PTS Update 49 - Feedback Thread for Player Experience Improvements

ZOS_Kevin · January 12

This is the official feedback thread for Player Experience Improvements coming in Update 49. We have a list of 20 improvements (some are rolled into one bullet because they are related) coming to reduce player friction when playing ESO.
That list includes the following:

Account-Wide Outfit Slots
Backbar XP
Bag & Bank Cost Reduction
Guild Repping
Guild Trade Listing
Hide Armor Settings for all slots
Improved Sort Order for Vendors
Increased Furnishing Limits and Home Recategorization
Increased Transmute Crystal Cap
Mimic Stones & Outfit Tokens
Mounts-For-Gold & Faster Riding Training
Longer Antiquities Lead Expiration
Quicker Crafting Research
Respec Skills & Attributes in the UI for Free
Stackable Treasure Maps
Upgrade Bag in UI
Vampire/Werewolf/Curse
Zone Guide Improvement

The team is looking for feedback on the following:

Do you notice and feel positively impacted by the Player Experience Improvements?
Are there any smaller pieces of feedback on any of the changes? We are looking for things that we could reasonably fix within the PTS cycle? Bigger fixes or other improvements not listed in the 20 above will be looked into for future updates.
Any other points of feedback?

tomofhyrule · January 12

Regarding the free respecs:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/687436/the-new-respec-system-absolutely-must-be-restricted-in-scored-content#latest

This is absolutely something that could lead to toxicity in groups, and Subclassing showed exactly how this could roll out.

While the idea is that players could use it if they need to, the actual practice of it will mean that raid leads will start to dictate exact setups to swap players' skill lines and even rolls constantly throughout the trials.

It needs to be restricted at first. If it goes well, then those restrictions could be loosened down the line, but starting with a free-for-all and then trying to put the cat back in the bag will only infuriate people and drive them off.

Destai · January 12

Right away, as I've said elsewhere, the horse training should be implemented the same as bag and bank upgrades. It is not fun to log in daily, even if it's reduced to 20 days, to level horse training. ZOS has stated the goal of reducing of daily FOMO - please, apply that here.

Aside from that, everything looks good so far.

For future request, I would like some love (albeit very tough) to be given to some NPCs who stalk the players. I originally submitted this as a ticket like a year ago, and haven't seen any movement since. There's some good examples in this thread here.

Especially in the base game, there's so many quest givers that practically pounce on the player and follow them. Some of them get in the way of wayshrines or skyshards. Others are redundant, and could be something less intrusive like a quest letter (Bera Moorsmith). There's also many that show up in multiple spots (Leramil, Ladlow Menant) too close together. This doesn't add to my experience or make it easier to adopt the quest.

acastanza_ESO · January 12

My only concern is that you should absolutely not be able to respec in leaderboard content, or in PVP enabled areas. Being able to respec at Cyrodiil gates, IC bases, or in trial lobbies before the trial starts, would be great, but allowing you to do it at will is absolutely going to be abused within approximately three seconds of this going live.

KS_Amt38 · January 12

I expected a change in the subclassing system after the last hints... that is disappointing. I wish pure classes are viable again.

Erickson9610 · January 12

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

My only concern is that you should absolutely not be able to respec in leaderboard content, or in PVP enabled areas. Being able to respec at Cyrodiil gates, IC bases, or in trial lobbies before the trial starts, would be great, but allowing you to do it at will is absolutely going to be abused within approximately three seconds of this going live.

I would argue that being able to respec in the wilderness of Cyrodiil or inside of a Keep should also be allowed, as long as you aren't in combat. You can change the skills on your bar in those situations normally, and this QoL change just allows you to stay in Cyrodiil without needing to leave in order to respec your build.

Ancalag · January 12

Love all the changes, make the game more enjoyable for new and old players.
Can't wait to see what you'll do next.

Here some potentiality:
- change Champion Points for free (like abilities and specs now)
- make armoury slots account wide (like you did for outfit)
- alliance rank points/xp account wide and maybe reduce total amount to achieve max rank. I don't like always playing pvp with the same character and so my higher rank character is still pretty low in comparison of all the pvp I played and don't match my real level and experience.

