On PSNA, Summerset usually has random topic zone chats going on. Likely because it's the most lucrative zone to fish, so you have a lot of players there with too much time on their hands and a lot to say while they're standing around fishing. Though admittedly it often turns toxic when the newly minted gold farmer character begs for sould gems. Then it's spam scroll vitriol condemning the gold farmer.

This is what happens when most of the content in your game is solo activities. No one talks because there's no need to interact with players for the vast majority of the stuff you can do in ESO. And the content that does require talking to others is mostly instanced dungeons, trials, IA or pvp. Not overland.

On the selling items point, since that is the only way people who are not guild members can sell anything (because of the truly weird way the game's trading system was set up), that's not going to go anywhere until ZOS create a more sensible selling mechanism.

I usually see a bit of chatter but your summary sounds fairly typical. I'm not sure zone chat is ever going to be a widely used social tool since you've got a lot of players doing a lot of different things, many of whom aren't here purely or at all for player interaction. You can just close the chat window.

The in-game chat is substantially moderated which - judging by the threads that popped up recently on the subject - drove quite a few players that still used it to third party solutions for their communication needs.

The current prevalence of 'marketing' messages on chat could be more a consequence of the absence of any other messaging rather than a substantial increase on the occurrence of these.

Said that there is also the fact that trading volumes (not just revenue) have been down month-on-month for quite a while and guilds might feel pressured into trying to recruit more aggressively in order to keep up with the bids which have not gone down at the same rate (as we engage on a race to the bottom to see who runs out of gold first).

Furthermore Crown trade seems to have stalled somewhat too, which was a strong contributor to carry runs (as traders/runners used the in-game gold to purchase shop items and sellers used the gold to purchase carries) therefore 'runners' may also feel the need to advertise more.

Ultimately it might just be a compounding issue. Maybe the in-game chat does - as other systems do - work as a measuring device of sorts.

Asking for help at world bosses or asking to group up for that kind of content seems like normal chatter to me. What kind of chatter do you feel is missing? Mostly what I see in zone chat - if it isn't asking for that kind of help or the advertisements - is a bunch of political fighting or toxic trolling, which in comparison the advertisements are more welcome at that point, in my opinion.

I think a lot of normal random chatter like "How is your day going?" or whatnot normally occurs in guild chats, where players are more familiar with each other on a daily/weekly basis than random strangers in zone chat.

I see normal chats in some zones.

Well... "Normal"... There's still quite a lot of furry ERP in Auridon on PCEU...

Though from my experience most of the chatting in game happens in local chat with people standing in groups around the wayshrines chatting with each other. Which is excellent. Since I don't want to have to suffer through Barrens Chat levels of inane garbage when I'm just doing stuff in a zone.

Also places like Auridon, Glenumbra and Stonefalls are rife with Newbie chat. With new players asking questions about the game (Things like builds, how skills work, how events work, asking for help with Endeavours/Golden Pursuits etc) and veterans answeing their questions.

The main thing is there's not really much reason to chat in zone chat. Like, starting a conversation there is just out of the blue yelling into the void and hoping someone answers which is why few people do it (Including yourself presumably).

You throw in the fact that Delves and Public Dungeons are on a different zone chat than the actual overland and it's less likely that someone who'd just doing general stuff in a zone will be able to participate in a zone chat (Someone clearing a zone or doing dailies will be dipping into and out of such things)

To top it off you have guilds to boot. Where people can be members of several guilds, giving them plenty of people to chat with consistently rather than trying to do something in zone chat.

Hence, zone chat being more of an advertisement space. Since there are other, often better, avenues for having social interactions.

It's particularly awesome how people are now posting trial listings in the group finder that are just ads for their carries.

C_Inside wrote: »

This is what happens when most of the content in your game is solo activities. No one talks because there's no need to interact with players for the vast majority of the stuff you can do in ESO. And the content that does require talking to others is mostly instanced dungeons, trials, IA or pvp. Not overland.

I find that doing solo content gives me even more time to chat. Doing group activities requires paying attention, so there isn't any time for friendly chat.