PTS Update 49 - Feedback Thread for Player Experience Improvements

ninibini · January 13

Increased Transmute Crystal Cap

since players can already store additional transmute crystals indirectly—either by keeping geodes unopened or by holding onto transmuted items—the practical effect of the cap becomes questionable. If the system already allows unlimited storage through workarounds, why maintain a hard limit at all?

Mostly you're either out of them all the time anyway or you're drowning in them.

Unlimited storage removes tedious micromanagement. Players shouldn’t have to choose between opening geodes, deleting them, or cluttering their bank just to avoid hitting an arbitrary cap.
Having more crystals doesn’t give a player power; it only gives flexibility. You still need to earn gear, traits, and transmutation station access. Unlimited storage doesn’t break progression.
Events often shower players with geodes. A cap forces players to stop participating or waste rewards, which runs counter to the purpose of events.

tomofhyrule · January 13

Here's something not on the list, but it may be nice to include it at some point.

The following Style Materials still exist in a "refineable" state, where players need to collect 10 of them to make one full style material.

Ancient Scales
Ashes of Remorse
Cassiterite Sand
Coarse Chalk
Dried Blood
Dull Sphalerite
Dwemer Scrap
Grains of Pearl Sand
Malachite Shards
Oxblood Fungus Spores
Pliant Ferrofungus
Raw Bonemold Resin
Scarab Elytra
Viridian Dust

This method of "refineable" style materials was dropped after the Morrowind Chapter in 2017. In U40, the similar Jewelry Platings were simplified to remove grains.

It may save database space and confusion to also simplify the above style materials so they drop as full materials and not as fragments.

Maitsukas · January 13

shadoza wrote: »

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.

PTS has two character and guild data cycles:

PC-NA data is used for Week 1 and Week 2 of testing.
PC-EU data is used for Week 3 to Week 5 of testing and will remain on the server until the next major update arrives on PTS.

Having everything wiped during each testing period is unfortunately something you'd have to deal with if you are on PTS a lot, since it is not possible to have two databases on the server at the same time.

Techwolf_Lupindo · January 13

shadoza wrote: »

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.

I went to PTS and found one treasure map in inventory and the popup showed same one in the bank. I pulled out the banker kitty and was able to remove the treasure map from the bank. Pulled up the charater inventory and seen the treasure map was stacked to two. These are the old treasure maps from live, not new ones from PTS.

Techwolf_Lupindo · January 13

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

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:
Guild Trade Listing

I did not find info in the PTS patch notes about this or I missed it entirely.

Does this mean the guilds can no longer hide there description? This is a huge QoL for those that have to go to guild traders to find out who is there as many of them like to hide for one reason or anther and therefore not searchable or returns "guild info not available". Business have to public display there license, would love for them to be forced to not "hide" any more.

KingArthasMenethil · January 13

Mounts-For-Gold
I noticed that in PvP Cyrodiil they didn't have any unique mounts. Guess the only thing that would fit there is the Alliance War Horse but that's on the crown store.

Gold Coast feels like it could've used the Imperial War Horse.

Gonfalon Bay and or some Breton High Rock Stables could've used that Breton Warhorse with the npc name of "Honor's Legacy" that's been at Gonfalon Bay's stables for years.

cookerski · January 13

Mounts-For-Gold
I can't see theese mounts in collections as "not collected" before purchase (all the other mounts - for trophies, achievements, Indriks - are visible). After purchasing they show up as "collected". Is this intended?

Respec Skills & Attributes in the UI for Free
After using respec we have two options: "Confirm", "Clear All". Would be nice to also have "Discard changes" in case you change your mind (on PC you can press ESC to have possibility to distard, so adding third option on the screen shouldn't be a problem).

Zone Guide Improvement
Zone Guide should direct you to closest point when you are in the zone. I've created new character, landed on Stros M'Kai, opened zone guide for Vvardenfell, picked Wayshrines and it pointed me to north-west wayshrine (Gnisis).

shadoza · January 13

cookerski wrote: »

Mounts-For-Gold
I can't see theese mounts in collections as "not collected" before purchase (all the other mounts - for trophies, achievements, Indriks - are visible). After purchasing they show up as "collected". Is this intended?

