Why would they be mixing up a 10 year old formula with Subclassing or a Vengeance Cyrodiil if the plan was just to drop the game into Maintenance Mode?

Radiate77 wrote: »

Why would they be mixing up a 10 year old formula with Subclassing or a Vengeance Cyrodiil if the plan was just to drop the game into Maintenance Mode?

I guess we have slightly different definitions of Maintenance Mode. I consider a game going into maintenance mode when there is less and less genuinly new content but instead recycles and shuffles around old content.

Cyrodiil gets a new map with new siege mechanics, upgradable fortifications would be new content.
Cyrodiil gets the same map with ability adjustments (such as in 2021 no proc or skills on cooldown timers) is recycled content. I consider Vengeance mode to be the latter.
A new class such as the Arcanist with new skills, animations and playstyle is new content. Subclassing is not.

Recycling and reshuffling content isn't inherently a bad thing but when it's the majority of the 'new' content, you know either they are creatively bankrupt or they're out of money.

However, I'm a little more hopeful for ESO's future now that ZOS's best talent is no longer directed at the new IP. Guild war 2 was went without new content for 5 years (2017-2022) but has come roaring back to life with an expansion every year since 2022. ESO can do the same.

Radiate77 wrote: »

Why would they be mixing up a 10 year old formula with Subclassing or a Vengeance Cyrodiil if the plan was just to drop the game into Maintenance Mode?

Well, subclassing is basically "Hard to balance all classes/skill lines ? Then, get rid of the balancing concept lol. Here, take the op lines like everyone else and strop cryin'. K thx bye"

And Vengeance "we're fed up of hearing you cry about balancing Cyrodiil or performances so here, no sets, no morph, less numbers/mechanics etc. Game magically balanced, performances fixed + less work for us in the end lol, k thx bye"

Add to that the yearly formula starting to change more often (and not for the better) with them already sayin' that not all the "seasons" years will be like that first one (and thus preparing the ground in people's minds for years with less content)

With that, it doesn't surprise me that some people see this as the start of a maintenance mode, at least for some parts of the game (and only the start of it, we're clearly not into full maintenance mode yet like other games)

The one thing that I've noticed over the last 11 years is the community's ability to create narratives based on very limited information, draw assumptions from them, then act as if those assumptions are all absolutely fact.

it was in maintenance mode. Things have changed. Zos no longer has any other product and thus they are completely reliant on eso to avoid another round of microsoft layoffs.

i think were gonna see some big improvements and renewed focus because if they dont, thats the end of zenimax online studio.

Old Rungar got your back zos... see my sig for details. This game still has plenty of life in it. It hasent even reached its potential yet.

It feels like every game I've played over the past couple years has been constantly plagued by "the game is currently in maintenance mode" comments. Even while the game is actively getting updated and has many employees tasked with bringing new content and systems.

Maintenance mode means no updates whatsoever, but servers are still online with minimal fixes. I can't see how ESO can possibly be considered maintenance mode with all the new stuff this year and planned going forward, even if people feel that there are less frequent content and patches—that's not maintenance mode.

People should look around and take to their consideration what is going on with the gaming bussines recently.
Even profitable studios are beeing closed, just because they are part of some bigger corporation that decides to fire them.

All the layoffs that have been made must and will change the product that the company delivers.
This struggle is about survival, sometimes it comes at the cost of quality.

Please have in mind that we don't know what is going on behind the scenes of this big corpo bussines.
One day someone at Microsoft can decide that they don't want ZOS around anymore, and just shut them down, we should have that in mind while creating our next emotional topic about the "worst pvp expierience" or the awfulness of preassure plates in new dungeons. Just sayin.

Call it whatever you want but it's slowing down with creativity and big additions in favour of rehashing and minimal effort, was a thing since quite a while already. Cancellation of the new product might help ESO to get back but it's probably already doing what was planned revenue wise and there's not much planning outside of keeping it coming and increasing monetisation sources even further the less players remains.