Underwhelming Solstice, WW event and Golden Pursuit ???

ToddIngram · October 14

I wasn't impressed with Solstice at all. It's very small and mostly recycled content. I've read there is a second addition to Solstice, but the additional area is even smaller than the original portion.

The Writhing Wall event is almost entirely a grind of activities we've already done.

And the current Golden Pursuit is the first one where I feel like ZOS is trying to kill the FOMO in the player base. Not to mention the GP is tied so closely to the WW event which is at best "meh".

ZOS is really going to have to step up their game if they expect to retain players. We need new and fun activities. Not grinding recycled content over and over and over again.

If this pace of content production is continued into next year it's not going to cut it. Especially for players who've been playing since release and have already done all the old zones more times than they care to do them already.

I mean, is it just me that sees a very underwhelming pattern forming here?

shadyjane62 · October 14

It's not just you. It's me too, and a great many others still here and all the people that have left since we were updated out of out lightning bolts in U35.

MorallyBipolar · October 15

Nope. It's not just you.

ZOS is scaling back the game in every way except meaningless cosmetics like skill styles and custom harvesting animations etc. rather than focusing on new content and fixing their PvP. (vengeance is not a fix or a test, and most of us won't play it)

shadyjane62 · October 15

Sorry to say it's not just you. I would like to think we are being divas but that's not it. I think it just genuinely sucks.

Lucasl402 · October 16

It sure looks like a winding down of everything to me. Radically less content, most of which is recycled and the roadmap that's been released is for more of the same in the future. And vengeance may have already killed Cyrodiil PvP. The few mandated vengeance event have already drove a surprising number of players away. Subclassing makes classes meaningless for the most part so no class diversity now. Two team BG's are never balanced teams.

I'm looking at the future for ESO and I'm just not seeing anything to look forward to. And almost all feedback has been ignored to get us to this point. So whatever.

Gabriel_H · October 16

Lucasl402 wrote: »

It sure looks like a winding down of everything to me. Radically less content, most of which is recycled and the roadmap that's been released is for more of the same in the future. And vengeance may have already killed Cyrodiil PvP. The few mandated vengeance event have already drove a surprising number of players away. Subclassing makes classes meaningless for the most part so no class diversity now. Two team BG's are never balanced teams.

I'm looking at the future for ESO and I'm just not seeing anything to look forward to. And almost all feedback has been ignored to get us to this point. So whatever.

The amount of content is inline with other chapters. A smaller map != Less Content. There is a contentious point around the Dungeons being in the Season Pass and ESO+ but the amount of things to actually do is around the same amount of hours required.

Venegeance has more players than normal Cyro. Poplock in live is around 75, in Vengeance it's around 300. So if you are seeing only 1 bar in Vengeance, it's still more players than Live.

Three team BGs weren't balanced either. It was a 2 v 1 farm vs a now 1 v 1 farm.

tomofhyrule · October 16

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

It sure looks like a winding down of everything to me. Radically less content, most of which is recycled and the roadmap that's been released is for more of the same in the future. And vengeance may have already killed Cyrodiil PvP. The few mandated vengeance event have already drove a surprising number of players away. Subclassing makes classes meaningless for the most part so no class diversity now. Two team BG's are never balanced teams.

I'm looking at the future for ESO and I'm just not seeing anything to look forward to. And almost all feedback has been ignored to get us to this point. So whatever.

The amount of content is inline with other chapters. A smaller map != Less Content. There is a contentious point around the Dungeons being in the Season Pass and ESO+ but the amount of things to actually do is around the same amount of hours required.

Stop right there. That is a flat out lie. Solstice has demostrably less content than other Chapters.

Look at what we got in 2023:
Necrom, $40:

Two zones (one large, one small), sharing 6 WBs, 6 Delves, and 2 PubDuns
A New Class
Two Companions
A new World Event (Bastion Nymics)
One new Tales of Tribute deck
A new Trial
A new worldspace with all new assets

Versus now:
Solstice, $50:

One zone, with 7 WBs, 6 Delves, and 2 PubDuns
No new feature (Subclassing is basegame so not included in the value of Solstice)
No Companions
A new World Event
No new Tales of Tribute deck
A new Trial
A new worldspace with mostly reused assets
4 DLC Dungeons (also playable via ESO+)

Mathematically, Solstice is offerring way less than Necrom did, and the Dungeons aren't making up for that. Solstice is only a good deal for people who: i) want to own the dungeons permanently regardless of ESO+ status, and ii) only get Chapters for the zones and do not care about Chapter features.