Respec Skills & Attributes in the UI for Free
After using respec we have two options: "Confirm", "Clear All". Would be nice to also have "Discard changes" in case you change your mind (on PC you can press ESC to have possibility to distard, so adding third option on the screen shouldn't be a problem).

Zone Guide Improvement
Zone Guide should direct you to closest point when you are in the zone. I've created new character, landed on Stros M'Kai, opened zone guide for Vvardenfell, picked Wayshrines and it pointed me to north-west wayshrine (Gnisis).

I had to leave in the middle of my testing for respec skills. The game asked me If I wanted to save before leaving. So I guess you could just leave without confirming, then go back into it. I think a clearer way of doing this would be good.

ZOS_Kira · January 13

Destai wrote: »

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.

Hey Destai, appreciate the feedback. Wanted to give a little more insight to how/why we approached it this way.

Like with Crafting Research, that it takes time to upgrade your mount is part of some of our linked progression systems that allow you to see your character grow stronger/faster/better over time.
While we want to reduce friction/grind, we do have to be thoughtful about overall player experience and progression, look to minimize 'invalidation' of previous player effort, and potential impact to other linked systems.

We MAY consider future improvements here, from account-wide mount training (in which case, you only have to do this process once), to allowing the player to do a set number of upgrades in a given time period, but that is to be determined and weighed against other potential improvements.

I also took a note to take a peek at overly aggressive questgivers. They better be careful, or they'll get the Stuga treatment!

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · January 13

cookerski wrote: »

Mounts-For-Gold
I can't see theese mounts in collections as "not collected" before purchase (all the other mounts - for trophies, achievements, Indriks - are visible). After purchasing they show up as "collected". Is this intended?

Hi there! This is not intended and we are working on a fix. We'll follow up with more info as we have it.

Thank you for letting us know about this!

Destai · January 13

ZOS_Kira wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

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.

Hey Destai, appreciate the feedback. Wanted to give a little more insight to how/why we approached it this way.

Like with Crafting Research, that it takes time to upgrade your mount is part of some of our linked progression systems that allow you to see your character grow stronger/faster/better over time.
While we want to reduce friction/grind, we do have to be thoughtful about overall player experience and progression, look to minimize 'invalidation' of previous player effort, and potential impact to other linked systems.

We MAY consider future improvements here, from account-wide mount training (in which case, you only have to do this process once), to allowing the player to do a set number of upgrades in a given time period, but that is to be determined and weighed against other potential improvements.

I also took a note to take a peek at overly aggressive questgivers. They better be careful, or they'll get the Stuga treatment!

That's fair, I can appreciate that. Thanks for the insight! Where I'm at now is - 3 toons left with only stamina to level up, so my use case is limited, but thinking about broader benefit.

In terms of quest-givers, I submitted a ticket at least a year ago, which I forgot to put in my original comment. It is 250123-002271. It should have a more exhaustive list by zone, but I can't seem to find that ticket through the support portal. Anyways, thanks!

MincMincMinc · January 13

Erickson9610 wrote: »

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.

So basically youll never be able to respec in cyrodil, because we will be stuck in combat with broken effect timers leaving us with 50% heal cut because someone was spamming hots to troll people and the timers broke.

IDK if someone is able to change morphs mid combat and live through an ult combo while doing so, more power to them. Looked like zos was already starting to put safeguards in like dropping block to enter menus. So I cant permablock tank and swap out sustain skills for damage skills as needed.

shadoza · January 13

ZOS_Kira wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

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.

Hey Destai, appreciate the feedback. Wanted to give a little more insight to how/why we approached it this way.

Like with Crafting Research, that it takes time to upgrade your mount is part of some of our linked progression systems that allow you to see your character grow stronger/faster/better over time.
While we want to reduce friction/grind, we do have to be thoughtful about overall player experience and progression, look to minimize 'invalidation' of previous player effort, and potential impact to other linked systems.

We MAY consider future improvements here, from account-wide mount training (in which case, you only have to do this process once), to allowing the player to do a set number of upgrades in a given time period, but that is to be determined and weighed against other potential improvements.

