The Great ESO Brain Drain

moderatelyfatman · December 2024

I want to state for the forum Moderators that this is not a quit or farewell letter. Please do not kill this thread.

ESO has lost a lot of content creators in the past three years, beginning with that infamous patch we will not name. Even those who have not moved away from the game completely (e.g. Nefas, Alcast etc) are predominantly focussed on other games now. The situation is even worse for PvPers with big names like Deltia and No1Else moving on.

So the question is: where are newer players getting their builds from or learning new content?
For PvE I guess SkinnyCheeks and HackTheMinotuar are still running for dps builds. And TankClub is still there for tanks.
For PvP I know Malcolm still maintains a good website and releases the occasional video. Luca Cash is another who does PvP build videos.
Also ESOU hasn't gone anywhere, although their latest builds are from mid 2023.

And then there is the direct, peer to peer knowlege gained from other players. I've noticed in the 3 guilds I belong to there are 3-4 tanks who have tanked all the content at vet level (non HM) which technically means that only two players in each guild have to quit and we're back to training runs and progs.
The situation for PvP is much worse. In one of my guilds we used to run PvP raids 4 times per week.... it has been zero for the last year. My other guilds were PvE based but used to at least do one PvP session per week to help players level up their Alliance skill line and get telvar, but no more. Most of our PvP raid leaders have moved onto New World or Throne and Liberty so that knowlege has gone and the capacity to build our guild back to its previous glory has gone with them.

So what do you think we as players can do to keep this knowledge and this community of elders going?

Soarora · December 2024

This is the problem with making high-end players unhappy. Sometimes people come back and then leave again, so I think it is possible for ZOS to bring some people back but they'll really have to figure out a way to turn this ship around.

What can we do? Well, we have to learn ourselves and become the new leaders. There are still people out there at the top and even if the top does disappear it's possible to build back up from the bottom. I try to answer peoples questions here and on discord but unfortunately most of what I say is from what I've heard from other people. Only thing I really truly help with as opposed to continuing word of mouth is dungeon mechanics, but I guess it's something.

React · December 2024

That is what happens when you ignore the feedback of your entire veteran playerbase for years. But according to Matt Firor, they've "Generally made the right decisions at the right times for their game".

I thoroughly enjoyed streaming ESO and creating content for it when the server hardware was replaced and it seemed like the PVP side of the game was finally improving. Then as time passed, zenimax continued to make poorly informed balance changes, they continued adding disgustingly broken sets while ignoring feedback regarding them, and they allowed the performance to slip back into disrepair after the initial improvement post-hardware replacement. The combination of all of these things completely took the joy out of streaming the game and creating content for me, personally. It genuinely feels bad to spend your free time essentially providing free promotion for a game where the developers make it exceedingly clear they do not value your opinions, and even go as far as to make you feel unwelcome when it comes things like the lack of communication surrounding PVP, the fiasco with Rich's stream, or the censorship regarding PVP in zenimax/bethesda streams in general.

It really isn't the community's responsibility to try and bring people like Alcast and Nefas back, that is on Zenimax. They need to do better. They need to listen to the veterans, make the changes people are asking for, and provide genuine proof that they are committed to improving the game. Until that happens, I can only imagine the game will continue bleeding veterans and high end information will become more sparse as a result.

Rkindaleft · December 2024

To be honest, the reason most of the content creators have jumped ship (or just straight up don't make content anymore) is no different to the reason endgame as a whole is losing players - constantly declining performance in PvP and instanced PvE content, bad updates and see-saw balance changes. This is entirely on ZOS if this trend continues, or if those communities can get revived.

Considering what was said in the Goodbye Nefas thread last year there seems to be a number of people here that seem to have a negative opinion on content creators, but every content creator that leaves means that:

1) There is less information accessible to the community in terms of build making and mechanics, ZOS doesn't do any of this, there's no actual proper tutorial on weaving, gear bonuses or what a rotation is, much less dungeon and trial guides, so unless you go look at guides online (from content creators) or happen to meet someone in game through word of mouth who will then tell you to look at guides online, it's legitimately difficult to actually get up off the ground.
2) The game has less advertising.

