Why should we believe that performance will ever improve?

Lags · December 20

Just why? After being told again and again, since 2019-2020, that zos is going to improve performance, why would we believe it? Performance has never improved. It has always either gotten worse, or just been bad. So before i go on a bit of a rant, let me ask. Why would we believe you now, again, for like the 5th time? How is it possible that a company of this size, with all your connections, does not know what the root of the issue is, and how to fix it? I dont believe that. Not after 10 years, and not after 5 years of actively trying to fix it. And tbh, to many of us, it just looks like you keep trying to work around the issue, which brings me to my next point.

whatever plans you have for cyrodiil, I really hope you will listen to player feedback. Most cyrodiil players do not want a dumbed down version of it. All we want is for it to work as it is right now. And maybe for an end to come to the ridiculous over healing/heal stacking issue that plagues it. Ruining build diversity sounds terrible. hybridization already did enough. You would basically be removing one of the big reasons that most of us play eso. If i wanted to play a game like that i would actually just go play bdo. And i know the suggestion is to potentially add in a campaign to try it, but im not sure how that is going to improve the cyrodiil we have. To me, that says you are looking for another work around for bad performance in cyrodiil, at the cost of what makes it great.

Im happy zos wants to try new things and start thinking outside of the box. Imo it might be too late with how much of this community is either gone or just doesn't really care anymore, but i guess better late than never. So much lost potential, all for the sake of hyper focusing on casual/solo play in an mmo, and money. Its a shame. Id love to be wrong, id love for this to be the big change in zos, but i have to ask myself what happens if this doesn't work like you want. Back to square one for another year? Either way, I just hope you dont disregard what people say about it and end up replacing cyrodiil, as it is now, with this new idea you have for it, even if a ton of people hate it.

I mean if its fun its fun, but i think something like this is just completely the opposite of what most people love about eso. Especially those of us that have spent time in cyrodiil already.

gariondavey · December 20

The company who cried, "trust us we are actually improving it now!"

Katahdin · December 20

I think they tried and its been longer than 2019 iirc.
I just dont think its possible to do, honestly

Avran_Sylt · December 20

Well, they're unionized now. Maybe they've now got leverage to advocate addressing tech debt.

Ruthless · December 20

name checks out

moderatelyfatman · December 20

@Lags
To be fair, I honestly believe ZOS tried to fix performance in 2020-21. Remember that we got new servers in 2021 and Cyrodiil was a dream for a couple months until code degredation beat Moore's Law.

Post patch 35 a lot of long term players left but ZOS was able to compensate by attracting new players (e.g. ESO became available in China) so the composition of the playerbase has changed significantly. For those who've been playing for less than one year, the Studio Director's Letter will be the first time you've heard a promise of performance improvements and most will instinctively take the comments at face value.

As for longer term players, we've been part of the problem. For nearly 5 years we've been reading the promises of better performance, calling it bovine organic waste and then renewing our ESO+ subscriptions and prepurchasing the new chapter. From ZOS's perspective they had a problem which was loud in the forums but didn't affect their bottom line so why should they bother fixing it?

The situation has now changed: previously poor performance reduced our enjoyment in the game but it has now become bad enough that a large minority cannot legitimately play the game on a regular bases. These people cannot buy from the crown store if they can't log in and are unlikely to renew their ESO+ if they can't benefit from it.

I think the last two years have hit ZOS hard enough that 2025 is going to be a make or break year for ESO. Either ZOS will turn things around or the game will enter a death spiral.

So I suspect this time round ZOS is genuinely invested in fixing the game. Whether they have the technical skill to actually pull it off is a whole separate galaxy!

Lags · December 20

Katahdin wrote: »

I think they tried and its been longer than 2019 iirc.
I just dont think its possible to do, honestly

no thats just not realistic. Isnt this a billion dollar company? Now under the umbrella of Microsoft? Elder scrolls is similar to warcraft or final fantasy. This game has so much potential, and this company has so much behind it. I refuse to believe that a company like this has no idea what the problem is, and how to fix it. Of course they know, they probably think its just not worth shelling out the money to fix it. Thats my guess. and thats also why i think they keep trying to do these random work arounds.

If this was world of warcraft and blizzard, dealing with such a long term massive issue, it wouldn't be handled like this. Because way to many people care and are playing, there would be too much of an outcry. Unfortunately so few people care or have faith in zos anymore, and they dont realize how much potential they have wasted a long the way with all the players they are chasing away for one reason or another.

Lags · December 20

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

@Lags
To be fair, I honestly believe ZOS tried to fix performance in 2020-21. Remember that we got new servers in 2021 and Cyrodiil was a dream for a couple months until code degredation beat Moore's Law.

Post patch 35 a lot of long term players left but ZOS was able to compensate by attracting new players (e.g. ESO became available in China) so the composition of the playerbase has changed significantly. For those who've been playing for less than one year, the Studio Director's Letter will be the first time you've heard a promise of performance improvements and most will instinctively take the comments at face value.

As for longer term players, we've been part of the problem. For nearly 5 years we've been reading the promises of better performance, calling it bovine organic waste and then renewing our ESO+ subscriptions and prepurchasing the new chapter. From ZOS's perspective they had a problem which was loud in the forums but didn't affect their bottom line so why should they bother fixing it?

