Discussion Thread: Dev Team’s “Top 5 Bugs & Pain Points” Request

LegendaryLoppers · February 5

I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that making solid builds is extremely complex and overwhelming.

I'd love an option, where I could make a parse template and save that, and if I changed a set, the game would tell me
"You'd do 35% less damage with that gear. Git gudd."

olsborg · February 5

I only have 1 pain point:

PVP meta: For years its been about building tankiness via blocking or % dmg reduction and tons of healing while still being able to deal dmg through proccsets.
Look at the current fotm meta where you slot Relequen, Draugrkin and Jeralls while having 40k max hp.

tomofhyrule · February 5

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

1 thing that surprised me was how few responses there were about combat changes directly

Honestly, that doesn’t surprise me much.

The endgame communities - trial trifectas and hardcore PvP - are significantly smaller (and less popular among the general playerbase) than the people in those communities want to admit. Sure, they see that the population is small, but they also live in echo chambers of others who also play that style, so it definitely makes it seem more popular than it is.

There’s also the fact that a number of players are not married to a single playstyle. Sure, “Grave Lord’s Sacrifice is bad” is a reasonable complaint from Necro players, but when we see the number of Necro mains who also play endgame who also don’t play support or support DPS who also play no other part of the game… that gets much smaller. Single-issue players will naturally not be happy unless their specific subrole is meta or close to it, but there also are not that many people who are married to one specific subrole of a specific class.

What do you see in the thread though? Cosmetics. Housing. People really care about how their character looks and how they can express their creativity. Sure, there are more general fixes and combat things (and ‘stackable treasure maps’ is probably one of the most common things) but a lot of what people want is new ways to customize their characters. Even a lot of the combat stuff mentioned is specific to customization (99% of the complaints about Grim Focus is the permaglow, nothing about the skill itself). And that was me as well: I know that my biggest pain point in the game is that I have to keep my werewolf unmorphed to make his color right - sure werewolf is a meme and he’s in thematic meme sets anyway but I don’t really care about his combat ability because it’s so much fun. I’d just prefer to be able to morph the transformation so he can be underpowered instead of straight-up-bad, but the color of his fur is the most important part to me.

Now that isn’t to say that people can’t be endgame players and be interested in fashion and furnishing, but in my experience those players are also a bit more flexible with the roles they play in endgame as well. They tend not to mind grabbing a character to do a specific task they need, so one underpowered class or archetype isn’t the end of the world for them.

But I am kinda eager to see the U46 patch notes to see if they’re going to address any of these. Sure, some things may be difficult to implement, but there are also a few points that could be easily thrown into that next patch. It would definitely make us feel good to see our voices heard.

Taril · February 5

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

to add to why i was surprised, most of the discussion channels i look at on the forums are combat mechanics and the PTS. I just thought id see more people say things like they had grievances with stuff like gravelords sacrifice etc.

It's quite possible that many people feel that the scope of "Combat is bad" is simply too much for this sort of thing.

Notably, the "Top 5" nature of it means really you'd list 5 individual things. Which might barely scratch the surface of things.

Take for example Necro. As a single class. Many threads have been made about the class, all of which touch on large numbers of issues. Vastly more than 5.

I suppose one could try and just list "Necro is bad" as a single point in the list... But does that accurately portray things? Will it highlight the aspects that are lacking? Or will it just be considered "My Necro isn't viable in endgame content" and then be dismissed because Necro's do see play in Trifectas/Vet Trials?

Personally, I could write an essay around all of my qualms with the combat system (And related systems like Overland and Dungeons). Which would likely hit 100+ different pain points.

But do I really expect there to be major overhauls in combat to be done anytime soon? Not in the slightest. Especially given the years that the massive Overland megathread has been active wherein only now (According to the live letter) is something this large being looked at.

If combat overhauls were seriously being looked at, I'd expect there to be more focused feedback requests related to specifics. Like, each class, skill line and even base combat mechanics (LA's, HA's, LA weaving, items like Oakensoul/Velothi etc)

So instead, focusing responses into smaller issues seems most appropriate. They're most likely to be considered and changed based off of limited feedback (I.e. Listing of the issue in question)

LadyGP · February 5

olsborg wrote: »

I only have 1 pain point:

PVP meta: For years its been about building tankiness via blocking or % dmg reduction and tons of healing while still being able to deal dmg through proccsets.
Look at the current fotm meta where you slot Relequen, Draugrkin and Jeralls while having 40k max hp.

I put something similar down on my list FWIW.

ZOS_Kevin · February 5

katanagirl1 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for starting this conversation, @LadyGP.

Just wanted to put a reminder that if folks share bugs and pain points here, that they also reflect that in the thread where we are collecting the list from players. LadyGP has it in the first post of this thread.