I would say Hyperioxes, Ry and Charles are the 3 best of the "smaller" channels, but for Ry and Charles a lot of their content is focused at people who are already at the endgame level and for beginners it might be hard to grasp what is presented. Xynode is still active and still has quite a few loyal fans but his mechanic guides are full of incorrect information and his builds aren't viable for what the current "endgame" is, being the last three or four trial HMs and their respective trifectas.

React wrote: »

That is what happens when you ignore the feedback of your entire veteran playerbase for years. But according to Matt Firor, they've "Generally made the right decisions at the right times for their game".

It's so funny to hear this when U35 made the majority of raiders just stop playing.

gariondavey · December 2024

React wrote: »

That is what happens when you ignore the feedback of your entire veteran playerbase for years. But according to Matt Firor, they've "Generally made the right decisions at the right times for their game".

I thoroughly enjoyed streaming ESO and creating content for it when the server hardware was replaced and it seemed like the PVP side of the game was finally improving. Then as time passed, time and time again zenimax made poorly informed balance changes, adding disgustingly broken sets while ignoring feedback regarding them, and allowed the performance to slip back into disrepair after the initial improvement post-hardware replacement. The combination of all of these things completely took the joy out of streaming the game and creating content for me, personally. It genuinely feels bad to spend your free time essentially providing free promotion for a game where the developers make it exceedingly clear they do not value your opinions, and even go as far as to make you feel unwelcome when it comes to the fiasco with Rich's stream, or the censorship regarding PVP in zenimax/bethesda streams in general.

It really isn't the community's responsibility to try and bring people like Alcast and Nefas back, that is on Zenimax. They need to do better. They need to listen to the veterans, make the changes people are asking for, and provide genuine proof that they are committed to improving the game. Until that happens, I can only imagine the game will continue bleeding veterans and high end information will become more sparse as a result.

This

katanagirl1 · December 2024

I don’t understand the negativity towards streamers, either those who don’t value them don’t need a good build and are just doing overland quests, or are theorycrafters themselves I guess. I would love to update my PvP builds but can’t seem to find anything that works for me. I don’t really want to run the RoA or Tarnished that everyone else is running because it’s horrible to be caught in the effects of that, there really is no counter. That’s really what PvP has become though, pick the most broken op sets and combine and voila.

Destai · December 2024

I’m definitely concerned that there’s a brain drain.

Having valuable resources for learning the game is essential to its success. Seeing folks like Nefas, SkinnyCheeks, and Deltia leave or go on hiatus is alarming. Even when I was super casual, I still relief on these guys for even the most rudimentary knowledge of making builds.

I think could and should do more to foster streamers and other content creators. I worry what resources will remain if they don’t.

MincMincMinc · December 2024

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I don’t understand the negativity towards streamers, either those who don’t value them don’t need a good build and are just doing overland quests, or are theorycrafters themselves I guess. I would love to update my PvP builds but can’t seem to find anything that works for me. I don’t really want to run the RoA or Tarnished that everyone else is running because it’s horrible to be caught in the effects of that, there really is no counter. That’s really what PvP has become though, pick the most broken op sets and combine and voila.

Rare to see someone have a take against afk "accessibility" driven combat. The pvp community has always been against sets or skills that play the game for you, but over the years of being ignored the vet population left. For years they justified adding in more proc, dot, aoe, effects that require minimal input to kill other players. Unlike in pve where you only cheat yourself out of fun, in pvp you basically grief all other players by running these sets. Inevitably if two sets can kill a player equally, people will always just slot the foolproof option.

