Alendrin wrote: »

Top Bugs/Issues
Stuck in combat pvp bug. Widely discussed.
Stuck in combat pvp bug. Widely discussed.
Stuck in combat pvp bug. Widely discussed.
Stuck in combat pvp bug. Widely discussed.
Stuck in combat pvp bug. Widely discussed.

Top Pain Points
PVP skill/equipment balance has been ignored for far too long.
Stacked HOTs in PVP. Do we really need people running with 15+ HOT on them?
Rush of agony set in pvp; it needs to go
Werewolf and especially vampire skills need a buff
Necromancer class needs a lot of love, especially in pvp. Recent changes are poorly thought out quick fixes, blastbones change was terrible, removing most used skill, and failed to address the underlying issue.

I agree with everything besides vampire which is balanced in terms of passives but over tuned in terms of blood for blood. Vamp ult is still good for tide turning in pvp fights.

WhiteScythe wrote: »

7. A proper GLOBAL chat not voice chat, text based chat.
8. Do we really need to be in multiple guilds? Let's make it feel more like a commitment to 1 rather than 5.

To say nothing of the fact that a global chat would dramatically increase message travel across a pretty small window, can you imagine how many people you'd have to block because you can't speak their language? Absolutely not. Not to say that other languages are bad, but if you can't understand what anyone is saying then it's pretty hard to use the feature.

And one guild? Really? Why would you ask for this? Why would anyone ask to have less access to something when it's perfectly optional to remain part of a single guild if that's what they want to do? Other MMOs have done this for a long time, and what it sounds like to me is that you just want other people to stay dedicated to a single guild, which isn't how a lot of people work and it's also not how a lot of guilds work.

UI Customization Limitations:

Description

Something that has always bothered me in ESO is the reliance on addons to improve the UI. While the UI has improved over the years, often taking inspiration from some addons, it remains clumsy.
Not only does it feel clumsy, but it also lacks flexibility in terms of customization, which can be both frustrating and limiting.

Many games allow players to reorganize almost every aspect of the UI to suit their preferences. This level of customization empowers players to tailor the interface to their needs. ESO, however, lacks essential features like a minimap, which requires an addon.

The problem with addons is that you depend on external developers to make them functional. Additionally, they often become outdated, forcing players to reinstall them frequently—a process I personally dislike. While I understand some people enjoy addons, I wish the game I purchased felt more complete without them.


Defense Nerfs and Ping Disparity:

Description

The combat system also frustrates me, particularly when playing with high ping. Previously, I relied on stacking defense to create opportunities for counterattacks. However, after the defense nerf and penetration boost, opponents can easily bypass my defensive stats. (Here I'm limiting to the PVP aspects, not even mentioning how hard it might be to follow some mechanics with high ping).

If players can penetrate defenses and attack faster, it severely limits counterplay, especially for those who enjoy dueling. In such cases, players with lower ping will always have the upper hand. I’m not referring to specific tactics, such as Dawnbreaker + Balorgh, but rather the broader challenges that have arisen from these changes.

Currently, even with 40k Physical/Magic Resistance and 30k health, it’s easy for opponents to defeat me. One strategy I used as a Sorcerer was the Protective Rune, which allowed me to temporarily stun enemies without draining resources. I also relied on Slippery, which was very effective, but unfortunately, we can't use Champion Points in battlegrounds.


Group Play Challenges:

Description

Group play in ESO often feels disheartening due to the presence of toxic and elitist behavior among some players.
This negativity not only diminishes the enjoyment of cooperative gameplay but also creates barriers to earning rewards that require high-level achievements. These rewards often demand a near "professional-level" dedication to the game, leaving more casual or less-experienced players feeling excluded.

The toxic environment can make it intimidating to participate in group content, which should ideally be a welcoming and enjoyable aspect of the game. It would be wonderful if mechanisms or incentives were in place to promote a more positive and inclusive community experience.

To address this, ESO could implement a commendation feature. In this system, players can reward others for fair, supportive, and sportsmanlike behavior. This encourages a positive community atmosphere and gives players an additional incentive to foster respectful and enjoyable interactions during group play. Such a system could transform the experience, making group activities more inclusive and rewarding for all players.


Support Player Shortages:

Description

A major issue in ESO is the lack of tanks and healers in group play, which often results in significant wait times—sometimes up to half an hour—for DPS players trying to join a party. While players can always join a guild or run content with friends, many rely on the "Looking for Group" tool for quicker matchmaking.

The intention of the "Looking for Group" tool is to expedite the process of forming parties for dungeons and matches, but it often achieves the opposite due to the shortage of support players. To address this, ESO could introduce incentives for tanks and healers, making these roles feel more rewarding and valuable within a party.