Shadesofkin · January 12

I generally want to echo agreement about respec in leaderboard focused content. This will lead to some draconian (heh) raid leads that will insist on it to the point of exclusion.

Jordan_Black · January 12

If I've bought more than 10 outfit slots over all my toons, will I get crowns refunded or do they just get turned into wasted dollars?

Thanks

JB

Cooperharley · January 12

Jordan_Black wrote: »

If I've bought more than 10 outfit slots over all my toons, will I get crowns refunded or do they just get turned into wasted dollars?

Thanks

JB

In their livestream today, they said they're discussing this currently internally.

XimTheBard · January 12

Hello, a friend and I noticed that while you've increased all these houses to 350/700 maximum furnishing slots, the amount of players that could visit has not changed.

I have several friends in the RP community who were excited to see the increase to 700, thinking the player limit would be increased to 24, which would allow big events to be hosted in these homes, as 350/700 notable homes have been 24 player limited.

Is there plans for the player limit to be updated to 24 for these houses, or will they remain as is?

lillybit · January 12

When respeccing skillpoints is it intended you can only remove them, not add like you currently can through the shrines?

It's a bit clunky having to respec to remove points and comfirm it (with the added wait) before you can add back in. For example switching morphs or if you take out a passive by mistake and want to put it back on.

I took off research passives to see what they all were now, then had to confirm and put them back on one at a time. Tho this could've been user error!

DoofusMax · January 12

Picked up the Vampire starter without any problem. The character was Covenant, so I went to the shrine in Bangkorai. I have no idea if that's where I was supposed to go, but reading journals is for milk-drinkers; real Nords already know where they're supposed to go. Rigurt taught me that.

Found the "special" Bloodfiends sitting nearby during daylight hours. They appropriately aggro'd and the game immediately crashed and burned. I came over here because it takes a while before the client registers that the game has crashed (that's true on the live game, too), so I'm off to go through the restarting process (again) now that it's had time.

EDIT: this is what I get for listening to Rigurt. Starter acquisition went fine, quest progression also fine (it's just the regular vampirism tutorial after that initial meet). Picky pedantics for Azisa's dialogue, though. Her voiced dialogue is "nah-ee-vah-tay" (spelled naïveté) but her written line is "naivety" which is pronounced "nah-ee-vit-ee." It's an easily fixed typo, but they are different words with different pronunciations and similar meanings.

Emeratis · January 12

First off I want to say thank you for all of the improvements and for being interested in doing more of them. It's really nice and refreshing to see them, even if I'm excited for some more than others. I do have a few concerns to express though.

As others have mentioned, respeccing in leaderboard content in an ideal world wouldn't be a problem but many of us know from experiences in the past it will lead to toxicity and restrictiveness that is not needed. Even if you don't play at a hm/tri level of pve play, strategies and habits often trickle down through word of mouth, copying others, or looking through logs for builds/insight. I wish it weren't the case but I've played this game for a decade and done group content for eight years and some things just don't change in how people interact with systems.

While I am elated that outfit slots are becoming accountwide so my alts can enjoy the fashion diversity of my main, I like others wonder what happens if we have more than 10 outfit slots across our characters? Even if nothing is awarded to me personally, I'm pretty sure I'm not too far over the 10 limit for my account but I know people who already have 10 slots per character.

While the lead timer extension is appreciated, I do have to wonder why the lead timer is a thing at all? It's never felt great. I also am somewhat frustrated because of all the QOL things we've been asking for for leads, the timer was not nearly as big of a pain point as how difficult is is for those of us who want to finish the lore codex to have consistent and rewarding progression. It is not fun or respectful of players time to spend weeks or months trying to get one lead. While it's worse with leads after the first drop, there are still og leads like the Echoes of Aldmeris that I have tried to farm on and off for years that I've still never had drop for me. Lead progression needs a serious overhaul and doubling the timer on leads expiring really doesn't feel like enough on this front. I love the lead system in concept but it's so frustratingly implemented.

Finally it wasn't mentioned in the stream but I want to give a massive thank you for the quality of life of rezing a player while moving. Not only is it very common in prog content or more learning runs to have "a graveyard" situation where one person goes to rez the original dead person only to die themselves and then on and on like a car pileup, but it also eliminates a major frustration for years of being moved by a mob walking past you or a boss's tail or wing swishing and having the rez be cancelled last second. Really really really happy and excited about this and surprised it wasn't mentioned sooner on the stream.