Prime example is tarnished, which is not only a poorly telegraphed skill, but it is an undodgeable aoe which can trigger off other players near you. Or the Acuity warden meta, where for some reason they allowed the class that has access to 30k pen and %crit damage sources to have a large undodgeable aoe skill that ramps all your damage and buffs your damage while proccing strong status effects.

moderatelyfatman · December 2024

MincMincMinc wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I don’t understand the negativity towards streamers, either those who don’t value them don’t need a good build and are just doing overland quests, or are theorycrafters themselves I guess. I would love to update my PvP builds but can’t seem to find anything that works for me. I don’t really want to run the RoA or Tarnished that everyone else is running because it’s horrible to be caught in the effects of that, there really is no counter. That’s really what PvP has become though, pick the most broken op sets and combine and voila.

Rare to see someone have a take against afk "accessibility" driven combat. The pvp community has always been against sets or skills that play the game for you, but over the years of being ignored the vet population left. For years they justified adding in more proc, dot, aoe, effects that require minimal input to kill other players. Unlike in pve where you only cheat yourself out of fun, in pvp you basically grief all other players by running these sets. Inevitably if two sets can kill a player equally, people will always just slot the foolproof option.

Prime example is tarnished, which is not only a poorly telegraphed skill, but it is an undodgeable aoe which can trigger off other players near you. Or the Acuity warden meta, where for some reason they allowed the class that has access to 30k pen and %crit damage sources to have a large undodgeable aoe skill that ramps all your damage and buffs your damage while proccing strong status effects.

The proc set dependency isn't just due to a decline in player skill but a decline in performance: what's the point of having skills if they don't fire when you use them? Proc sets are currently the most reliable way to do damage right now.

Rohamad_Ali · December 2024

We discussed these problems long ago around 2016 and came to the conclusion zos is profit driven first, community second. When they dropped the subscription model and created the loot boxes and store, that was the signal we would end up here. More dedication goes into cosmetics then gameplay because profit always wins. Happens to all modern AAA mmo's eventually.

SeaGtGruff · December 2024

I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, but...

Maybe losing creators of "high-end" builds might not be such a bad thing? Maybe there's too much copying of other players' builds without understanding the whys and whynots? If someone understands the whys and whynots, shouldn't they be able to come up with their own "high-end" builds?

Soarora · December 2024

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, but...

Maybe losing creators of "high-end" builds might not be such a bad thing? Maybe there's too much copying of other players' builds without understanding the whys and whynots? If someone understands the whys and whynots, shouldn't they be able to come up with their own "high-end" builds?

Not everyone wants to theorycraft and not everyone's good at it. Theorycrafting takes a lot of time, knowledge, and math. If you're starting from nothing and going in completely blind then you're going to end up with a whole lot of builds that do 60k or less dps as a damage dealer, or do not effectively buff/debuff as a support.

In order to be most effective you need to understand the build, yes. Personally, I found that making my own builds helped with my effectiveness a lot. But I still use a lot of information from other people to build.

SeaGtGruff · December 2024

Soarora wrote: »

Not everyone wants to theorycraft and not everyone's good at it. Theorycrafting takes a lot of time, knowledge, and math. If you're starting from nothing and going in completely blind then you're going to end up with a whole lot of builds that do 60k or less dps as a damage dealer, or do not effectively buff/debuff as a support.

In order to be most effective you need to understand the build, yes. Personally, I found that making my own builds helped with my effectiveness a lot. But I still use a lot of information from other people to build.

I don't particularly want to theorycraft, at least not the way players use that term. I do enjoy experimenting-- although when a game has so many different types of damage, resistances, gear sets, etc., that researching and understanding everything is more like studying for a law degree than for playing a game, then I start to lose interest due to the sheer tedium of it all. I'm in the game to have fun-- and, yes, to be challenged-- and I'd rather learn a game on my own than just pull up a walkthrough or FAQ guide so I can follow somebody else's directions on how to "beat" a game without engaging with it very much on my own.

As for "builds that do 60k or less dps," it wasn't so long ago that 60k dps was considered to be a very respectable amount of damage. Then some theorycrafters worked out ways to get 100k dps, then even higher than that, and of course players began copying those builds. And when they found out how trivial much of the game becomes when they're pumping out 150k dps or higher, the percentage of players griping and sneering about the game being "too easy" skyrocketed. That's how it seems to me, anyway. And I do think players should play the way that's fun for them. I just don't hear that many high-end massively-OP players gushing about how much fun they're having playing the game; it sounds more like the opposite.