Hey Kevin, I posted in the thread but just wanted to add here that I wonder if this might also be some good material for a survey, like y'all did last year about guilds. Not that you won't get useful feedback here on the forum, but I feel like that's going to be very difficult to parse through. Especially with the answers varying so greatly depending on the areas of the game that people engage with. Just a thought about another potential avenue for gathering this feedback from players but in perhaps a more structured way.

It's really nice to see our feedback being sought after, whatever form that may take.

That is a good idea. The general point with the thread is to get a baseline for the communities most sought after bugs. We are reviewing this now and seeing what can get tackled and when. However, getting more feedback via a survey is not a bad idea and something we can work on for later in the year.

We do have a few surveys in the works on other issues, so we need to finish those and get them out before taking on any other survey projects.

I am curious how survey recipients are selected. Despite having many, many more hours in the game than most players and several stars next to my name here on the forums, I have never got one. I guess I have bad RNG everywhere, lol.

The last survey on Guilds was posted on the forum, discord and shared on social media. We will be posting surveys here on the forum, discord and on Reddit going forward. These are community team led surveys. However, sometimes our other teams send out surveys and they have their own data points they are trying to hit.

I don’t use Discord or social media but I’m on here several times a day. I don’t remember seeing anything. I wouldn’t know when or where to look to be honest.

This is the link to the post we made for the survey. Best places to look in the future would be pinned to the recent discussions, General section and to check the Dev Tracker. We had it available on all three of those points here on the forum when the survey was available for feedback.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kevin created a thread asking players to submit their top five bugs and pain points that we would like addressed but asked to keep comments to a minimum.

This thread is for discussing the dev team’s request itself, what bugs and issues you think are the most important, and any expectations or thoughts on how they might address them.

So, about the request itself, my plan is to ignore it. My expectations are that it won't matter. My expectation is that they will be more attracted to player comments that align favorably with their current decisions and not as much for comments that are not.

I expect that they already have stuff in the works. Planned, booked, and confirmed. While ZOS needs to listen to players, I think that what we say now won't be in the game for over a year, assuming that it aligns well with what ZOS wants. 2026 or even 2027. By then, the player comments and opinions may be very much different than they are today. Many players that respond to this query today may not even be playing the game anymore.

The goal is to get feedback to that we can see what can be prioritized over the next few updates and then plan out from there. Part of Matt's end of year letter notes how the team is working to be more agile and tackle things at a faster rate. So the ask is helping to set up for that. Obviously, ultimately up to you on your level of participation in that. Just wanted to provide extra context for the ask.

@ZOS_Kevin

It would be really interesting (for me at least and likely for some others) to see how all this feedback has been interpreted on your side once you have finished compiling the information.

For example, are you going to be ranking all our suggestions by gameplay area and then similarity / popularity of suggestion. Will there be difficulty of implementation taken into account etc?

I think that's what would help players understand whether their help has been valuable or not.

For example If I saw a pvp bugs/pain points list and the 'stuck in combat' bug was at the top because many players had mentioned it I would understand it, even though it's not top of my individual list. But equally that's been 'known' about for 10 years at this point and is unfixable by conventional means so far so it would be heartening to understand that if it is the feedback about the problem being not being able to mount / teleport to keeps when in combat being the main issue was actually received.

ZOS_Kevin · February 5

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kevin created a thread asking players to submit their top five bugs and pain points that we would like addressed but asked to keep comments to a minimum.

This thread is for discussing the dev team’s request itself, what bugs and issues you think are the most important, and any expectations or thoughts on how they might address them.

So, about the request itself, my plan is to ignore it. My expectations are that it won't matter. My expectation is that they will be more attracted to player comments that align favorably with their current decisions and not as much for comments that are not.

I expect that they already have stuff in the works. Planned, booked, and confirmed. While ZOS needs to listen to players, I think that what we say now won't be in the game for over a year, assuming that it aligns well with what ZOS wants. 2026 or even 2027. By then, the player comments and opinions may be very much different than they are today. Many players that respond to this query today may not even be playing the game anymore.

The goal is to get feedback to that we can see what can be prioritized over the next few updates and then plan out from there. Part of Matt's end of year letter notes how the team is working to be more agile and tackle things at a faster rate. So the ask is helping to set up for that. Obviously, ultimately up to you on your level of participation in that. Just wanted to provide extra context for the ask.

@ZOS_Kevin

It would be really interesting (for me at least and likely for some others) to see how all this feedback has been interpreted on your side once you have finished compiling the information.

For example, are you going to be ranking all our suggestions by gameplay area and then similarity / popularity of suggestion. Will there be difficulty of implementation taken into account etc?

I think that's what would help players understand whether their help has been valuable or not.