Appreciate all you're doing on the QOL improvements front and really hoping you continue with more. Also, excited to type up some thoughts in the QOL wishlist thread you mentioned creating on the stream.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · January 12

XimTheBard wrote: »

Hello, a friend and I noticed that while you've increased all these houses to 350/700 maximum furnishing slots, the amount of players that could visit has not changed.

I have several friends in the RP community who were excited to see the increase to 700, thinking the player limit would be increased to 24, which would allow big events to be hosted in these homes, as 350/700 notable homes have been 24 player limited.

Is there plans for the player limit to be updated to 24 for these houses, or will they remain as is?

Hello! Here's a reply directly from Kira and both our Player Experience Improvements and Housing teams:

An interesting callout, to increase housing population caps along with our furnishing limits increases and home categorization rebalancing. Not something that we had initially considered, but as part of this feedback (since we've seen it called out a couple places already), we decided to take the opportunity to adjust the pop caps to better align with the new categories. We've put in a bug that once resolved, will up these (hopefully for a future PTS), and def aiming for U49 proper. Now Staple homes will have a population cap of 6 players, Classic homes will have a population cap of 12 players, and all notable homes will remain at a cap of 24 players. (Note: This will effectively increase the population cap to homes that were previously Classic but have since moved into the Notable category.)

couriersix · January 12

I haven't tried the other QoL changes just yet, but I did try search around Tamriel for all the purchasable mounts for gold.

I felt like their prices were reasonable, however some of their placements were questionable. I felt like the Bleakrock Snowdog was in a bit of an odd place, and would have fit better in Windhelm. Same with the Ja'zennji Siir Fox being in Vulkhel Guard, this could have been swapped with the mount which is in Rawl'kha.

The Sapiarch Senche Serval could've gone to either Auridon or Summerset, and another wolf mount could've been added to the Gold Coast/West Weald (such as the Highland Wolf)

Western Skyrim could also have a more fitting mount too, maybe a nord themed Sabre Cat?

I would have liked to see a more daedric themed mount in Fargrave / Coldharbour, like the Nightmare Courser.

Overall these are just nitpicks and I liked exploring Tamriel and finding all of the mounts! I appreciate that the gold for them is kept pretty low, because it means that newer players will be able to buy them and have a cool mount relatively quickly. The Dwarven Horse was also a highlight, and was very cute.

MurkyWetWolf198 · January 12

Any chance we can get the visual effects vampirism to be a toggle? I’m tired of being stuck as an ugly, pasty wretch 😭

Lykeion · January 12

In U49 I noticed that players carrying more than 100 Tel Var can no longer queue for a new Cyrodiil campaign. I assume this change is meant to prevent players from using campaign queues as a fast way to exit Imperial City.

However, I’d like to point out that this behavior is still possible through the Random Dungeon Finder.
A player can still queue for a random dungeon, enter the instance (and then immediately leave it), which effectively allows them to escape Imperial City with Tel Var.

This may unintentionally increase the number of players queuing as fake tanks or healers, since there is now more incentive to use the dungeon finder as an escape mechanism rather than for actual group content.

XimTheBard · 12:01AM

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

XimTheBard wrote: »

Hello, a friend and I noticed that while you've increased all these houses to 350/700 maximum furnishing slots, the amount of players that could visit has not changed.

I have several friends in the RP community who were excited to see the increase to 700, thinking the player limit would be increased to 24, which would allow big events to be hosted in these homes, as 350/700 notable homes have been 24 player limited.

Is there plans for the player limit to be updated to 24 for these houses, or will they remain as is?

Hello! Here's a reply directly from Kira and both our Player Experience Improvements and Housing teams:

An interesting callout, to increase housing population caps along with our furnishing limits increases and home categorization rebalancing. Not something that we had initially considered, but as part of this feedback (since we've seen it called out a couple places already), we decided to take the opportunity to adjust the pop caps to better align with the new categories. We've put in a bug that once resolved, will up these (hopefully for a future PTS), and def aiming for U49 proper. Now Staple homes will have a population cap of 6 players, Classic homes will have a population cap of 12 players, and all notable homes will remain at a cap of 24 players. (Note: This will effectively increase the population cap to homes that were previously Classic but have since moved into the Notable category.)

