing (4 accounts annually) anyway. Yes, I love this game and truly enjoy it that much.

Mainly because with the change, they promised we'd have more condensed chapters that would be just as big as a chapter and a DLC zone smashed together, but it doesn't really feel that way.

It just feels we're getting less content now.

While I don't think returning to the old system is desirable, I would like the extra developer time the new system allows also to be applied to other things than bug fixes and quality of life tweaks.

Hugely ambitious (and therefore probably unworkable), but it would be nice to see the original cities get a radical overhaul, perhaps with a chapter associated with the same. Refreshing the base game environment would go a long way to making some major centres feel less dated compared to DLC. Perhaps for one year new buildings / works could be under construction, and the next year they actually appear.

But probably pie in the sky since it would involve re-placing a vast number of quest NPCs, objectives, etc.

ChaoticWings3 wrote: »

I'm in the middle on this. On one hand I like the previous dlc structure with how everything connected together throughout the year with lots of content to explore but the slower pace now feels more relaxed to me. What I mean is that I was kind of getting overwhelmed by how much there was to do in the game and I felt like I couldn't keep up with the content as it was coming out since I take things slow in the zones and dungeons. When western skyrim got released I didn't finish the main quest in Morrowind yet to give you a good idea of how far I was behind on everything. I was also skipping a lot of npc dialogue and not reading any lore books too.

I'm not trying to argue against your feelings, as feelings are always subjective and that's totally fine.

That said, I'm just a little astonished as I always read all dialogues (often I don't even read but listen to the voice actors until they've finished their text, even if it takes much longer - but it's not like I'm in a rush anyway, especially since there's only one story release per year now), I read most lorebooks, I even talk to every random npc in a town, in case they've something funny to say (first thing I do when arriving in a city is actually walking a big round, looking at all buildings, entering the ones that can be entered without trespassing, and talking to all npcs). I also take screenshots often. And then I usually progress through the map by following all roads, also sometimes leaving the road when I see there's some kind of remote building or structure on the map, doing all side quests along the way, and of course doing the main quest, too. If there's a world event currently active, I do it immediately, otherwise I save it for later. Same goes for world bosses.

I did just that also for Gold Road, and when I finished all quest content and had seen everything once, I was at 28,5 hours (yes, I took time to jot down my playtime each day out of curiosity and because of the frequent forum discussions about this issue). The epilogue were a bit more than another 3.5 hours, so in total it were slightly over 32 hours for a very unhurried playstyle, and I still had a few world bosses and world event locations to do; as well as achievements, of course (although I generally don't care much for these - I work on them at times, but I'm not hurrying to finish them, and I know that I will never get all anyway, especially the ones related to trials, PvP and the card game - game content I'm not much interested in).

So, yeah, it were 32 hours, played deliberately slow not to finish the content too fast, because there's (almost) nothing new for another year... With the remaining world bosses and events maybe half an hour more. People who play in a normal pace probably would have finished several hours faster. The official play time ZOS considers for a chapter is 30 hours.

I only play ESO for 2 hours in the evening normally (which is probably below the average), but even with that limited time, 30 hours of content are finished in roughly two weeks.

Of course then there's also repeatable daily quests, Archive, housing, dungeons and trials, daily crafting,... and all kinds of side activities. I just want to say: 30 hours per chapter isn't that much. For me, it's two weeks; for someone who plays 3 hours a day, it's 10 days, if someone has more time, then it's a week of content or less. That's almost nothing for a whole year.

ESO looks huge, but beneath the surface, every zone can easily be finished within 1 to 2 weeks. How many zones is it right now? I might start an experiment with a new character and record the time it took to play through "everything" one day.

Syldras wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i like the new form where we get more free content updates instead of having to shell out more money for more dlc every year

I mean, it's nice that the latest small updates were free, but on the other hand they also gave away several of the story dlcs for free in the past.

Also, personally I am willing to pay them money if they actually deliver good content. Production isn't free, they have to pay their staff, so if I get my money's worth, I'm totally fine with paying for content.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

having the 3rd and 4th quarters being focused on more QoL and bug fixes for long term issues is something that was desperately needed

I'm still of the opinion that bug fixes should be done on the side. A studio should be able to handle normal maintenance work without it negatively affecting regular releases. I'd be lenient when it comes to small studios with only a dozen of employees, but ZOS is a big, successful company that should theoretically have the funds to hire as many people as neccessary to both do fixes in a reasonable time, as well as delivering new releases. People buy chapters, they have ESO+, they buy things from the crown store - there should be enough revenue.

bugfixes still take development time, fixing bugs is not always a trivial task

so they can either spend the time fixing things, or making new things, but trying to do both is basically overtasking

i agree that all content still has costs associated with it, but they make a larger amount of money from subs + crown store than the one off DLCs (most people who sub dont even buy the dlcs because they get access to it through the sub, i actually have bought every dlc in the off chance i need to let my sub lapse for some reason)

the main reason they are giving away a lot of old dlc right now is due to the 10th anniversary yearlong event, i fully expect them to continue those giveaways every month until at least april of next year based on what information we have already been given

Very much so....ESO hasn't been the same since they stopped and as a result I play and spend much less.

