Upset with the direction ESO has gone

Xirks · June 9

ESO used to be amazing, over the last few years it has definitely made some horrible moves. U33 with the dynamic stat scaling really is where ESO fell off the rails, where now the healers and tanks could pump out insane damage and class roles kind of went out the window, especially in PvP. This began the HP meta, where most of your long time PvPers really started leaving in masses.

Scribing came next, and as every PvPer questioned... why slot any class abilities at all when I can just scribe a skill that CC's, Heals, and DPS all in 1 overpowered click!

Following that terrible update came SUBCLASSING, yikes.. totally threw classes out the window with that one. ESO stopped being ESO and became something... else.
Sure subclassing is cool and made the single target classes able to cleave with Arcanist beams.. but with that came THE only meta you need to be running.. DK/NB/ARC for any and all PVE content. Why has ESO strayed so far from where it should be.

I won't even comment about ZOS Crowning the most consistently powerful class as King of ESO.. but I understand that there are to be all class reworks, why it will take so long confuses a lot of us.. but it is what it is. Should just release them all together.. but not listening to your customer base seems to be the trend around here.

Finally to top it off, with everyone furious about the imbalance of ESO.. We get CLASS MASTERIES so hyped up.. only to be spit in our faces come release.

I am super disappointed in ESO... Used to be the GOAT videogame.. Now its becoming more of a meme.
You think you are moving forward in a good direction, but your customers think quite the opposite..

This game started falling apart and losing its player base in 2022.. and continues to drop.. as someone who has been here from the beginning, please ZOS.. open your eyes, we miss what the game is supposed to be..

Destai · June 9

I'm with you.

I went into this year hopeful and eager to embrace change. I'm not sure why I did, because the last few releases have really fallen flat.

I'm at the point where I realize things won't ever be where I want them. Their main issue was never communication. I see that now. It's their decision making process. Tomes Points expiration and the Night Market really showed me that. They're never going to make the decisions that I want or that respect my time.

And really this game feels rudderless to me. We've seen many delivery model changes. We've seen their declarations for doing better. And still, long awaited features like Challenge Difficulty get launched in a rough state. PTS feedback still isn't getting us stronger releases.

Combat balance is hopeless for me. They're always adjusting and tinkering in the name of balance that can never be achieved. And often times, their ideas seem like they're out of left field and don't stand up to scrutiny. Like the changes to Tide-born and Empower - no one asked for that. It's a shame because the combat redo itself is a great endeavor so far. The DK is so fun now.

I'm just at the point where there's little left to do. It comes down to the reward structures. I have no reason to play most content now. I guess we'll see what the High Seas event looks like. Hopefully Rumors and Sages Vault are fun and rewarding. I'm not confident they will be.

BXR_Lonestar · June 9

I agree with you. The problem is that when Zos is wrong, they don't revert changes, they just make new changes to try to make the old changes irrelevant. Case in point, the class rework that is an ongoing process. I think they recognize that subclassing was a huge mistake, but the problem is that some people still like it (and in truth, some people just like broken things). So they can't just revert it outright without upsetting a portion of their player base. So they're making changes around the periphery to make pure-classing more attractive, but in doing so, the pure class builds are being balanced against subclassed builds, which are broken. So guess what that means for the pure class builds? They're ALSO going to be broken.

That's just how it seems to work with Zos. Is it the right way to do things? No. When you make a mistake, you should revert the mistake and then proceed to make the changes you want to make. But realistically it is probably the only thing they can do to keep the most players happy.

duagloth · June 9

2022? Lol its been longer than that

JiubLeRepenti · June 9

You think you are moving forward in a good direction, but your customers think quite the opposite.

I'm personally kinda enthusiastic about the direction the game has been taking for a few months now.

I'm not saying that everything is perfect, but at least the dev team tries new things and offers a kind of content we've never had before (for instance, the Night Market).

I couldn't stand the old recipe: "1 Chapter > 2 dungeons > 1 Extension > 2 dungeons". It was always the same thing year after year: 6 little delves, 18 little skyshards, 2 public dungeons, 6 world bosses...

I prefer having the team focus on QoL and the addition of new special/original content rather than being stuck in the same lool year after year.

Also, another point that needs to be highlighted: we all want different things here. When ZOS tries to do something different, there will always be happy and unhappy people.