Such incentives could include special rewards or exclusive benefits, encouraging players to embrace support roles and significantly improving group play experiences for everyone.


Faction-Based PvP Exploitation:

Description

The PvP in ESO revolves around faction-based fights, where players select their Alliance and engage in battles against the other two factions. However, the ability to switch factions has led to significant issues, as players often team up with friends from opposing factions to gain strategic advantages. This undermines the competitive spirit of faction-based combat.

Additionally, the large map does little to support solo fights, as players frequently camp and lure opponents into specific areas. The design of the map, combined with key keeps and resource locations, funnels fights into a few hotspots, leaving other parts of the map largely vacant. This not only limits gameplay variety but also facilitates exploits where players repeatedly capture and recapture keeps to farm Alliance Points.

Such exploits have a detrimental effect on PvP integrity. Many players abuse these mechanics to boost Alliance Points and secure top spots on the leaderboard. In some cases, groups of players collaborate across factions to rotate Emperorship among friends, further exacerbating the problem.

I really just want cross play and most importantly cross saves/progression.

It would massively reduce queue times, increase how alive the overland and cities feel, make trading more active, let friends play together across platforms, let people who last gen owned a xbox/ps but now own a current gen ps/xbox (the opposite) keep their characters, etc etc.

There's so many reasons why cross play and progression has become so popular. I am honestly surprised ESO never got it so far, as the only PC + console MMO (afaik) it seemed obvious.

Months later this is still a thing?

Bugs.

1. I never got random disconnects from server errors before. Now I am getting them all the time. Disabled all add-ons, play on different computer, still constantly randomly disconnected. This is especially prevalent in Cyrodiil.
2. Stuck in Combat. Maybe this is getting fixed (Vengeance)?
3. Sometimes castles in Cyrodiil will take forever to unburst despite a battle being long over. Sometimes it happens much quicker. The inconsistency is very annoying.

Pain Points.

1. I don;t know why ZOS can't admit when an idea is bad. I don;t expect perfection. I do kind of expect when at least 85% of long established Templar mains say they hate the new Jabs animation, to at least have a discussion about why we don;t like it and if the new Jabs animation does make Templar either less fun or less competitive to play (it does both).
2. The Rush of Agony set not only violates the game's core crowd-control rules, it also directly violates ZOS's stated combat core principles of 1) not have one set dominate 2) combining high damage with CC 3) not allowing counterplay options.
3. The new classes (Arcanist, Necromancer) are both bottom tier PvP specs because they are clunky/awkward to play, and have a gimmick offensive that do not work against competitive thinking opponents. Yet I've seen nothing but nerfs to Arcanists and an insistence that Necros use a skill none of them like (see pain point #1) even though Sorcerers are crazy OP in PvP.
4. The design of Cyrodiil's Castles make it *more* difficult to defend the inner keep, thus defeating the entire purpose of a castle. Attacker can ring the entire outer wall with siege and concentrate a ridiculous amount of coldfire, meatbags, lancers, etc., and completely wipe out the defenders who are forced to concentrate on a tiny area on the top floor.
5. If we are going to be literally locked out of our characters in PvP for the theoretical sake of the integrity of the AvAvA format, the least ZOS can do is to offer more or a reward for participating in a 30 day campaign that isn't based on the 2014 ESO economy.

AtriaKhorist wrote: »

show previous quotes

I don;t know why ZOS can't admit when an idea is bad. I don;t expect perfection. I do kind of expect when at least 85% of long established Templar mains say they hate the new Jabs animation, to at least have a discussion about why we don;t like it and if the new Jabs animation does make Templar either less fun or less competitive to play (it does both).

For emphasis and one I should have put into my own feedback.

Jabs. Flurry. Sacrificial Bones. Grim Focus. Stop dying on pointless hills, ZOS.

Should've also mentioned those proverbial hills in my piece on a first page when touching grim focus in particular. It breeds nothing but estrangement from our characters and it only seems to increase with more changes that are done so badly.

Pain point: getting killed when riding down the stairs.

Golden Pursuits - if I unpin them on a character, I'd like that to be respected in future Golden Pursuits.

Bosmer racials - you decided that Bosmer only get 2 racials because I will not PVP while every other race gets 3. If you want to force PVP, introduce a new race, don't mess with people's main. Or, make it consistent for all races - one applicable to PVE, one for PVP and one that helps both.

Similar for warden's - nothing recent has made me care. IA class sets - useless, warden scribing class skills - more useless.