For example If I saw a pvp bugs/pain points list and the 'stuck in combat' bug was at the top because many players had mentioned it I would understand it, even though it's not top of my individual list. But equally that's been 'known' about for 10 years at this point and is unfixable by conventional means so far so it would be heartening to understand that if it is the feedback about the problem being not being able to mount / teleport to keeps when in combat being the main issue was actually received.

So we can't answer this with exact detail because we are in the beginning stages of addressing this. Also depending on the issue, it may take a different set of resources to resolve. But the general idea is compile what are the top items (this is why we asked for top 5) and figure out what a solution looks like and what it takes to implement said solution. We can then assess what we can do with the time and resources we have for each update (we work on a lot of stuff, so time is always our worst enemy). As Matt mentioned in his end of year letter, the change in update structure is to allow the team to address things faster and more often. This is the year of transition for that change and we are prepping for that with the bug/pain point list.

That doesn't mean that the least asked items will not get addressed. We will work on a way to prioritize them once we get some of the bigger asks out of the way. For any that can't be addressed at this time, we will figure out a way to message that out. Similar to what we said about items like class change tokens.

But just to reiterate, this is all in an effort to address some of the higher bug issues and pain points in the community as a starting point and then adapt from there.

allochthons · February 5

Jestir wrote: »

Like I might be the only person left from the large amount of people on these forums wanting a "class change token" (:< or alternate, class swapping through armory when? ) left after all these years

/raises hand
I understand why they don't have a class change token, but how logical is it that I can change my character from a lizard to a cat, but I can't change from a paladin to an assassin?

I am keeping a few characters around (as bank toons) on the off-chance they do ever give us a class change. I spent too much $$ on things like Cyrodiil skyshards to delete them, but they're redundant (esp since hybridization).

LadyGP · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kevin created a thread asking players to submit their top five bugs and pain points that we would like addressed but asked to keep comments to a minimum.

This thread is for discussing the dev team’s request itself, what bugs and issues you think are the most important, and any expectations or thoughts on how they might address them.

So, about the request itself, my plan is to ignore it. My expectations are that it won't matter. My expectation is that they will be more attracted to player comments that align favorably with their current decisions and not as much for comments that are not.

I expect that they already have stuff in the works. Planned, booked, and confirmed. While ZOS needs to listen to players, I think that what we say now won't be in the game for over a year, assuming that it aligns well with what ZOS wants. 2026 or even 2027. By then, the player comments and opinions may be very much different than they are today. Many players that respond to this query today may not even be playing the game anymore.

The goal is to get feedback to that we can see what can be prioritized over the next few updates and then plan out from there. Part of Matt's end of year letter notes how the team is working to be more agile and tackle things at a faster rate. So the ask is helping to set up for that. Obviously, ultimately up to you on your level of participation in that. Just wanted to provide extra context for the ask.

@ZOS_Kevin

It would be really interesting (for me at least and likely for some others) to see how all this feedback has been interpreted on your side once you have finished compiling the information.

For example, are you going to be ranking all our suggestions by gameplay area and then similarity / popularity of suggestion. Will there be difficulty of implementation taken into account etc?

I think that's what would help players understand whether their help has been valuable or not.

For example If I saw a pvp bugs/pain points list and the 'stuck in combat' bug was at the top because many players had mentioned it I would understand it, even though it's not top of my individual list. But equally that's been 'known' about for 10 years at this point and is unfixable by conventional means so far so it would be heartening to understand that if it is the feedback about the problem being not being able to mount / teleport to keeps when in combat being the main issue was actually received.

So we can't answer this with exact detail because we are in the beginning stages of addressing this. Also depending on the issue, it may take a different set of resources to resolve. But the general idea is compile what are the top items (this is why we asked for top 5) and figure out what a solution looks like and what it takes to implement said solution. We can then assess what we can do with the time and resources we have for each update (we work on a lot of stuff, so time is always our worst enemy). As Matt mentioned in his end of year letter, the change in update structure is to allow the team to address things faster and more often. This is the year of transition for that change and we are prepping for that with the bug/pain point list.

That doesn't mean that the least asked items will not get addressed. We will work on a way to prioritize them once we get some of the bigger asks out of the way. For any that can't be addressed at this time, we will figure out a way to message that out. Similar to what we said about items like class change tokens.

But just to reiterate, this is all in an effort to address some of the higher bug issues and pain points in the community as a starting point and then adapt from there.

One thing I would caution against is that once the list gets compiled people are going to naturally assume the top 5 are going to be worked in that order and obviously this is not how development works.

343i (Halo Studios now) did a really good job when they went through something similar at communicating WHY say Top Issue #14 was solved before Top Issue #2. They would say something like... well we realized we couldn't solve #2 because #14 was directly responsible for a portion of said issue #2 so we had to solve that first before we can finish #2.