And we have a very good example right now on the main page of this forum:

OsUfi · June 9

And yet so many people have returned to the game with this update and the last.

Some even say ESO is peak now (I agree).

It's almost like ZoS can't please everyone...

Xirks · June 9

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Also, another point that needs to be highlighted: we all want different things here. When ZOS tries to do something different, there will always be happy and unhappy people.

And we have a very good example right now on the main page of this forum:

You did not look into this post at all, vengeance is awesome is a post made by someone who has never been into cyrodiil other than in vengeance, written by a solely pve'er. So this viewpoint would be disregarded in the argument of the pvp we have been playing for YEARS compared to vengeance.

Finedaible · June 9

*shrug* The changes this year have been better than the absolute stagnation under the previous director's lead. Things still need a lot of improvement and the class reworks have only just begun, but I do feel like there is at least a glimmer of hope for the remaining classes. There is no growth without some element of risk in an MMO, and ESO's audience is changing towards your traditional MMO I think. Especially so with the future of single-player Bethesda titles looking pretty grim.

Luneca · June 9

I'm guessing OP found out that NB Masteries didn't make any real difference in PvP. I told them so. That's why I just fire siege.

Destai · June 9

Finedaible wrote: »

*shrug* The changes this year have been better than the absolute stagnation under the previous director's lead. Things still need a lot of improvement and the class reworks have only just begun, but I do feel like there is at least a glimmer of hope for the remaining classes. There is no growth without some element of risk in an MMO, and ESO's audience is changing towards your traditional MMO I think. Especially so with the future of single-player Bethesda titles looking pretty grim.

The problem isn't that they're trying new things. The problem is they're repeating the same mistakes in a different format.

Lacking Rewards
Limited-time events
Questionable combat balance
PTS issues going live
Release quality still suffering from bugs and long maintenance windows.

Are some things better? Sure. Of course they are. They've had some goodwill gestures, I don't want to say it's all bad. The rollout of the account wide armory slots was really generous. The DK release was stellar.

But honestly, aside from that, the song remains the same.

For me the bellwether moment was the Tomes Point expiration debacle. People can disagree with me on this, that's fine, but it was eye opening. IMO, all they had to do was let them carry over or just have a larger carryover cap. They didn't even join the conversations here. They instead decided to roll out of a whole new system rather than compromise on that one thing. That told me, despite the authentic sounding streams, the studio hasn't changed.

We'll see how this year shakes out, after the rest of the features land. I just expect it to be more glorified dailies and dolmens. Hope I'm wrong.

tsaescishoeshiner · June 9

If they released all the class reworks at once, there would be huge complaints about the long wait and everything moving too fast lol. This sounds like a "upset either way" type of situation.

There are certainly very valid issues (PvP meta, DPS variety) but I think the combat is better and more interesting than it's ever been, and people I play with are pretty happy with it (sometimes overwhelmed at the options).

Subclassing, hybridization, scribing, and class masteries are being used in some problematic areas like tanky PvP builds (which I hope get adjusted) and optimized meta DPS, but these were also issues 5-6 years ago lol.

I remember when some classes were almost completey blocked from hitting required DPS numbers, whereas now it's more flexible and doable, even if we need some variety in the highest performing builds (there's almost always a narrow number of builds performing highly). For endgame content that is less min-maxed (like HM dungeons or non-HM trials), there is still lots of variety.

For PvP, I remember 1vXers and jumping glass cannon sorcs before all these changes ... I think the flavor of the problems have changed, but they're not all new.

I also think when people are tired of a game, they can latch onto changes and blame them for their unhappiness.

Combat balance isn't perfect, but I much prefer combat as it is now to how it was before.

Destai · June 9

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

If they released all the class reworks at once, there would be huge complaints about the long wait and everything moving too fast lol. This sounds like a "upset either way" type of situation.

There are certainly very valid issues (PvP meta, DPS variety) but I think the combat is better and more interesting than it's ever been, and people I play with are pretty happy with it (sometimes overwhelmed at the options).

Subclassing, hybridization, scribing, and class masteries are being used in some problematic areas like tanky PvP builds (which I hope get adjusted) and optimized meta DPS, but these were also issues 5-6 years ago lol.