And a further analysis from a different thread:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The major difference is that dungeons are accessible with ESO+, regardless of buying the pass or not. This means that for players who do not intend to own them permanently (which is relatively common - many people specifically try to avoid having DLC dungeons in their random queue, and there are also loads of players who do not intend to stop paying for ESO+ until they stop playing the game, at which point owning the DLC outright is not a concern since they will never be playing without ESO+), that this is not a benefit at all.

For people in that camp, adding the dungeons does nothing to increase the perceived value of Solstice, since they will never use those dungeons as a permanent unlock. There is no way to purchase Solstice without being forced to buy the dungeons along with it, so if you don't want them, you're forced to pay extra money for something you don't want. This means the price is higher than Necrom and they are getting no direct benefit from that price increase, and this is doubly important for players who care more for other features like Companions, Tales of Tribute, or exclusive new features like Classes since the purchase of Solstice does not include any of those.

Solstice is a good deal for players who:
Play ESO for the story only and do not care about the side activities or features

Do not have an ESO+ subscription, but still want to play dungeons

Prefer to own all DLC outright regardless of their ESO+ status

If, however, you are not one of those categories of player, then Solstice is clearly a worse deal than Necrom was.

Syldras · October 16

Gabriel_H wrote: »

The amount of content is inline with other chapters. A smaller map != Less Content. There is a contentious point around the Dungeons being in the Season Pass and ESO+ but the amount of things to actually do is around the same amount of hours required.

Even if you really take your time, the main story for Solstice (including East Solstice which I've already finished on PTS) doesn't take longer than 6 hours to complete (including epilogue). There are no companions this time (which also means no companion questlines). No new ToT deck. Side quests strewn about West and East Solstice are about 20 in total, although some of them are just "Pick up found item, give it to npc in the city" type of quests which are done in a minute.

The big ESO chapters had always been advertised as having 30 hours of story content. The winter dlc was said to have 15 hours. Solstice doesn't even reach that.

Lucasl402 · October 16

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

It sure looks like a winding down of everything to me. Radically less content, most of which is recycled and the roadmap that's been released is for more of the same in the future. And vengeance may have already killed Cyrodiil PvP. The few mandated vengeance event have already drove a surprising number of players away. Subclassing makes classes meaningless for the most part so no class diversity now. Two team BG's are never balanced teams.

I'm looking at the future for ESO and I'm just not seeing anything to look forward to. And almost all feedback has been ignored to get us to this point. So whatever.

The amount of content is inline with other chapters. A smaller map != Less Content. There is a contentious point around the Dungeons being in the Season Pass and ESO+ but the amount of things to actually do is around the same amount of hours required.

Venegeance has more players than normal Cyro. Poplock in live is around 75, in Vengeance it's around 300. So if you are seeing only 1 bar in Vengeance, it's still more players than Live.

Three team BGs weren't balanced either. It was a 2 v 1 farm vs a now 1 v 1 farm.

Others have outlined how factually inaccurate your claims about Solstice are.

Vengeance 3 was a total flop too. There were fewer players than any vengeance so far and many, many more players have drawn the line and will never play a version of vengeance again. They will uninstall first. And you can't point to anything ZOS has said about the vengeance 3 population caps either. Only ZOS knows what thoe caps were. And it doesn't matter because performance during vengeance 3 was as bad or worse than live, so no reason for them to go down that road at all anymore.

MoonPile · October 16

I guess I'm in the minority in that I really like Solstice itself:

I love the environment design; most of the game has reused assets and it's smart to do so, so I don't mind to see some here. And the Argonian ones in particular have a gorgeous reskin that I really want to use as furnishings.
Harvesting there is fun because the plant furnishing drop rates aren't too bad (I complained a lot about this when it was first on PTS, but when it hit Live it was actually ok )
I don't mind the smaller size of the zone
I love the new Home Goods vendor furnishings that are all new assets from the zone
Bismuth Steam Baths house is awesome

I've posted a bunch of screenshots to the tags below.
I'm MOST interested in Stone-Nest aesthetically, and hope the quests / locations on U48 PTS are smoothed out because I really like this new Argonian lore.

[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/stone-nest
[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/beauty shots
[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/eso solstice

But you'll see if you visit these links... I definitely have some disappointments too. Mostly the fact that much of what interested me from the new zone is not even practically obtainable & usable until months or years later. So then what's the point of buying early? Might as well wait and get it discounted.

Pic related: one of my favorite location designs, and I actually enjoy this daily quest combo:

As for the Wall: lukewarm.
If you stay away from other players and farm what the text says (not the map), at least it's easy to get done in a few mins. As someone in another thread said, it's fine to have a low-pressure event. But compared to how it was marketed, it's... well LBH, it's dailies.