People are going to unfairly freak out when they see the lower hanging fruit get solved first so just knowing that is going to come and be prepared to explain the reason behind it might make it easier on y'all. In no way trying to tell you how to do your job so hopefully this doesn't read in a condesending manner (text sucks lol).

ESO_Nightingale · February 5

Taril wrote: »

ESO_Nightingale wrote: »

to add to why i was surprised, most of the discussion channels i look at on the forums are combat mechanics and the PTS. I just thought id see more people say things like they had grievances with stuff like gravelords sacrifice etc.

It's quite possible that many people feel that the scope of "Combat is bad" is simply too much for this sort of thing.

Notably, the "Top 5" nature of it means really you'd list 5 individual things. Which might barely scratch the surface of things.

Take for example Necro. As a single class. Many threads have been made about the class, all of which touch on large numbers of issues. Vastly more than 5.

I suppose one could try and just list "Necro is bad" as a single point in the list... But does that accurately portray things? Will it highlight the aspects that are lacking? Or will it just be considered "My Necro isn't viable in endgame content" and then be dismissed because Necro's do see play in Trifectas/Vet Trials?

Personally, I could write an essay around all of my qualms with the combat system (And related systems like Overland and Dungeons). Which would likely hit 100+ different pain points.

But do I really expect there to be major overhauls in combat to be done anytime soon? Not in the slightest. Especially given the years that the massive Overland megathread has been active wherein only now (According to the live letter) is something this large being looked at.

If combat overhauls were seriously being looked at, I'd expect there to be more focused feedback requests related to specifics. Like, each class, skill line and even base combat mechanics (LA's, HA's, LA weaving, items like Oakensoul/Velothi etc)

So instead, focusing responses into smaller issues seems most appropriate. They're most likely to be considered and changed based off of limited feedback (I.e. Listing of the issue in question)

i agree that sweeping changes and systems are unlikely to happen so i mostly focused on things that personally effect me and the way i play the game. things like warden's class utility being incredibly hard to access as a damage dealer without dropping damage, and adjusting light armor and the ice staff are infinitely easier for zos to do than making pure stamina and magicka builds a real thing again. Over the years i've come to understand the scope of zos's abilities and the types of things they can do to make an impact.

allochthons · February 5

One of the things I think is lost in the original discussion is the differences between playing on PC (and thus access to add-ons) and console.

Pain points for console are much, much different. For instance, I can't begin to express how much damage the 2-week guild trader change hurt console traders. Engaging with the guild trader system is exponentially more difficult on console without addons than it is on PC with add-ons. It takes literally hours to check prices, if you check prices in more than your own location. I simply can't do that for high priced items more than maybe every few months, certainly not every 2 weeks. I've stopped selling things like Timbercrow for this very reason, and my engagement with the guild trader system is down by 75%.

And then I see people in the Dev Team request thread ask for more guild trader locations and I want to scream.

I didn't even bother listing guild traders under my (more than) 5 things, because it's hopeless. The feeling that ZoS won't bother with things that are fixed by plug-ins is strong.

And when they do (Armorer) their version is sub-standard (can't use in trials, IA etc? PC can change builds running through vet trials, using 1 build for adds, 1 for bosses. I heard a DEV comment how cool it was that players could change builds during vet trial runs during an official Bethesda Stream. WTH?)

I concentrated on things I know affect all platforms. The "consoles are the peasants of ESO" feeling we get from ZoS is very strong.

Having said that. I really appreciate that ZoS's communication seems to be improving drastically. I agree with LadyGP about this.

Thank you, ZOS.

ZOS_Kevin · February 5

LadyGP wrote: »

One thing I would caution against is that once the list gets compiled people are going to naturally assume the top 5 are going to be worked in that order and obviously this is not how development works.

343i (Halo Studios now) did a really good job when they went through something similar at communicating WHY say Top Issue #14 was solved before Top Issue #2. They would say something like... well we realized we couldn't solve #2 because #14 was directly responsible for a portion of said issue #2 so we had to solve that first before we can finish #2.

People are going to unfairly freak out when they see the lower hanging fruit get solved first so just knowing that is going to come and be prepared to explain the reason behind it might make it easier on y'all. In no way trying to tell you how to do your job so hopefully this doesn't read in a condescending manner (text sucks lol).

No you're fine. No worries! We will plan to be clear in Patch Notes for when fixes happen and follow up with some longer explanations on fixes. I'm sure we will need to adjust a bit on the communication front, but we'll do that based on your feedback.

ESO_Nightingale · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

One thing I would caution against is that once the list gets compiled people are going to naturally assume the top 5 are going to be worked in that order and obviously this is not how development works.