Offer 3 versions of costumes or make it possible for female characters to wear the male version. I hate that the male characters get covered up costumes while the female costume has less coverage. Do you have any idea how horrific it is to have a bug fall into cleavage? It's traumatizing.

Sharing knowledge of recipes account-wide. Nearly all recipes have little value and there's so many of them.

Pain Point 1: Lack of overland difficulty. Separate overland phasing or a configurable debuff like The Lord of the Rings Online has (Landscape Difficulty system) would be great.
Pain Point 2: Monetization, I prefer to buy content outright but the crafting bag really makes that difficult. Charge me $100 for the unlock I don't care. I just refuse to pay a subscription on top of having a cash shop. If TESO had a subscription-only server with all the cash shop stuff in the loot pool, I'd gladly pay and never touch the buy2play version of the game ever again.
Pain Point 3: I'd like older game systems to be revisited but it's hard to do that when you're putting out a chapter every year. Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood should've been expanded on instead of being left to rot. Older zones too. Why are people still hammering away in Vivec City at the same spot they were seven years ago?
Pain Point 4: Combat should be more engaging and impactful.
Pain Point 5: Vanilla UI should be updated and given an identity away from Skyrim's design language. It'd be nice if TESO did its own thing.

Stealing another one from a post in this thread. I agree wholeheartedly. This is the sort of thing that makes a lapsed player never come back.

Pain Point 1- Storage Issues for non ESO+ (or no longer ESO+). If you used to be an + sub and are no longer it's very difficult to use your bank/inventory. The second you take something out of your bank you're never going to get it to another toon if you need too. It's basically impossible to move gear around between toons without deleteing/selling a ton of matts because your inventory/bank is so full.. and if you're into housing then you're really screwed. I say this as someone who even has a guild bank I'm using as backup storage. It's tough.

Dungeon quests that bug out if someone else in the group does something (Volenfell, if someone else does the lever activation in the Guardian's Skull, you can't get credit for it and thus the quest bugs - Crypt of Hearts 1, if people run off and skip the side Lich boss, you get pulled to next boss fight even if you try to do it and thus can't get the Phylactery) or that you can't pick up if other players run ahead (Selene's, etc) because NPC's talk and you have to wait for them to finish before you can pick it up. Or ones like Direfrost where if people run ahead and skip the trio boss that activates with the brazier, you again get pulled ahead and can't complete the quest. It's SUPER frustrating not to be able to complete quests because of these issues.

A pain point: console players don’t have an auto-run toggle. This would be a very nice QoL feature.

Top Bugs/Issues
- Not much to report here that hasn't already been said. There aren't that many bugs that impact gameplay for me personally.

Top Pain Points

My top pain points are all about Quality of Life changes related to irritating Sound Effects or Visual Effects. 95% of the time that we spend in game involves pressing the 'Attack' button, hearing sound effects, and looking at in game visuals. The other 5% is spent switching characters in menus and navigating inventory. I will use the word 'Irritating' here as it basically is what friction means in the context of video games.

- More Options to Control Audio Effects: Request option in audio menu to mute the player character's combat voice. It is very irritating hearing repetitive grunts and yells during combat from the player character (not other players). (Examples: Disable player character grunts when attacking. Disable clunk sounds when Undaunted Skill prompts trigger without having to mute interface sound effects entirely. Disable Specific Skill or Skill Tree Sound Effects, like Rapid Strikes sound effect, visual is great sound effect is irritating). This would be my #1 request and would meaningfully improve gameplay. Its bad enough at times that I tend to play the game with all sound effects muted or very low which isn't ideal.

- More Options to Control Visual Effects: Request option in Video or Interface menu to disable other player AOE visual effects or drastically mute their color/contrast. (Example: Arcanists provide buffs with spinning green circles around the body of every member of the party, I should be able to disable that and simply see a status in bottom right corner a buff was applied. Disable other player Pets, or Summoned Pets, or Companions.) This would be my #2 request and would meaningfully improve gameplay. This will be very important after sub-classing is introduced as the overly bright distracting Arcanist visuals and Sorcer Flying Pets will be significantly more common.

- Character Swapping : Logging out and back in with multiple characters is not as smooth as it could be. The process is irritating. Prefer to have an in game 'character' change option that only works in specific locations like towns or cities or houses.

-Longer Recently Picked Up Items Indicators or Button to Clear the Indicator : The indicator that an item was recently picked up is to quick to clear in the inventory menu. It would be helpful to switch the clearing of that indicator to a specific button in the inventory rather than having it linked to the first time you open the inventory, close, and re-open. This is very irritating and a pretty big one.