I remember when some classes were almost completey blocked from hitting required DPS numbers, whereas now it's more flexible and doable, even if we need some variety in the highest performing builds (there's almost always a narrow number of builds performing highly). For endgame content that is less min-maxed (like HM dungeons or non-HM trials), there is still lots of variety.

For PvP, I remember 1vXers and jumping glass cannon sorcs before all these changes ... I think the flavor of the problems have changed, but they're not all new.

I also think when people are tired of a game, they can latch onto changes and blame them for their unhappiness.

Combat balance isn't perfect, but I much prefer combat as it is now to how it was before.

You have a point for sure.

I do think combat's overall in a great state. It is quite fun, and I love having the options we have now. And I'm pretty excited for the upcoming reworks.

Where I get irritated with them is balance changes after time investments have been made. After seeing mythics getting nerfed because they somehow realized their calculations were wrong years later - yeah, I'm not going to make the time investments again.

Veinblood1965 · June 9

I actually completely disagree. I quit the game sometime back to being totally unhappy with several changes mentioned here. But since then from what I see on the forums ZOS is really starting to take player input more seriously and asking as I stated in another post I made "Is this change going to be FUN for the players". and "Will this change cause more players to quit that subscribe to the game(population decline).

It's almost to the point where my trust is back and I may re-sub. I don't say that lightly as when I quit was definitely not happy. Of course some changes are still odd like the recent change to IC so it's more of a pain to get back to home base, definitely causing an already under-populated zone to become even more so, but for the most part I'm noticing a lot of nice changes that are well thought out.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · June 10

Absolutely. They never should have brought this broken blender build cherry picking system upon us in the first place. We would not need character refreshes and Class Mastery if it were not for Subclass. It needs to go. It has run off all of the vets, crippled our guilds, limited our playstyles, punished people who purchased the game for their Class and so many other things.

Kalle_Demos · June 10

I agree. ESO has been on a downward spiral for a long time. Shameful because much of this could have easily been avoided. The two years ahead of us slapping band-aids on this balance disaster could have been avoided. The fact that there is a real effort in place to fix the problem should be encouraging but I've been cursed with a working memory. Been burned and utterly disappointed far too many times to have any faith in whatever comes next. Many longtime players, those that are left, feel the same. Again, this negative sentiment festering could have been avoided.

FieryPhoenix · June 10

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

I agree. ESO has been on a downward spiral for a long time. Shameful because much of this could have easily been avoided. The two years ahead of us slapping band-aids on this balance disaster could have been avoided. The fact that there is a real effort in place to fix the problem should be encouraging but I've been cursed with a working memory. Been burned and utterly disappointed far too many times to have any faith in whatever comes next. Many longtime players, those that are left, feel the same. Again, this negative sentiment festering could have been avoided.

Agreed. At this point I’m pretty much only still playing because my friend group is still here, but with the way things are going that won’t be the case much longer. The management have made it clear that their vision for the game matters more than the sentiment of their core audience and the detriment of those choices to the game play experience.

Tallon_IV · June 10

Destai wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

*shrug* The changes this year have been better than the absolute stagnation under the previous director's lead. Things still need a lot of improvement and the class reworks have only just begun, but I do feel like there is at least a glimmer of hope for the remaining classes. There is no growth without some element of risk in an MMO, and ESO's audience is changing towards your traditional MMO I think. Especially so with the future of single-player Bethesda titles looking pretty grim.

Are some things better? Sure. Of course they are. They've had some goodwill gestures, I don't want to say it's all bad. The rollout of the account wide armory slots was really generous. The DK release was stellar.

Did you mean outfit slots? Armory slots are still (unfortunately) per character.

Destai · June 10

Tallon_IV wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

*shrug* The changes this year have been better than the absolute stagnation under the previous director's lead. Things still need a lot of improvement and the class reworks have only just begun, but I do feel like there is at least a glimmer of hope for the remaining classes. There is no growth without some element of risk in an MMO, and ESO's audience is changing towards your traditional MMO I think. Especially so with the future of single-player Bethesda titles looking pretty grim.

Are some things better? Sure. Of course they are. They've had some goodwill gestures, I don't want to say it's all bad. The rollout of the account wide armory slots was really generous. The DK release was stellar.

Did you mean outfit slots? Armory slots are still (unfortunately) per character.

Ah good catch, yes that’s what I meant!