343i (Halo Studios now) did a really good job when they went through something similar at communicating WHY say Top Issue #14 was solved before Top Issue #2. They would say something like... well we realized we couldn't solve #2 because #14 was directly responsible for a portion of said issue #2 so we had to solve that first before we can finish #2.

People are going to unfairly freak out when they see the lower hanging fruit get solved first so just knowing that is going to come and be prepared to explain the reason behind it might make it easier on y'all. In no way trying to tell you how to do your job so hopefully this doesn't read in a condescending manner (text sucks lol).

No you're fine. No worries! We will plan to be clear in Patch Notes for when fixes happen and follow up with some longer explanations on fixes. I'm sure we will need to adjust a bit on the communication front, but we'll do that based on your feedback.

This is great to hear. people will REALLY need context moving forward

Destai · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kevin created a thread asking players to submit their top five bugs and pain points that we would like addressed but asked to keep comments to a minimum.

This thread is for discussing the dev team’s request itself, what bugs and issues you think are the most important, and any expectations or thoughts on how they might address them.

So, about the request itself, my plan is to ignore it. My expectations are that it won't matter. My expectation is that they will be more attracted to player comments that align favorably with their current decisions and not as much for comments that are not.

I expect that they already have stuff in the works. Planned, booked, and confirmed. While ZOS needs to listen to players, I think that what we say now won't be in the game for over a year, assuming that it aligns well with what ZOS wants. 2026 or even 2027. By then, the player comments and opinions may be very much different than they are today. Many players that respond to this query today may not even be playing the game anymore.

The goal is to get feedback to that we can see what can be prioritized over the next few updates and then plan out from there. Part of Matt's end of year letter notes how the team is working to be more agile and tackle things at a faster rate. So the ask is helping to set up for that. Obviously, ultimately up to you on your level of participation in that. Just wanted to provide extra context for the ask.

@ZOS_Kevin

It would be really interesting (for me at least and likely for some others) to see how all this feedback has been interpreted on your side once you have finished compiling the information.

For example, are you going to be ranking all our suggestions by gameplay area and then similarity / popularity of suggestion. Will there be difficulty of implementation taken into account etc?

I think that's what would help players understand whether their help has been valuable or not.

For example If I saw a pvp bugs/pain points list and the 'stuck in combat' bug was at the top because many players had mentioned it I would understand it, even though it's not top of my individual list. But equally that's been 'known' about for 10 years at this point and is unfixable by conventional means so far so it would be heartening to understand that if it is the feedback about the problem being not being able to mount / teleport to keeps when in combat being the main issue was actually received.

So we can't answer this with exact detail because we are in the beginning stages of addressing this. Also depending on the issue, it may take a different set of resources to resolve. But the general idea is compile what are the top items (this is why we asked for top 5) and figure out what a solution looks like and what it takes to implement said solution. We can then assess what we can do with the time and resources we have for each update (we work on a lot of stuff, so time is always our worst enemy). As Matt mentioned in his end of year letter, the change in update structure is to allow the team to address things faster and more often. This is the year of transition for that change and we are prepping for that with the bug/pain point list.

That doesn't mean that the least asked items will not get addressed. We will work on a way to prioritize them once we get some of the bigger asks out of the way. For any that can't be addressed at this time, we will figure out a way to message that out. Similar to what we said about items like class change tokens.

But just to reiterate, this is all in an effort to address some of the higher bug issues and pain points in the community as a starting point and then adapt from there.

The ask here is for us to see your recap list. Maybe once the thread's considered done, you guys can close it off with that list and some general comments on next steps or whatever. Having a recap list shared with us is important.

As we move forward with this new direction, it's important for us to be sure we're understanding each other as groups. So, if people have said en masse "stuck in combat" is a pain point - we'd like to see that listed out and your understanding of what the pain point actually means.

IMO, there should be a shift from "we're passing it along" or "we're reviewing it internally" to specific language like "we recognize XYZ as a top issue, here's our interpretation of the aggregate player sentiment on that issue". This will cut down on negativity and misunderstandings when some of these pain points eventually get addressed. Keep up the good work though. Really happy with how things are being handled lately.

Destai · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

One thing I would caution against is that once the list gets compiled people are going to naturally assume the top 5 are going to be worked in that order and obviously this is not how development works.

343i (Halo Studios now) did a really good job when they went through something similar at communicating WHY say Top Issue #14 was solved before Top Issue #2. They would say something like... well we realized we couldn't solve #2 because #14 was directly responsible for a portion of said issue #2 so we had to solve that first before we can finish #2.

People are going to unfairly freak out when they see the lower hanging fruit get solved first so just knowing that is going to come and be prepared to explain the reason behind it might make it easier on y'all. In no way trying to tell you how to do your job so hopefully this doesn't read in a condescending manner (text sucks lol).