Excellent! Really stoked to hear this!!

Aliyavana · 12:05AM

Vampire/Werewolf/Curse: Azisa the Keeper claims she loves Lamae Bal and has her vampiric strain. You find her and she states that she tends to a shrine to Molag Bal out of respect for Lamae Bal, but Lamae Bal hates Molag Bal because he violated her, and Lamae even has you kill Molag Bal worshippers. Can we please change it to a shrine to Lamae Bal?

Inari Telvanni · 12:07AM

Aliyavana wrote: »

Vampire/Werewolf/Curse: Azisa the Keeper loves Lamae Bal and has her vampiric strain. You find her and she states that she tends to a shrine to Molag Bal out of respect for Lamae Bal, but Lamae Bal hates Molag Bal because he violated her, and Lamae even has you kill Molag Bal worshippers. Can we please change it to a shrine to Lamae Bal?

I agree with this. The entire basis of the vampire quest is rooted in Lamae reclaiming what was forced upon her.

CoolBlast3 · 12:08AM

Agreed, nonsensical for this to be a shrine to Molag Bal.
Lamae Bal's Cult is all about desecrating Shrines of Bal (you literally desecrate one in the vampirism tutorial), please do a change to make these to Shrines of Lamae Bal instead of Molag. It's extremely jarring to read this, and it feels like an oversight. Would be really appreciated by Lamae simps such as myself

shadoza · 1:02AM

Mounts-For-Gold & Faster Riding Training: I didn't see much on the mounts. Those that I did look at were selling unique mounts for a very high amount of gold. Guess it is something to save for.

Longer Antiquities Lead Expiration: I didn't have a problem with the expiration of leads; I have a character dedicated to hunting down antiquities. It is nice to have more time since leveling this can take a long time.

Quicker Crafting Research: too soon to feel the joy, but good. A month is so long that I forget I am researching.

Respec Skills & Attributes in the UI for Free: I tried the skill respect feature and found it to work well. I changed a couple things and saves in a rush because an Ogrim found me, but was able to go right back to it after the fight was settled. (I noticed the CP still charge 3000k to change.)

Stackable Treasure Maps: I couldn't find any maps to test the stackable trait. I notice those in game already are not included and the ones found in the tester boxes are not stacked either. I assume it will be like the surveys. Not a fan of that since they have to be unpacked to see what you have, then you are stuck with the ones you aren't using at the moment filling up the inventory space.

Upgrade Bag in UI: This feature was good. I can't tell if it is cheaper than before, but it is more convenient. My game friend will appreciate this feature as he can never find the person upgrading bag space.

Vampire/Werewolf/Curse: I was going to try this, but I am a bit scared that I will get stuck that way. Maybe, next day, I will create two new characters to curse.

(I discovered two maxers but only one cure.)

Zone Guide Improvement: I think this is going to work just find. I clicked on the thing I wanted to do next and the guide showed me where to look for it. It didn't stay, but it did show me. I asked for this along with others so great to see it made it.

Any other points of feedback? I don't know if this is feed back or ignorance. It has been a time since I used the PTS. A few days ago, I set up a few characters to use for testing, but discovered my normal mode game was on the PTS server. This unnerved me a bit because changes and testing moves made me feel like I was compromising my game. I am banking that none of what happens on the PTS will show up on the game side?
Question: Does the copy happen every time an update is done? If so there is no sense in creating a set up for repeated use.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · 1:38AM

couriersix wrote: »

I haven't tried the other QoL changes just yet, but I did try search around Tamriel for all the purchasable mounts for gold.

I felt like their prices were reasonable, however some of their placements were questionable.

+1 this, I thought the wolf in Auridon in particular was an…odd…choice.

I did appreciate that there were a bunch of new lorebooks though!

Sordidfairytale · 1:49AM

Any other points of feedback? Can you make the Tester's Infinite Transmutation Geode drop more than 50 Transmute Crystals? 250 a pop would be rad.

jetplane_18 · 1:52AM

Neither Firralthel or Azisa offer my main character to "immediately regain the state and skill line" even though this guy has maxed both in the past. They don't offer anything at all.