Syldras wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

bugfixes still take development time, fixing bugs is not always a trivial task
so they can either spend the time fixing things, or making new things, but trying to do both is basically overtasking

No one says it's trivial. But this is a huge, multi billion dollar company. They could easily afford to hire accordingly. A company of that size should be able to both work on fixes, as well as put out regular releases in a reasonable scope and quality.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the main reason they are giving away a lot of old dlc right now is due to the 10th anniversary yearlong event

I wasn't talking about their current giveaways, but about the Q4 dlcs they give away for free at release date as either a log-in reward or the reward for a game event. Which was the case with Murkmire, Deadlands and Firesong. So it's not like there never had been free content updates before the Archives or the upcoming PvP thing, whatever it is.

Deadlands and Firesong were only given away to chapter owners so not really free.

Murkmire was i am quite sure the only q4 dlc that was given away without conditions before the 10 year anniversary

No! The fact that the past updates were underwhelming does not mean this schedule is bound to fail. We've had pretty interesting stuff the past updates imo.

I must also say I strongly dislike dungeon DLCs. I rarely touch them, despite having ESO Plus. It's so boring and bland.

I want the game to grow the way it is now: more and more focus on QoL and expanding the evergrowing "tree" of intricated systems ESO has.

We still have room for: farming at home; monster taming and battling; bulleting board for assigning companions and alts for missions around Tamriel.

Syldras wrote: »

I have the impression that sometimes ZOS somehow doesn't quite get what people suggested. People have been saying they want "more to do" for years - which lead to ZOS announcing they want to "focus on repeatable content so people have more to do" (and then introduced Archive)... But many people don't want to run through the same thing for all eternity, they want to see new things. Even adding a few new bosses and some new backdrops once a year doesn't change much. That might keep one occupied for 2 or 3 weeks after the change, but then it's boring again.

I think this is a very important point.

A lot of times things sound great in theory but the execution is flawed. OR the idea is great but they don't have the resources to see it through properly.

I LOVE IA. it's a great addition to the game. But it certainly doesn't replace me missing my two additional dungeons a year. Why? Because it's a completely different kind of content, so when I play IA vs. when I play dungeons depends on how much time I have and who I'm playing with -- I'm not going to run IA when three of my friends are around and want to do four person content. I also am not going to jump into IA if I only have an hour or two to play, whereas I can definitely get a few dungeons in during that period of time. If they implemented a save, that could change, though.

Therefore, I'd argue that IA, as-is, isn't providing additional "repeatable" content, especially if it comes at the expense of more dungeons (as much as I like the IA content), so if IA was the whole plan for this strategy, it did not meet the strategic goal, regardless of if a portion of the population enjoys it.

Another example is the idea of the QoL / Bug Fix quarter. I think a lot of us (myself included) were optimistic that significant bugs would be fixed: Stuck in Combat bug, I'm looking at you. Bad raid instances. Lag. Login error problems. Bugs that keep people from completing content. That's the stuff I'd want addressed. But for many folks, most of the fixes addressed weren't significant pain points - it seemed like the team went for quantity over impact, which makes the trade-off for this idea over new content less appealing than it sounded initially. I also thought this would be a temporary situation where we'd swap back to more new content after some of the longstanding issues were finally addressed.

I will also say, though, that I think sometimes what actually happens is that ZOS tries to combine client ideas/requests with strategic development needs, so they can present scenarios as win-win... but they aren't win-win and it would be better to separately market the new things and be realistic when there are constraints. AwA was a HUGE one for this -- it was billed as a highly requested feature but implemented in an odd way and then later revealed it was to save database space. I can tell you that my frustration and indignation at the implementation choices would have been significantly reduced if ZOS had simply said "we need to do this to reduce the size of the database" up front as opposed to trying to sell the changes as something I wanted. Same for IA. IA is great. But it would be better to just say "Hey, we've got this new feature we think people will like" and separately say "hey, it's really expensive to keep providing the amount of story content that we've done in the past, and we're going to need to pull back on that, because it's become unsustainable" instead of combining it into a message that sounds like "hey questers and dungeon goers, we're going to give you some repeatable content that you'll like just as much and will keep the game fresh, thereby giving you more variety than those dungeons and story content you used to look forward to" which is just... flawed. Acknowledging that people like content you are still making (but just less of it) while trying to sell something completely different using the logic that they like the current content doesn't work well.

Anyway, it seems safe to conclude that, of the people who have responded to this poll, many have not seen an increased or even equal value from the model change. Whether they would like to go exactly back to what we had before, or a variation, varies but this is all good feedback for ZOS.

I would love to go back to the days when we got more for our money. Now, instead of a second region with a story and two more dungeons, we get "quality of life" updates that were included before and are now being sold to us and hyped as new "features".