No you're fine. No worries! We will plan to be clear in Patch Notes for when fixes happen and follow up with some longer explanations on fixes. I'm sure we will need to adjust a bit on the communication front, but we'll do that based on your feedback.

I missed this post originally, but this sounds great. Context and explanations are fantastic, thanks!

sixlalas · February 5

Features I'd like to see.

Time to fly.. earned per zone, earned with some amount of seniority, etc. The constant repetition of "you can't get there from here" because of diabolically designed rock cliffs/walls gets old after months, years... I'd imagine the innovation this brings, potentially in terms of air combat, would be a major differentiator with WoW. Imagine, if you can, Cyrodiil Air. I do understand, however, that this level of addition would be code intensive.

Time to break up cloth and leather. The issue with Dreugh Wax costs is largely unfair to new players. Also, the amount of experimentation we have to do to find out if Mother's Sorrow is better than Order's Wrath (for example) means a fair amount of wasted resource. I'd like to see cloth be itself, but add a 5th major crafting discipline, leather. Leather would boast features similar to cloth, and quite possibly just occupy the medium weight armor slot by itself... with blacksmithed gear = heavy, and cloth = light. I realize this too is code intensive.. everywhere that cloth goes now, leather would have to go. That's a lot of code.

Fix the "show on the map" feature when finding stuff. The game has gotten so large that it is not viable without this help, and it makes mistakes so often that frequently more time is spent figuring out where to go than the quest would take of it's own accord. The most prevalent such error occurs when a quest includes objectives in multiple zones. High Isle and Amenos is a particular problem - I can't count how many times I've been advised to got to Amenos, only to discover the objective is really in High Isle.

Find a better reason for the constant aggro during overland travel; everything that can move and breathe attacks instantly? One possibiliity is peace treaties.. especially with local satrapies and their bestial assistants. A series of quests, upon entry in new zone, result in treaties and associated pacification of the local small critters.. possibly renewable. Dungeoneering mob density and aggression, on the other hand, seems to be reasonable, since the dungeons are the bad guy's turf. IKR, more code.

Do away with the crafting bag. If the desire to add a special bag or special bag sizing for whatever reason, for a special price, is of value.. fine, just make the owner's existing bag, well, bigger. Include some sorting options, ability to move about in vast inventory with some finesse. Two bag types trips over which has what, constantly. Included in that is the banking, which has further distinctions about what can be deposited, and what cannot be. Way too complicated. Banks have been dealing with this for years; they use things called safe deposit boxes. It is not unusual to open a safe deposit box and find left-over pizza. So.. give the rules a break on what should be eligible for deposit, and what should not be. Bank is a bank, use it.

katanagirl1 · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for starting this conversation, @LadyGP.

Just wanted to put a reminder that if folks share bugs and pain points here, that they also reflect that in the thread where we are collecting the list from players. LadyGP has it in the first post of this thread.

Hey Kevin, I posted in the thread but just wanted to add here that I wonder if this might also be some good material for a survey, like y'all did last year about guilds. Not that you won't get useful feedback here on the forum, but I feel like that's going to be very difficult to parse through. Especially with the answers varying so greatly depending on the areas of the game that people engage with. Just a thought about another potential avenue for gathering this feedback from players but in perhaps a more structured way.

It's really nice to see our feedback being sought after, whatever form that may take.

That is a good idea. The general point with the thread is to get a baseline for the communities most sought after bugs. We are reviewing this now and seeing what can get tackled and when. However, getting more feedback via a survey is not a bad idea and something we can work on for later in the year.

We do have a few surveys in the works on other issues, so we need to finish those and get them out before taking on any other survey projects.

I am curious how survey recipients are selected. Despite having many, many more hours in the game than most players and several stars next to my name here on the forums, I have never got one. I guess I have bad RNG everywhere, lol.

The last survey on Guilds was posted on the forum, discord and shared on social media. We will be posting surveys here on the forum, discord and on Reddit going forward. These are community team led surveys. However, sometimes our other teams send out surveys and they have their own data points they are trying to hit.

I don’t use Discord or social media but I’m on here several times a day. I don’t remember seeing anything. I wouldn’t know when or where to look to be honest.

This is the link to the post we made for the survey. Best places to look in the future would be pinned to the recent discussions, General section and to check the Dev Tracker. We had it available on all three of those points here on the forum when the survey was available for feedback.

I must have missed it in General Discussion if I didn’t make it up from the posts I had not read yet. I go up from the last one I read.

I checked out the Dev Tracker once before but generally don’t go there. I don’t do Recent because I only have certain subforums I follow.

Since it is an important item and one that is time-sensitive, would there be a way to make that thread highlighted in a different way? Maybe a different color? I generally don’t check the pinned threads but will try to do so now.