I also took a note to take a peek at overly aggressive questgivers. They better be careful, or they'll get the Stuga treatment!

I would rather NOT have everything made account wide progression. I have several characters and start new ones often. If each character comes with the progression of previous end-game characters, I wouldn't feel the growth at all. Things like housing, pets, mounts, and other collections item are find to share with account. But growing your stamina or bag levels account wide would feel like my older characters are doing all the work and the newer ones are getting a free ride.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · January 13

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

cookerski wrote: »

Mounts-For-Gold
I can't see theese mounts in collections as "not collected" before purchase (all the other mounts - for trophies, achievements, Indriks - are visible). After purchasing they show up as "collected". Is this intended?

Hi there! This is not intended and we are working on a fix. We'll follow up with more info as we have it.

Thank you for letting us know about this!

As a follow up, when this fix goes live in one of the upcoming PTS incremental patches, all mounts you can get with in-game gold will appear in the collections menu under their animal type and show "not collected" and then be collected if and when you purchase them.

ZOS_Kira · January 13

jetplane_18 wrote: »

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.

Hey Jetplane, thank you for letting us know. It looks like there may be some bug tomfoolery going on blocking the questgivers from reoffering the bite(s). We're looking into this now.

ZOS_Kira · January 13

Qyrk wrote: »

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.

- 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.

Hey Qyrk,

Thank you for the thoughts!

The 'wasted' skill when upgrading your riding training was a consequence of the change to make it give 3 upgrades instead of one. To mitigate, you'll notice that the cost to upgrade is 500 gold (only 2x what it was before, despite now giving three upgrades). Additionally, riding lessons still give a singular upgrade, so if you want to min/max those you can use them to fill the final steps.

It was a great callout on the Land Baron and Citizen achievements. That is a bug and will be resolved by updating the achievement text for either PTS2 or 3, timing depending.

Last but not least, we agree that leads drops for later codex's isn't where we want it to be right now. That is something we are actively looking at for a future update.

Don't hesitate to keep the feedback coming!

tinythinker · January 13

I tried to open some transmute geodes on the PTS yesterday, but it didn't work. The UI said I had plenty of space with the new cap. Not sure if anyone else had that happen.

Destai · January 13

Not sure if this is the correct thread for this, but had some feedback on the mounts. The listing of the new mounts for gold could use a small improvement. I'm seeing the new mounts as usually the third option in the list. I would prefer that they be on the bottom. Not sure what sorting logic there is, but that would be much appreciated to have.

ZOS_Kevin · January 13

Destai wrote: »

Not sure if this is the correct thread for this, but had some feedback on the mounts. The listing of the new mounts for gold could use a small improvement. I'm seeing the new mounts as usually the third option in the list. I would prefer that they be on the bottom. Not sure what sorting logic there is, but that would be much appreciated to have.

Hey @Destai, this is the correct thread. There should be sort by option in the UI. It sounds like you might be viewing in alphabetical order. If the sorting option is not there, please let us know.

Destai · January 13

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Not sure if this is the correct thread for this, but had some feedback on the mounts. The listing of the new mounts for gold could use a small improvement. I'm seeing the new mounts as usually the third option in the list. I would prefer that they be on the bottom. Not sure what sorting logic there is, but that would be much appreciated to have.

Hey @Destai, this is the correct thread. There should be sort by option in the UI. It sounds like you might be viewing in alphabetical order. If the sorting option is not there, please let us know.

Oh I might’ve missed it, I am normally a console player but figured I’d hop on PTS. Thanks!

robertlabrie · 12:47AM

Can someone tell me where the new vampire shrines are? I wanna give the quest a try

robertlabrie · 12:53AM

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.

There are armory stations in IC and Cyro already. I cant' speak for the others.

robertlabrie · 1:35AM

The new guild store listing is a huge improvement. It's not as featureful as Awesome Guild Store but for players who aren't into the guild trader habit and just want to find items quickly its a massive upgrade.

The text search when you have a category is a little confusing. I listed some rose in my trader and searched for it when I had furnishings selected it said no results. That's technically true but was a bit confusing consider making text search global.