- Remove Collectable Bugs from Dungeons and Overland : Frequently an actual in game fly or bug will hover over something that I am attempting to collect like loot from a defeated enemy. The prompt to collect ingredients from in world bugs is frustrating to run into in the game world. If there is a way to have "Loot Collection" prompts take priority over in game bug collection prompts that would be great.

- NPC Hit or Impact Animations : I think the current free form mobility and quick reaction player character animations for combat in ESO is a big part of the fun. Combat is genuinely engaging because of how quick/mobile and rythme based it is. Any changes to player character combat animations that are planned should be careful to avoid long or slowly performed triggered player animations that lock the player in place. The 'snappyness' of existing combat is key, I think player combat animations are actually pretty good. More important to me would be introducing better NPC hit impact animations for when they are hit. To me that is what is missing.

Anyway thank you devs for making a genuinely fun game! ESO is incredible.

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Pain Point 3: I'd like older game systems to be revisited but it's hard to do that when you're putting out a chapter every year. Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood should've been expanded on instead of being left to rot. Older zones too. Why are people still hammering away in Vivec City at the same spot they were seven years ago?

Kinda similar here, but I'd think they'd have to add secondary servers for people who expand beyond the timeset.
Plus, a progression thing, so people can see all quest they may still need to complete or may lose out on if they progress the time to the next stage of the map.
New characters see the hammering map, finish the questline and they can progress to the finished buildings with a new questline.
Speaking of Vvardenfell, as a Khajiit main, I am heartbroken I can't help those Khajiit escape the Telvanni. I don't care if I'd have to slay them all, free the Khajiit! And darn that Argonian who sold us out. I don't care if I was working for her at the time, I'd rather free the Khajiit.
And we never see them again. Makes me think they took them off somewhere and executed them, which is even more heartbreaking.
Bring them back afterward, let us save them!
Buy em as a houseguest (quest reward), I don't care. I'd like to free them!
Or at least let us see their bodies for closure, if they were executed.

That can be added to my list of pain points too.

Bugs:

1. Any knockback skill in Cyrodil/BG's can cause you to phase through some objects getting stuck . (I got Dragon leaped into the Bleakers Gateway pillar)

2. Some abilities wont cast on command, sometimes causing me to spam the button a few times.

3. Some objects you can jump on and do a free fall animation, takes a few minutes to touch the ground again.

4. When leaving or entering a populated zone, get a random loading screen, sometimes leads into game crashing.

5. Another bug I just thought of the quest "Goblins affection". If you put the gem on (the costume) and you duel next to the quest giver. When you die, It shatters the gem that converts you into a goblin. Then you cannot retrieve the quest/quest item again. (I lost the gem/outfit this way and never can get it back on my main character).

6. Last but not least, the login/logout bug that happens when you crash but your account says your still logged in.


Pain points.

1. Swallow Soul has to long of a delay, and the heal from it never crits. The skill itself still lacks behind other spammables you can get from other weapon skill lines or guild skill lines.

2. I think Vigor is overtuned for PvP, and everyone uses it in every build.

3. Nightblade fear, the Trap version of the skill placed 2 traps, one on selected area, and one under your feet. This is already hard to play around, now it just places wherever you select. I hate this. Maybe just changing this version of the skill completely to something more useful.

4. Methods of making gold are tedious, and time consuming, Never can enjoy the game cause optimization cost so much.

5. Might get hate for this, But my biggest pet peeve of ESO , is not having a central auction house. Having to track down traders via a web browser to find things I need is actually ridiculous.

6. Almost forgot. Something about the ball groups need to be studied and adjusted. Whether that be adjusting cross heals (or stackable heals) or some kind of negative effect per player in group *similar to rallying cry or pale order*. Ball groups in Cyrodil definitely kill the experience.

There’s only a couple of “bugs” that I can say really affect gameplay for me on a significant and consistent basis:

Bugs:
1) Chat interface … it’s bad. Often unable to join channels and will randomly disconnect from channels. Yes, I know we have Twitch and console parties, but, it’s supposed to be a social MMO. This means random, team based content becomes difficult to coordinate.

2) PvP buff / debuff applications … there are FAR too many instances where a buff / debuff from another player will affect you, the timer will reach 0, however the affect will persist on you, even though death. The only way for this to resolve is for the match to end or to leave the instance (I.e. go into the sewers or a fort).

Pain Points:

This is the bigger area for me. As a gamer for a lot of years many of us have seen all variations of MMO and while there’s a lot to love with ESO, many aspects feel VERY clumsy and lazily put together; as if content drops were more important than gameplay environment & experiences. Just about everyone would accept a period of no new content if it meant broad QoL improvements.