I don’t know if anyone else reads the forums this way, but it works best for me. Sorry if I sound contrary because I don’t intend to be that way. There are multiple ways to use these forums but since there are a lot of parts to interact with there are different ways to do so based on your preferences. It just so happens that it slipped through before I got a chance to read it.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

Kevin created a thread asking players to submit their top five bugs and pain points that we would like addressed but asked to keep comments to a minimum.

This thread is for discussing the dev team’s request itself, what bugs and issues you think are the most important, and any expectations or thoughts on how they might address them.

So, about the request itself, my plan is to ignore it. My expectations are that it won't matter. My expectation is that they will be more attracted to player comments that align favorably with their current decisions and not as much for comments that are not.

I expect that they already have stuff in the works. Planned, booked, and confirmed. While ZOS needs to listen to players, I think that what we say now won't be in the game for over a year, assuming that it aligns well with what ZOS wants. 2026 or even 2027. By then, the player comments and opinions may be very much different than they are today. Many players that respond to this query today may not even be playing the game anymore.

The goal is to get feedback to that we can see what can be prioritized over the next few updates and then plan out from there. Part of Matt's end of year letter notes how the team is working to be more agile and tackle things at a faster rate. So the ask is helping to set up for that. Obviously, ultimately up to you on your level of participation in that. Just wanted to provide extra context for the ask.

@ZOS_Kevin

It would be really interesting (for me at least and likely for some others) to see how all this feedback has been interpreted on your side once you have finished compiling the information.

For example, are you going to be ranking all our suggestions by gameplay area and then similarity / popularity of suggestion. Will there be difficulty of implementation taken into account etc?

I think that's what would help players understand whether their help has been valuable or not.

For example If I saw a pvp bugs/pain points list and the 'stuck in combat' bug was at the top because many players had mentioned it I would understand it, even though it's not top of my individual list. But equally that's been 'known' about for 10 years at this point and is unfixable by conventional means so far so it would be heartening to understand that if it is the feedback about the problem being not being able to mount / teleport to keeps when in combat being the main issue was actually received.

So we can't answer this with exact detail because we are in the beginning stages of addressing this. Also depending on the issue, it may take a different set of resources to resolve. But the general idea is compile what are the top items (this is why we asked for top 5) and figure out what a solution looks like and what it takes to implement said solution. We can then assess what we can do with the time and resources we have for each update (we work on a lot of stuff, so time is always our worst enemy). As Matt mentioned in his end of year letter, the change in update structure is to allow the team to address things faster and more often. This is the year of transition for that change and we are prepping for that with the bug/pain point list.

That doesn't mean that the least asked items will not get addressed. We will work on a way to prioritize them once we get some of the bigger asks out of the way. For any that can't be addressed at this time, we will figure out a way to message that out. Similar to what we said about items like class change tokens.

But just to reiterate, this is all in an effort to address some of the higher bug issues and pain points in the community as a starting point and then adapt from there.

@ZOS_Kevin

To clarify, im not really looking for what you intend to address / how you intend to address it. More so 'what you understood from user comments'.

So a post along the lines of, "From the pain points and bugs listed we have gathered a number of topics. Here are a few of them which stood out or seemed a common issue, along with some context with how we have interpreted them."

E.g. players are frustrated with being stuck in combat and have communicated that the main issues are not being able to travel around cyrodiil quickly because of it. Vs just 'Stuck in combat bug'.

kiwi_tea · February 5

to add to why i was surprised, most of the discussion channels i look at on the forums are combat mechanics and the PTS. I just thought id see more people say things like they had grievances with stuff like gravelords sacrifice etc.

Because the game provides so little guidance to casual players, they end up *very* dependent on content creators and friends for guidance. A lot (but not all) of those content creators and friends are end game players with *detailed* knowledge of how the game works. And a lot of those players turn up less and less in my circles - almost every friend who taught me has left the game, and now I'm in the position of being the one teaching others even though I know infinitely less than the people who have left. I'm a very average player who still struggles to weave well, and suddenly I'm the local "expert" in some of my guild circles solely because the real experts are gone.

Even though that end-game community is relatively tiny, it really does help to address their concerns to a greater degree than the devs have seemed willing to. In absence of in-game help, experienced players are the experts and the teachers that provide an important service to the game as a whole - imparting knowledge.

Part of the problem for ZOS is players hear content creators' overall vision for the game often and coherently in an accessible format, while ZOS does not very readily share *it's own* vision of what combat ought to look like in the same way content creators do.

We get snippets in patch notes that don't often clarify the overall aim in a coherent way, and often tweaks (especially to sets) look entirely random and aimless to outsiders. Since when did Relequen's need a line of penetration, for example?