It seems like more players were having fun when they weren't so hung up on crafting or copying builds that can melt powerful bosses in seconds, and then turning around and complaining about hiw bored they are with the game because they can melt everything in seconds. It's really kind of baffling to me.

moderatelyfatman · December 2024

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, but...

Maybe losing creators of "high-end" builds might not be such a bad thing? Maybe there's too much copying of other players' builds without understanding the whys and whynots? If someone understands the whys and whynots, shouldn't they be able to come up with their own "high-end" builds?

The problem I have is that the system is unnecessarily complicated and deceptive. A while ago Hyperioxes released a video on why the tooltips are lying because what you see in the tooltip and what happens in game are two different things.

When people with that level of knowlege struggle to get the full picture, what hope is there for the rest of us?

DenverRalphy · December 2024

Or, as is usually the case with every MMO or any online game ever in existence.. those very players/content creators just move on cuz life takes them in a different direction. Sometimes it's off to the next newest game/name in the industry. Sometimes it's other life events, like marriage, job promotion, children (college graduation is usually a biggie). And quite often, it's simply burnout/boredom.

In my experience, if it's due to lack of developer support, then those players/creators would have disappeared much much sooner.

The good news, is that quite often a new up and comer steps into the ring.

Soarora · December 2024

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Not everyone wants to theorycraft and not everyone's good at it. Theorycrafting takes a lot of time, knowledge, and math. If you're starting from nothing and going in completely blind then you're going to end up with a whole lot of builds that do 60k or less dps as a damage dealer, or do not effectively buff/debuff as a support.

In order to be most effective you need to understand the build, yes. Personally, I found that making my own builds helped with my effectiveness a lot. But I still use a lot of information from other people to build.

I don't particularly want to theorycraft, at least not the way players use that term. I do enjoy experimenting-- although when a game has so many different types of damage, resistances, gear sets, etc., that researching and understanding everything is more like studying for a law degree than for playing a game, then I start to lose interest due to the sheer tedium of it all. I'm in the game to have fun-- and, yes, to be challenged-- and I'd rather learn a game on my own than just pull up a walkthrough or FAQ guide so I can follow somebody else's directions on how to "beat" a game without engaging with it very much on my own.

As for "builds that do 60k or less dps," it wasn't so long ago that 60k dps was considered to be a very respectable amount of damage. Then some theorycrafters worked out ways to get 100k dps, then even higher than that, and of course players began copying those builds. And when they found out how trivial much of the game becomes when they're pumping out 150k dps or higher, the percentage of players griping and sneering about the game being "too easy" skyrocketed. That's how it seems to me, anyway. And I do think players should play the way that's fun for them. I just don't hear that many high-end massively-OP players gushing about how much fun they're having playing the game; it sounds more like the opposite.

It seems like more players were having fun when they weren't so hung up on crafting or copying builds that can melt powerful bosses in seconds, and then turning around and complaining about hiw bored they are with the game because they can melt everything in seconds. It's really kind of baffling to me.

Do remember when people say "this used to be good damage" that it may have been the marker before the trial dummy existed (meaning their dmg was actually higher than it sounds) and also that as content gets added to the game, its balanced around the current amount of damage.

katanagirl1 · December 2024

MincMincMinc wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I don’t understand the negativity towards streamers, either those who don’t value them don’t need a good build and are just doing overland quests, or are theorycrafters themselves I guess. I would love to update my PvP builds but can’t seem to find anything that works for me. I don’t really want to run the RoA or Tarnished that everyone else is running because it’s horrible to be caught in the effects of that, there really is no counter. That’s really what PvP has become though, pick the most broken op sets and combine and voila.