Soarora · June 10

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

We would not need character refreshes and Class Mastery if it were not for Subclass.

Honestly… I think we still would’ve needed them. A complaint I have heard is that classes all feel the same and, whilst I don’t fully think so, compared to other games? Yeah, they play pretty similar aside from necro and arcanist.

Meta is still wildly up in the air but the class masteries seemed to have shaken up trial rosters quite a bit. We’re finally having werewolf DPS be more than a meme with the refresh, healers get to play with something other than SPC (though the lack of pearls bc of warden’s major heroism I hear isn’t great), warden support dps might finally be a thing, and generally speaking, so far, I think these are the most diverse rosters I’ve seen outside of casual guilds. Of course, we might quickly devolve back into specific class mt, specific class ot, warden healer, specific class healer, 1-2 support dps, and then stacking whatever does the highest damage. But with pure class masteries, that’s shoving 7 classes PLUS WEREWOLF into the roster out of the 12. Instead of like… 4 classes from the magdk meta and 5 from the arcanist meta (from memory, I could be off).

Edit: honestly, I’m glad to potentially hear people main classes again. Of course, it’s not like everyone stopped maining classes, but lots of people abandoned their main class who can now potentially return to them. And that’s wholesome 🥹.

Mojey87 · June 10

To be Fair and impartial, no matter what game direction is heading you will get people always complain about something, for instance DK rework were great, guess what, people complain too many DK in Cyrodil.
same story now it will repeat itself the WW rework, give it few days and people will complain on the same.
the game state this year its been better than previous years, the dev team works on improving and polishing the game to satisfy the community and it need time, nothing can be accomplished in one night.

Roztlin45 · June 10

Random thoughts from the bottom looking up:

If your company makes cars with square wheels and then wonder?!?? why sells go off a cliff! "BOOM" THEN especially don't double down and also place the motor on the roof and sharp spikes in the driver seat! If you were the driver of the car you would understand why this is not going to work.

JimT722 · June 10

I have really enjoyed the dk rework, ww rework and challenge difficulty. ZoS even had excellent communication while those were in testing. I haven't felt this positive about the direction of the game in a very long time.

rothan117 · June 10

My interest in the game is declining due to the lack of story continuation and lack of new areas to explore. And revisiting Thieves Guild really does not cut it, they really should have added side quests continuing Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood associations with every expansion since they came out. And Thieves Guild was probably the second worst expansion for me, only Murkmire was worse.

And I am so sick of Sheogorath already, another quest line with him just does not motivate me to log in.

I am down to just being a trader and hording gold with a few hours in game per week.

AzuraFan · June 10

rothan117 wrote: »

My interest in the game is declining due to the lack of story continuation and lack of new areas to explore. And revisiting Thieves Guild really does not cut it, they really should have added side quests continuing Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood associations with every expansion since they came out. And Thieves Guild was probably the second worst expansion for me, only Murkmire was worse.

And I am so sick of Sheogorath already, another quest line with him just does not motivate me to log in.

I feel the same way (and I agree with you about Sheogorath - I groaned when I saw they were bringing him back again. There are so many Daedric princes - why is it always him?).

While I think there have definitely been some positive changes and better communication, without a new area to explore, I'm starting to feel like I'm wasting my gaming time doing the same repetitive tasks in the same zones I know like the back of my hand. I started to feel this way when they dropped the 4th quarter story DLC, but now it's worse, since there isn't even an annual zone. It doesn't help that I have a Steam backlog beckoning to me, that will give me new experiences and stories.

I do appreciate the story content coming, but I know it'll take me a few days to do, maybe a week or two if I intentionally drag it out. Then what? More repetitive challenges for cosmetics and such I don't really need?

So yeah, my interest is also declining. I can see they're trying to right the ship, but for me it may be a case of too little, too late. I'm curious to see the warden rework and the solo dungeons, but my sub runs out in February. Unless there's something substantial announced for earliesh next year that appeals to me, I won't be renewing or sticking around.

Lixiviant · June 10

Last couple of years I've had to force myself to play the game. I log in to keep my Guilds, but it just isn't exciting anymore.

Can we just roll back 5 years and start from there? I resubbed a couple of months ago and regret it.

On the bright side, I play a lot of my other games I've picked up.