When I reflect on why I didn't bring combat up as a pain point I think of two things

(1) I didn't reflect enough on how much I see casual players frustrated by trying to make their own dungeon/trial builds then doing only 2-5% of group damage. I am guarded about sharing logs for this reason, because it can be incredibly demotivating for players to realise how little their earnest efforts have got them. Instead I try to build them up without letting them compare to others, but it can be really, really difficult when they *want* to keep aspects of a build that just doesn't do any damage or healing at all. I mean, gosh, healing... ...is there anything in the game that helps a newer player understand that burst heals are for emergencies, and that healing over time is a higher priority? The number of new healers I've met running full burst heal builds alone is pretty sobering - and it's very stressful and frustrating for them too.

(2) Combat balance feels like natural disasters. It seems to just sort of happen, not like the tides, but like hurricanes or earthquakes. Things that worked stop working, while things that never worked continue to never work year upon year upon year. Who knows if any of the sets people try to use will ever reach some baseline of viability. There are hundreds of them that can trap players by sounding cool, then doing next to nothing in a basic build. The floor is too low in terms of sets. It's too low, and it's flooded.

I didn't bring it up because it's overwhelming. So many people give up and just run something bad that they're comfortable with, but that also locks them out of doing heaps of content. Does that matter if they're happy? But often they *aren't* happy about what they can't do... Many actively avoid huge areas of the game, and get very upset if they try to attempt them because they are so frustratingly out of their reach. But then they learn to be content in what they can do, but become very guarded about being judged, and very jealous of what others can do. It definitely causes weird friction in the playerbase - such as the newbies and casuals players trying to experience a normal dungeon at their own pace, while sweaty players are speed-running it to farm gear/get crystals. Or the frustration of casual players who love ESO's events, but can never break into the top 12 DPS to actually get some loot from world bosses etc.

katanagirl1 · February 5

allochthons wrote: »

One of the things I think is lost in the original discussion is the differences between playing on PC (and thus access to add-ons) and console.

Pain points for console are much, much different. For instance, I can't begin to express how much damage the 2-week guild trader change hurt console traders. Engaging with the guild trader system is exponentially more difficult on console without addons than it is on PC with add-ons. It takes literally hours to check prices, if you check prices in more than your own location. I simply can't do that for high priced items more than maybe every few months, certainly not every 2 weeks. I've stopped selling things like Timbercrow for this very reason, and my engagement with the guild trader system is down by 75%.

And then I see people in the Dev Team request thread ask for more guild trader locations and I want to scream.

I didn't even bother listing guild traders under my (more than) 5 things, because it's hopeless. The feeling that ZoS won't bother with things that are fixed by plug-ins is strong.

And when they do (Armorer) their version is sub-standard (can't use in trials, IA etc? PC can change builds running through vet trials, using 1 build for adds, 1 for bosses. I heard a DEV comment how cool it was that players could change builds during vet trial runs during an official Bethesda Stream. WTH?)

I concentrated on things I know affect all platforms. The "consoles are the peasants of ESO" feeling we get from ZoS is very strong.

Having said that. I really appreciate that ZoS's communication seems to be improving drastically. I agree with LadyGP about this.

Thank you, ZOS.

I want to echo what you said about the trading economy.

In order to sell any items, I have to list extremely low. However, many other items are still listed at very high prices in traders. I don’t know how they manage to continue to pay the listing fees but they do. This makes it difficult to buy when I am earning so little. I earn more gold from doing the daily crafting writs on 8 toons per week than I do selling the master writs I don’t do and list for sale. That’s really all I have to list on a weekly basis. The gold for my guild donation comes out of those daily crafting writs earnings too.

Thanks for highlighting this issue in more detail, I did mention it on my list of Pain Points.

redlink1979 · February 5

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Bank Stacking seems to be under represented under pain points.

The bank ui is in dire need of a Stack All option. Let alone a smarter algorithm knowing when to stack items upon deposit.

I've sent several tickets in-game reporting this issue with the player's bank gamepad/console UI layout...

elinien · February 6

kiwi_tea wrote: »

I didn't reflect enough on how much I see casual players frustrated by trying to make their own dungeon/trial builds then doing only 2-5% of group damage.

It's not just the sets though. You can give someone all the "good" sets and they still won't do the damage they want to do because they likely won't be using them to greatest effect. There are a host of other aspects about doing damage the game never teaches. I'm not just talking about weaving, but understanding how all the buffs work together... knowing to stack dots and aoes... just like how with healing you have to learn burst is only for emergencies and your primary healing is over time.

While giving newer players guidelines about sets and skill loadouts might help a bit, I have my doubts it will help as much as is needed. They still need ways (and people) to teach them all the intricate aspects of doing damage (if they want to learn). I play several times a year with my young nephews and had to teach them how to do damage when the game didn't (when they were willing to listen). And some people pick it up faster than others. It took me years to learn to be even the mediocre damage dealer I am.