Rare to see someone have a take against afk "accessibility" driven combat. The pvp community has always been against sets or skills that play the game for you, but over the years of being ignored the vet population left. For years they justified adding in more proc, dot, aoe, effects that require minimal input to kill other players. Unlike in pve where you only cheat yourself out of fun, in pvp you basically grief all other players by running these sets. Inevitably if two sets can kill a player equally, people will always just slot the foolproof option.

Prime example is tarnished, which is not only a poorly telegraphed skill, but it is an undodgeable aoe which can trigger off other players near you. Or the Acuity warden meta, where for some reason they allowed the class that has access to 30k pen and %crit damage sources to have a large undodgeable aoe skill that ramps all your damage and buffs your damage while proccing strong status effects.

Well I can’t say I have always been that way. Back when sorc was bad I did go Dark Con because as a no pet PvP build I was getting wrecked, and I’m one who’s too old to 1v1 (not that I have a chance to do that much since I’m usually outnumbered). I mostly rely on negate, but also have siege shield so I can stand on the ram and revealing flare on a resto bar so I can repair doors without getting bombed so it’s not like I can do much damage. Lately Cyrodiil has been mostly tower fights and ball groups running amok inside home keeps so I wonder if just putting on Siegemaster’s Focus and defending might be better and less frustrating. I mean, when you can hit a whole group with a full round of lancer fire and their health not drop at all, what’s the point of even trying to fight.

Sorry for the rambling, I used to love Cyrodiil PvP but it’s been rough the last couple of weeks and I just find myself logging out after getting farmed for 20-30 minutes.

Rkindaleft · December 2024

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, but...

Maybe losing creators of "high-end" builds might not be such a bad thing? Maybe there's too much copying of other players' builds without understanding the whys and whynots? If someone understands the whys and whynots, shouldn't they be able to come up with their own "high-end" builds?

The problem I have is that the system is unnecessarily complicated and deceptive. A while ago Hyperioxes released a video on why the tooltips are lying because what you see in the tooltip and what happens in game are two different things.

When people with that level of knowlege struggle to get the full picture, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I feel like this in itself is a massive problem with the game that doesn’t get talked about enough. I touched on it briefly in my post before but the reason why content creators are so important (and thus why the reduction of informative content being made is so important) is because the game does absolutely nothing to try to explain any of its complex and variable combat mechanics. How is a new player meant to understand about the difference between critical chance and critical damage? Or how weapon and spell damage scales? Or why people put all 64 attributes into the same stat? What do specific buffs and debuffs do and what do their effects mean? Why doesn’t weaving have a proper tutorial and is limited to a level up tip and a load screen? There’s tons more, I could go on and on. ZOS doesn’t go into any significant detail inside or outside of the game, 99% is from content creators.

moderatelyfatman · December 2024

@Rkindaleft
A major problem is that the tooltips for the in game build guides haven't been updated in 10 years.
If they fixed that, the new player experience wouldn't be such a mess.

LalMirchi · December 2024

A simple search for the top twitch streams shows that among games Counterstrike & Call of Duty feature among the most viewed. These are old first person shooters with fast action so I guess that explains their popularity. Marvel Rivals seems to have shot into the top echelon lately.

https://www.google.com/search?q=top+twitch+streams

Disclaimer: I have only ever watched ESO streams for the drops, on a another screen with the sound almost muted.

Seriously watching ESO combat streams is personally extremely tedious even though I like the combat when playing the game. I do occasionally watch ESO PVP vids as that is a playstyle I would like to learn sometime.

I sometimes wonder about the level of participation among the general player population in such channels as even the Zenimax steams with ESO drops only have a few thousand concurrent viewers at most.

Zodiarkslayer · December 2024

Streamers do not stream ESO, because there is no money in it for them anymore. [snip]

Talking about brain drain, I'd like to add, that ESO has a player skill based progression to end game. Those streamers dont help.
It's not like someone says use this build! And when you copy it you can immediately complete all Trial HMs. That notion is a bovine secretion.

[edited for baiting]

Vaqual · December 2024

I am a bit torn on the topic. On one hand it can be really important for new players who are considering to commit to an MMO that a game appears "alive". In that sense content creators provide valuable publicity.