Dock01 · October 17

MoonPile wrote: »

I guess I'm in the minority in that I really like Solstice itself:
I love the environment design; most of the game has reused assets and it's smart to do so, so I don't mind to see some here. And the Argonian ones in particular have a gorgeous reskin that I really want to use as furnishings.

Harvesting there is fun because the plant furnishing drop rates aren't too bad (I complained a lot about this when it was first on PTS, but when it hit Live it was actually ok )

I don't mind the smaller size of the zone

I love the new Home Goods vendor furnishings that are all new assets from the zone

Bismuth Steam Baths house is awesome

I've posted a bunch of screenshots to the tags below.
I'm MOST interested in Stone-Nest aesthetically, and hope the quests / locations on U48 PTS are smoothed out because I really like this new Argonian lore.

[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/stone-nest
[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/beauty shots
[*] https://moonpile.tumblr.com/tagged/eso solstice

But you'll see if you visit these links... I definitely have some disappointments too. Mostly the fact that much of what interested me from the new zone is not even practically obtainable & usable until months or years later. So then what's the point of buying early? Might as well wait and get it discounted.

Pic related: one of my favorite location designs, and I actually enjoy this daily quest combo:

As for the Wall: lukewarm.
If you stay away from other players and farm what the text says (not the map), at least it's easy to get done in a few mins. As someone in another thread said, it's fine to have a low-pressure event. But compared to how it was marketed, it's... well LBH, it's dailies.

I can’t with the reused assets. The price should be lower, not higher. I don’t mind spending $68 on something worth it, but this is just lowballing us. its 8$ max from the looks of it

JustLovely · October 17

The future doesn't look good, judging by the trends over the last few years. Since U35 really. I don't know of anything ZOS has listened to from the player community since U35. They're just doing whatever and telling us to take it or leave it, and a lot are leaving it.

Skill styles are a complete joke and waste.
Housing never should have been introduced.
ToT is just a giant huh?
In game rewards are practically nonexistent.
Subclassing is a cop out to avoid balancing or creating a new class.
Vengeance is an affront to every PvP main.
........the list is too long to type out, but never forget the jabs animation change and zos' response to feedback about it.

I just don't see how the current path ESO is on can possibly last much longer, and it's tragic because ESO was and still could be the best MMO ever created.

twisttop138 · October 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Lucasl402 wrote: »

It sure looks like a winding down of everything to me. Radically less content, most of which is recycled and the roadmap that's been released is for more of the same in the future. And vengeance may have already killed Cyrodiil PvP. The few mandated vengeance event have already drove a surprising number of players away. Subclassing makes classes meaningless for the most part so no class diversity now. Two team BG's are never balanced teams.

I'm looking at the future for ESO and I'm just not seeing anything to look forward to. And almost all feedback has been ignored to get us to this point. So whatever.

The amount of content is inline with other chapters. A smaller map != Less Content. There is a contentious point around the Dungeons being in the Season Pass and ESO+ but the amount of things to actually do is around the same amount of hours required.

Venegeance has more players than normal Cyro. Poplock in live is around 75, in Vengeance it's around 300. So if you are seeing only 1 bar in Vengeance, it's still more players than Live.

Three team BGs weren't balanced either. It was a 2 v 1 farm vs a now 1 v 1 farm.

Are they paying you? That's a ludicrous statement. You look at the Morrowind release, Summerset, even Orsinium. Not reused assets, tons of poi, side quests and side activities. New systems, there just really isn't any comparison. This is more akin to murkmire, with some chapter stuff squeezed into the reused nonsensical island we got. I get that being contrary is some people's jam but you're gonna have to do better then that man.

SilverBride · October 17

I still enjoy the game enough to keep playing but have noticed that it has changed a lot the past 2 years and not for the better. This is the first year I didn't pre-order the new content but waited for it to go on sale because I didn't feel it was worth the full asking price.

It feels to me like they are giving players things they have been asking for but not implemented in the way they were requested. Such as for increased slots for housing we got a furniture vault. For a class change token we got subclassing. For overland difficulty we got that they are working on something.

These things are not enough, especially in light of losing some of the value of the ESO+ subscription cost.

It just doesn't feel like the same game any more.

Mesite · October 18

I saw the phrase WW Event and thought I'd missed a werewolf event. Let's have a werewolf event when this is over.

CatoUnchained · October 18

ZOS is seriously going to have to step up their game. Not sure how they're going to manage it, but if they don't its.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZhI5BtgmFw