The situation has now changed: previously poor performance reduced our enjoyment in the game but it has now become bad enough that a large minority cannot legitimately play the game on a regular bases. These people cannot buy from the crown store if they can't log in and are unlikely to renew their ESO+ if they can't benefit from it.

I think the last two years have hit ZOS hard enough that 2025 is going to be a make or break year for ESO. Either ZOS will turn things around or the game will enter a death spiral.

So I suspect this time round ZOS is genuinely invested in fixing the game. Whether they have the technical skill to actually pull it off is a whole separate galaxy!

Well im glad you're optimistic but im just not there with you. Ill always hope for the best, but at this point i have seen nothing that shows me something will change. We shall see. As for the new servers, i dont remember that at all. I dont remember them getting new servers ever. I remember the restructure, and them upgrading some things, and ya i think in like 2022 after they did something things were good for like a month. Maybe less. But thats nothing new. A lot of the time when they bring the servers down or do some kind of maintenance things are good for a week or two. But it always goes back, and its always gotten progressively worse.

And ya, some people are part of the problem, but there are deff a ton of people that have been voicing their concerns over the last couple of years more and more. And zos has to know how many people have been leaving. Even when you look at the steam charts, which offer a little insight at least, the game has been in a decline since 2020. To the point where now its not all that far off from what it was in 2016.

And more than that, they should wonder why so many content creators abandon ship when it comes to eso. Most of them dont leave happy, they dont leave and say oh i did everything i could and felt fulfilled and moved on. they say oh, zos made terrible changes and didnt fix massive issues, so im gone. Its not something that is a huge deal to average players, but it should be concerning for zos to see.

I have always believed that the biggest problem with zos is they cant admit they are wrong. They cant admit things are going poorly and accept that they chose a wrong direction, and turn it around. even with the criticism from that recent pvp live stream. they turned it into people were bullying brian, completely overlooked what people were saying by telling us we shouldnt expect the devs to be pvp gods when no one said that, and also that this makes them not want to do something like that again, and on and on. they always handle this stuff so poorly, and can never look inward.

anyway, im hoping maybe someone from zos will answer my questions. Even though im sure they wont. But i always hope i am proven wrong and they turn things around. No matter what game im playing i would always rather be playing eso. Just not the eso of today.

moderatelyfatman · December 20

@Lags
Yeah, I'm pretty much with you 100% with this.
I think what's different is ZOS legitimately want to fix the game because of Microsoft, which spent somewhere around $7B in 2021 to aquire ZOS and all its IP include Bethesda.

They way I see it, Microsoft gave ZOS two years to get their act together before cutting off the money tree. Hence the 'make or break' situation. I suspect a major restructuring of the company will happen if things don't get better.

M0ntie · December 20

Well they are off to a terrible start. The lag is the worst it has been for a loooong while. My performance is usually good. But since the NLF started, it is just horrible. It is giving me a headache becuase of the lag in ping.

Zodiarkslayer · December 20

@Lags
I see it this way: They know the problem, but they shy away from solving it, because that would mean destroying Cyrodiil as we all know it. Just as you describe it, actually. There is no intention to decept, as you interpret it. There are just more considerations than you are aware of.

I think, the problem is simply how the game code tracks ability effects. And if I am right, the only solution is to change how every ability in the game works. You basically have to rewrite the entire game code.
And in terms of development costs we are talking something around the budget of the original game, if you want a solution within in an acceptable timeframe. If not more.

That is a pitch I wouldn't want to have to make to the shareholders. 😅

DeadlySerious · December 20

"They're working on it!"

JiubLeRepenti · December 20

I don't think it's possible, thanks to their potato engine.

I'll never understand why they decided to use an ersatz version of a 2005+ engine that can't even animate a simple cloak.

React · December 20

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

@Lags
I see it this way: They know the problem, but they shy away from solving it, because that would mean destroying Cyrodiil as we all know it. Just as you describe it, actually. There is no intention to decept, as you interpret it. There are just more considerations than you are aware of.

I think, the problem is simply how the game code tracks ability effects. And if I am right, the only solution is to change how every ability in the game works. You basically have to rewrite the entire game code.
And in terms of development costs we are talking something around the budget of the original game, if you want a solution within in an acceptable timeframe. If not more.

That is a pitch I wouldn't want to have to make to the shareholders. 😅

They supposedly spent an entire 2-ish years doing just that - a full rewrite of the code. This was a project that was supposed to accomplish exactly what you're suggesting here, rewriting the base code to allow the game to perform well and for changes to be made more easily without breaking other things. The entire time they were working on this, they specified they'd have no time whatsoever to do any pvp content, as those resources would be spent resolving the issues with the code.

After about 21 months, if I'm remembering the time frame correctly, they announced they'd made no significant progress and had to roll back what they'd accomplished so far. There was no further mention of the project after that.

Destai · December 20

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom not sure if you have seen this conversation, but this is a good example of something to walk through in an AMA. I would consider this to be a hot, and persistent, topic. Providing a detailed summary of the many performance improvements and challenges mentioned here would go along way.

SilverBride · December 20

I'm one of those players that never had performance issues, but lately I've had a few random disconnections and freezes. Something is different.

ZOS_Icy · December 20

Greetings,

With there already being a thread opened on this subject here, we're going to go ahead and close this one down.

Thank you for understanding.