My toon had vampirism saved in an armory slot so I equipped it and approached both to get some flavor text. I then cured it via the crown store cure and talked to them both again. Neither is offering either curse, still.

That was all in Stonefalls because my toon is EP right now. The guy was originally DC so I found Azisa in Glenumbra but I got the same text as before so I'm guessing that alliance doesn't matter.

Erickson9610 · 1:52AM

I found it odd that the new shrines only serve to give you a werewolf/vampire bite, and then tell you to go to the old shrines to complete the tutorials. While I like how the new characters reference the old characters, I wish it was a bit easier to actually get from the new shrine to the old shrine on a new character that may not have convenient fast travel points unlocked.

I'm not sure exactly why it matters which alliance we're pledged to when completing either werewolf quest or either vampire quest, though. I know the quest in the Crown Store leads you to the new shrine in your alliance zones, and the tutorial quest for the curse leads you to the old shrine in your alliance zones, but I can't think of a lore-related reason why these werewolves and vampires would care which alliance you're in if they're willing to infect/teach you. Is this just a relic of how curses worked pre-One Tamriel?

I would prefer if the new shrines would summon a portal directly to the tutorial quest for your curse — so, for instance, a Shrine of Hircine (new shrine) could offer a portal directly to a Werewolf Ritual Site (old shrine) so you don't need to walk to the first shrine and then walk to the second.

Completing the tutorial quests for either curse will hide the respective quest starter from the Crown Store. Going back to those new shrines will not give you the option to get bit from the NPC again, even if you cured yourself. They only give you the option to get bit again if you have not already completed Hircine's Gift or Scion of the Blood Matron, whichever one they give you the quest for. Is this intended behavior?

YandereGirlfriend · 2:10AM

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Regarding the free respecs:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/687436/the-new-respec-system-absolutely-must-be-restricted-in-scored-content#latest

This is absolutely something that could lead to toxicity in groups, and Subclassing showed exactly how this could roll out.

While the idea is that players could use it if they need to, the actual practice of it will mean that raid leads will start to dictate exact setups to swap players' skill lines and even rolls constantly throughout the trials.

It needs to be restricted at first. If it goes well, then those restrictions could be loosened down the line, but starting with a free-for-all and then trying to put the cat back in the bag will only infuriate people and drive them off.

Just disallow it in leaderboard content.

No reason that like 99.9% of generic players should have to pay for the antics of the 0.1% of PvE turbo-sweats.

Erickson9610 · 2:24AM

This line of dialogue has some pretty big implications for the future of Werewolf:

Erickson9610 wrote: »

The quest giver who can give your character a werewolf bite in Update 49 has a line which highlights how important stealth and strength are to lycanthropes:

We're getting a rework to Werewolf in June (presumably Update 50) with new models, combat adjustments, and new animations. That could be the update we get the ability to sneak!

Werewolf sneaking would be a huge QoL feature to consider for the future! After that, I would really like to have a Scribing Grimoire made specifically for the Werewolf skill line, since Werewolves have no access to Scribing currently.

Qyrk · 3:32AM

These are positive additions to the player experience, thank you.

Faster Riding Training
- When one Skill (for instance Stamina) has 58/60, you lose/waste your third upgrade.

Home Recategorization
- Please revisit the achievements Land Baron and Citizen, and make sure it correlates with this new recategorization; otherwise it will confuse new players. Currently, it still lists those that are recategorized as staple homes.

Respec Skills
- Is there a way to add a Remove Morphs option?

Stackable Treasure Maps
- Can you please clarify whether because of RNG, that it will be harder to get the treasure map you want to get because of the larger pool of zone options? Maybe make newer maps scale their drop rates?

Other Things:
-Have a Lock/Unlock Key Binds in Inventory
-Please make discovered leads to Stack from one source. This will help those trying to fill their codex since we don’t have to wait until all pieces of the lead is dug out before we start the next codex of leads.
- Please increase the leads drop for 2nd or 3rd codex. This is a grind and is becoming a chore especially for new players as more leads get added to the game.

code65536 · 3:34AM

Stackable Treasure Maps

Tested this on PTS today. Thank you.