Lekjih · June 10

I think they're doing good for the most part tbh. I like subclassing, I like pure classing. Masteries is a good answer to subclassing. I like Night Market, I like werewolf rework. Not keen on DK visuals. Challenge difficulty is a "I will use this until I have the achievements and then never again" but I have friends who enjoy it. Not keen on story writing but tbh how many people pay attention to the lore. Not keen on nostalgia farm on Solstice, wary of thieves guild continuation being nostalgia farming but hopeful it's not (and it would be nice to see those guys again). Excited for sea battles or whatever ships and boat we get.

Arfaelwen · June 10

I play ESO because I like the story and the quests, the housing, exploring the areas, and the characters. Dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds aren't really my thing. That’s why I’ve personally been pretty unhappy with the game’s direction for a while now. I’ve been waiting too long for content I actually enjoy—new areas and storylines—but instead, all we get is flashy stuff, and they tinker with a skill here and there—or now with 100 armor sets—but without any clear concept that I can see.

The Night Market was a disaster, because I had to look for a new group every few minutes since the one I was in would disband after a short time (and neither of my two guilds managed to put together their own groups). The mindless grinding for the new points isn’t motivating and reminds me more of Asian grind-heavy games.

But as for actually working on things like further sprucing up the graphics, as they did in the three beginner zones, or finally eliminating that unspeakable combat bug—nope.

Improving PvP—good approach with this Vengeance campaign, even if I’d rather stick with the “old” versions. But lo and behold, as soon as Vengeance arrives, all but one are simply shut down.

And the lack of quality control, despite the PTS beforehand, is just a joke. Currently we have the wonderful bug with the difficulty levels, but there’s always something, even after weeks of testing on the PTS and corresponding player feedback, the update is still rolled out fresh with the known bugs.

Nothing new in terms of story or areas for nine months, and then comes the announcement that the Thieves’ Guild is continuing the quest. That’s just a half-baked, slapdash event that’s over in a week. Then comes the naval battle. Yeah, I’m pessimistic about that. Doesn’t sound like discovery and exploration, just like: Now we’re fighting in the water instead of on land.

But as I said, that’s just my personal opinion, and I’m sure there are players among you who are thrilled with the new direction. And I’m genuinely happy for you. It’s just not for me anymore.

Stamicka · June 10

I think ZOS deserves some credit this year because it at least feels like they’ve turned a new corner. They’re more receptive to feedback, they communicate better, and they have made some genuinely good decisions. There’s been issues too of course, but overall I think they’ve done better lately.

On a personal level, I don’t play much at all anymore. I agree that irreparable damage has been done to the game. It still functions as the fallback of fallback games for me, but hybridization, subclassing, core combat mechanic changes, power creep, and procs are always there to remind me why I don’t like the game much anymore.

I also don’t really have many friends that want to play anymore. Overall the low population puts a damper on things.

I basically want an ESO ‘classic’ though. Something like the Homestead patch of ESO with modern QoL and content additions. We are like 9 years removed from that patch by now so I don’t think it’s going to happen and I’ve accepted that.

AScarlato · June 10

I'm mostly in RP circles and my guilds are dead.

They mostly play for solo content, lore, stories, and casual exploration. We haven't had any of that this year. I know we have a couple hours of stories this year but that's it.

I'm an anomaly in my groups as I was having fun in Night Market and don't mind doing things like BGs that they aren't interested in at all.

I'm afraid they will get through the new stories in a few hours and leave again until next year when we get Winterhold, which won't even be a full zone as we have had in the past from my understanding.

Kalik_Gold · June 10

Xirks wrote: »

This game started falling apart and losing its player base in 2022.. and continues to drop.. as someone who has been here from the beginning, please ZOS.. open your eyes, we miss what the game is supposed to be..

Left in 2022, came back end of last year after NW debacle. Been so lost and confused in ESO since return...

SilverBride · June 10

ESO has veered farther and farther away from what it once was to the point that I don't even recognize it as the same game any more. I have zero interest in the Night Market. Golden Pursuits which I also used to enjoy are now dependent on the Night Market so undoable for me. And Tomes are just an annoying version of the endeavors I used to enjoy.

Games need to evolve to stay interesting but not at the expense of losing the things that made it ESO.

I do still enjoy some aspects of the game which is why I keep playing, but I fear they will be taken away, too.