On the other hand, most of the videos and streams that I have seen lately are absolutely worthless (in the literal sense). They provide trivial information that is accessible to anyone who is capable of reading their tooltips, or aim purely at abusing imbalanced and overperforming build elements. How many potential players find themselves watching something like that and consider the game poorly designed? Who looks at meta-builds and thinks this is a nice RPG?

This isn't to say that a charismatic streamer can't have entertainment value, but the fraction of truly informative content is very tiny.

Ph1p · December 2024

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion, but...

Maybe losing creators of "high-end" builds might not be such a bad thing? Maybe there's too much copying of other players' builds without understanding the whys and whynots? If someone understands the whys and whynots, shouldn't they be able to come up with their own "high-end" builds?

I agree 100% that people shouldn't blindly copy the setups and strategies of high-end, world-record scorepushers and expect those to work the same in a casual PUG run.

But any decent content creator puts their suggestions into context. They might propose easy-to-farm overland gear for beginners, while recommending meta sets and dynamic rotations for experienced players. They might propose a basic boss strategy and encourage you to try X or Y, depending on your group. And if you have the time and prefer to study the ins and outs of the game yourself, you can ignore all of this and come up with everything on your own. The point is that this offers choice, and the game is the poorer without it.

Ishtarknows · December 2024

Soarora wrote: »

Do remember when people say "this used to be good damage" that it may have been the marker before the trial dummy existed (meaning their dmg was actually higher than it sounds) and also that as content gets added to the game, its balanced around the current amount of damage.

There was a subsequent change to the trial dummy with U35 which saw it gain another buff (Ele Catalyst iirc) which gives even higher numbers than before. Comparing current trial dummy DPS to that of a few years ago isn't straightforward, and comparing to before the trial dummy was introduced harder still.

manukartofanu · December 2024

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or, as is usually the case with every MMO or any online game ever in existence.. those very players/content creators just move on cuz life takes them in a different direction. Sometimes it's off to the next newest game/name in the industry. Sometimes it's other life events, like marriage, job promotion, children (college graduation is usually a biggie). And quite often, it's simply burnout/boredom.

In my experience, if it's due to lack of developer support, then those players/creators would have disappeared much much sooner.

The good news, is that quite often a new up and comer steps into the ring.

Content creators are people who spend thousands of hours studying a game. Yes, they study the game, not just play it. Viewers often don’t realize how much work actually goes on behind the scenes to create content, which leads to the false impression that switching to another game is something that can be done easily due to life circumstances—like changing jobs. But that’s not how it works. If such a change does happen due to life circumstances, it’s definitely not because of something like getting married or having a child. It would have to be something much more serious, like a catastrophic event resulting in a long and painful recovery or a battle for survival against a life-threatening illness.

And yes, out of boredom, someone might simply stop creating content. But if you see someone explaining why they’re leaving and giving their reasons, that’s a different story. For these people, this is a passion. They invest a huge amount of their time, and often money, into creating content for ESO. At some point, they may just become disillusioned with the state of things.

Creating content for ESO purely for money doesn’t make sense. People who create here do so out of a genuine passion for the game.

Erickson9610 · December 2024

manukartofanu wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or, as is usually the case with every MMO or any online game ever in existence.. those very players/content creators just move on cuz life takes them in a different direction. Sometimes it's off to the next newest game/name in the industry. Sometimes it's other life events, like marriage, job promotion, children (college graduation is usually a biggie). And quite often, it's simply burnout/boredom.

In my experience, if it's due to lack of developer support, then those players/creators would have disappeared much much sooner.

The good news, is that quite often a new up and comer steps into the ring.

Content creators are people who spend thousands of hours studying a game. Yes, they study the game, not just play it. Viewers often don’t realize how much work actually goes on behind the scenes to create content, which leads to the false impression that switching to another game is something that can be done easily due to life circumstances—like changing jobs. But that’s not how it works. If such a change does happen due to life circumstances, it’s definitely not because of something like getting married or having a child. It would have to be something much more serious, like a catastrophic event resulting in a long and painful recovery or a battle for survival against a life-threatening illness.