The choice of furnishing categories to feature was a bit odd. Do people really buy expensive trial dummies and crafting stations that often? I WISH!

I just saw "recent searches" while writing this - that's the business. NICE WORK!

robertlabrie · 1:43AM

Imperial City
You cannot queue for another campaign while in Imperial City (includes sewers and districts) if you have 100+ tel var stones on your person.

This, this right here, is diabolical. Undo. I literally have a key bound to port to Blackreach.

Erickson9610 · 1:59AM

One idea for a future QoL feature would be a toggle to hide all player cosmetics, including Skill Styles, Polymorphs, Mementos, and Mounts.

This would allow players to improve client-side performance, improve readability of skills, and reduce flashy visuals.

Maybe this could be implemented as a single toggle to hide everyone else's cosmetics, or implemented as a blacklist to hide cosmetics from individual people. It could also be implemented on a per-cosmetic basis, allowing players to hide troublesome cosmetics from everyone, rather than all cosmetics from troublesome people.

tomofhyrule · 3:05AM

robertlabrie wrote: »

Imperial City
You cannot queue for another campaign while in Imperial City (includes sewers and districts) if you have 100+ tel var stones on your person.

This, this right here, is diabolical. Undo. I literally have a key bound to port to Blackreach.

That's... the point?

It is fully an exploit that people can queue out of IC to protect their Tel Var. The design of the IC is not that you can just use an addon to hotkey and leave with all of your Tel Var intact.

If you need to leave in a hurry, they have Recall stones that you are welcome to use instead. And yes, they cost Tel Var. Because the design of the zone is not to be able to have a free eject button.

guarstompemoji · 5:41AM

Fantastic addition with the mounts! These add a lovely flavor/goal to the game. They also add a (needed) added gold sink to the economy, but in a fun and engaging way.

Euryale · 6:08AM

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.)

As someone who hosts a twice a week RP event, pop caps could probably be higher than 24 on notable. A tavern should be able to be bustling. The bump is nice, but why are these instanced zones capped in the first place?

Additionally, locking or throttling respec in instanced zones is a good idea. Perhaps limit to only class lines active on zone in? A little wiggle room can help a non-meta build team get though a tough spot in a dungeon but the potential for abuse is huge. Particularly battlegrounds.

H3rBie · 6:34AM

Please make the solo arenas (MA, VH) resetable, it's so annoying that you have to wait everytime you want/need to reset.

Pretty sure that everyone who is doing score runs there would love it.

(PS: I know that this is no feedback for the current changes, but imho the best place for that wish)

Qyrk · 7:01AM

Thank you Kevin and much appreciate for the reply surrounding the horse training, that make sense and I guess such a very minuscule inconvenience when you look at the bigger picture. Lovely that those house achievements will be looked into and later codex leads will hopefully be revisited.

I have a few more items that came to my mind when I started a new character in PTS and approaching it to the lens of a new players’ experience:

- Zone Guide improvements are great. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but the ‘circle’ created on the map doesn’t have a ‘description’. Do we think it will help players that when hovered to indicate something like ‘Zone Tracking’ and link back to the Zone Guide when clicked?

- Is there a way to make the Fragments section in Collections to be ‘completed’ for those that already received them?

- Since we’re talking about Hide Armor option, it’s at the top section which is easy to select. Now with hundreds of options for each armor category, is it possible to add ‘Add to Favourites’ option for the Outfits and have that Favourite Section? Scrolling through the outfit styles can be tedious (especially when you scroll Light/Medium/Heavy etc.) and will be good to implement something like what we already have in Mounts or Costumes, to make selection easier when interacting with the Outfit Table.

- Since we’ve slightly changed the Character UI with the Guild Name selection and Mundus (great change btw), I hope that in the future the team will consider selecting your character ‘Title’ a little easier/efficient.

- Daily Quest Achievements (1/10/30): I imagine that if you’re a new player trying ESO, when you consider all the Daily Quest Achievements for WB/Delve/Incursions etc. that you need to do to catch up, that will make it tedious and such a chore. I wonder as more and more zones are added and along with it include this type of achievement, if a new player will feel overwhelmed or feel tedious achieving all that they need to do?