1) Mitigation: This is number one for me. This is an issue in PvE & PvP. The cost vs reward prospect of many builds simply isn’t there. A lack of attention do mechanical and attribute combinations results in a limited set of builds that can solo melt PvE content as well as be nearly unkillable in PvP. .. And make no mistake, this isn’t about “winning”, it’s about the experience. Builds attributed & mechanics needs a logic whereby there’s real diminishing returns for stacking various stats. No build should be able to spam melee attacks while essentially ignoring nearly all incoming damage without blocks & shields. I don’t want to run a dungeon with a teammate that’s just running through mobs and bosses without hardly taking a scratch and we’re all just along for the ride. If one wants to build for mitigation and be tanky, that’s fine; they should also have a penalty to damage output to balance, if someone wants to heal to the stars, fine, a penalty to durability to balance. If one wants to deal stupid high damage for their build, ok, great; but a penalty to healing received or mitigation to balance. Nobody has to be a glass cannon or a statuesque tank but when values in certain categories start to accumulate to and beyond a certain point that’s when the progressive penalties should apply; more than what we see. This will still allow full build diversity but introduce more balance to builds which promotes role cooperation and more authenticity to PvP combat.

2) Nature of RnG: I think a number of players here have mentioned this in various applications. Whether it be item / reward drops or the use of RnG as a means to increase difficulty mechanics it’s starting to feel like ESO is turning into an RnG havens for example, don’t develop PvE content whereby the mechanics contradict; if an AoE is a mechanical objective in a flight, don’t overlap that mechanic with a needs-to-avoid AoE. .. and again, it’s not about winning; it’s about the players being required to learn and adapt to the mechanics. If we’re doing that we still have to execute the gameplay properly, this is where the difficulty is supposed to come in. If we’re doing that only to find the proper response to a mechanic is another mechanic we’re supposed to avoid, well, where’s the reward in that. Players want to feel a sense that they’ve accomplished the feat of learning the gameplay and that their coordination and effort were the cause; not that the RnG simply happens to align for them and they’re just taking the win. .. if we wanted to play a slot machine we’d go to a casino.

3) Global Cooldown: We all understand why this exists and I think most all of us are fine with it, however, I’d suggest GCD be reduced from 1.0 to 0.5 seconds. GCD makes combat in ESO feel so clunky and unresponsive. We have mechanics in the game that are measured in 0.5 increments but GCD effectively makes many of them useless in real world examples. Further, it also feels like the game input stacks; this makes for really poor combat feel; especially when the stack isn’t consistent (did it stack my input? Did it not? Should I re-trigger?) by the time you answer that question it’s too late. You want combat that feels smooth and responsive; so that things like rotations and in-combat reactions can actually be refined by the player as they grow; not simply feeling like a spam fest; which is what we see now. So many players slot the “most recognizable” inputs which really restricts build variety. GCD isn’t the sole cause of this but it’s a big contributor. GCD plus inherent server lag makes concepts of “proper timing” woeful and inconsistent. I don’t expect much to be done about the servers but we could at least adjust GCD.

4) Target Recognition: This one .. I’m not sure where to begin … this is an issue in both PvP & PvE. We’ve got massive bosses & PvE characters with what seems like some awkward sliver of their hotbox that’s detectable by the game engine to actually deal damage. This is less noticeable on melee builds but is grossly evident on ranged DPS builds. Trying to figure out exactly where on the character the hitbox might be in a heated battle, while the character is moving is irritating. This goes for PvP as well where it seems like only a portion of the other player is recognized to deal damage. Again, melee builds don’t really have this issue because they can just be in the vicinity of the opponent and the aoe of the melee attack will recognize; but for everyone else, hard luck. IMO this has a lot to do with contributing to the slow and clumsy feel of combat; because as we properly time an ability or cast; only to see that our character just stands there, well, leaves a lot to be desired.

These items for me aren’t about “making one class stronger or nerfing another” .. this goes more toward the core of the gameplay mechanics and employing a different logic in some key areas to improve game experience by creating combat that’s more fluid and responsive. Combat in ESO right now just feels like driving a school bus from the back seat.

There have been a lot of adjustments and updates to the game over the years and I think it’s a good time to look at the “macro” and really see how the aggregate of all these changes have affected real world game experience and how we can better refine that. This is what will give the franchise the foundation to weather the next generation of MMOs on market and keep a loyal player / customer base for years to come.

Rotating “metas” as a way to offset existing mechanics will get old; it’s not like we haven’t seen that approach in the MMO genre before.