And yes, out of boredom, someone might simply stop creating content. But if you see someone explaining why they’re leaving and giving their reasons, that’s a different story. For these people, this is a passion. They invest a huge amount of their time, and often money, into creating content for ESO. At some point, they may just become disillusioned with the state of things.

Creating content for ESO purely for money doesn’t make sense. People who create here do so out of a genuine passion for the game.

I don't see what is so dire about "the state of things" that people who have dedicated as much time as they have are leaving. What is so bad that a content creator switches to a new game, and why is it just now becoming a problem?

manukartofanu · December 2024

Erickson9610 wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or, as is usually the case with every MMO or any online game ever in existence.. those very players/content creators just move on cuz life takes them in a different direction. Sometimes it's off to the next newest game/name in the industry. Sometimes it's other life events, like marriage, job promotion, children (college graduation is usually a biggie). And quite often, it's simply burnout/boredom.

In my experience, if it's due to lack of developer support, then those players/creators would have disappeared much much sooner.

The good news, is that quite often a new up and comer steps into the ring.

Content creators are people who spend thousands of hours studying a game. Yes, they study the game, not just play it. Viewers often don’t realize how much work actually goes on behind the scenes to create content, which leads to the false impression that switching to another game is something that can be done easily due to life circumstances—like changing jobs. But that’s not how it works. If such a change does happen due to life circumstances, it’s definitely not because of something like getting married or having a child. It would have to be something much more serious, like a catastrophic event resulting in a long and painful recovery or a battle for survival against a life-threatening illness.

And yes, out of boredom, someone might simply stop creating content. But if you see someone explaining why they’re leaving and giving their reasons, that’s a different story. For these people, this is a passion. They invest a huge amount of their time, and often money, into creating content for ESO. At some point, they may just become disillusioned with the state of things.

Creating content for ESO purely for money doesn’t make sense. People who create here do so out of a genuine passion for the game.

I don't see what is so dire about "the state of things" that people who have dedicated as much time as they have are leaving. What is so bad that a content creator switches to a new game, and why is it just now becoming a problem?

Don’t ask me. Maybe try listening to the creators who are leaving to hear what’s so bad about the state of things. Oh, wait—nobody’s listening to them, and that’s actually one of the reasons. Funny how that works. Why this is even a problem isn’t for me to answer. I wasn’t trying to judge the situation, just pointing out how the original message downplays what can really make a creator walk away from something they’ve poured so much into.

Servadei · December 2024

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

So what do you think we as players can do to keep this knowledge and this community of elders going?

Nothing. It's not a customer's responsibility to keep other customers happy and in the game. There are already people who literally get paid to do that.

Toanis · December 2024

In the end, if you can't stand it anymore, it's better to move on than become the resident grump.

From the dev's perspecive it's easier to support the Entertainers who basically use the game as their backdrop and just need some goodies for their community events. They also are more likely to bring in new players than the Teachers who usually are only noticed by new players after they're told to "git gud".

Catering to those who know the game's in and outs better than the devs themselves and constantly need new challenges (for which they can in turn make guides) is a lofty goal but ultimately a recipe fpr failure, since the average players will move on to games where they don't need to slavishly follow guides to get anything done.

Dragonnord · December 2024

TESO became a kid's game because new and casual players asked for all kind of nerfs.

ZOS listened and nerfed every aspect of the game. Result? Endgamers left.

Can't complain because what TESO is now is the result of what people asked for.

Renato90085 · December 2024

Dragonnord wrote: »

TESO became a kid's game because new and casual players asked for all kind of nerfs.

ZOS listened and nerfed every aspect of the game. Result? Endgamers left.

Can't complain because what TESO is now is the result of what people asked for.

i dont think so newplayer want nerf
The newplayer I've met in the past two years all think that the game is overly simple and boring
most leave within 3 months.....