Will the developement of crossplay still happen after the layoffs?

fizzybeef · July 7

A well performing game wouldnt of been axed like this. It is no secret that the population on some servers was dying since ages and due that even more people quitted.
The player numbers were shrinking, a fact highly discussed and loved to be ignored by some parts of the audience.

But how ever now we see the results of the course this game took over the past years, since its all about money eso clearly didnt bring enough cash in anymore and got hit hard by layoffs.

Players have asked for crossplay since years to keep the game active and have been ignored till a point when ZOS couldnt ignore it anymore and at some point last year, finally announced there is a team working on it.

It was said changes were already made to get crossplay to work ( same update times all plattforms) but crossplay will not settle before 2027.
Now since the team got reduced i wonder if this is still happening and what we can expect, in wich time schedule it will happen.
Will it be even more delayed?

Im 100 % convinced there are a lot of other things wich need to be completed and andressed too, like the unfinished class refresh, texture update, new story content.

But without to finally FIX the population - the game will simply DIE.

If people continue to leave, because the game is not populated anymore, they will not buy crowns, they will not pay for eso plus.

Respectfully fixing the games population - either buy combining them or attracting new people to join or old people to return, must be STEP ONE to keep this game surviving.
If thats even wished.
Till now it looks like maintenance mode and slowly running out, is our course.

fizzybeef · July 7

ADDITION: I hope this will be adressed on the new roadmap or there will be a short statement by zos about the topic.
Just to let us know, this is still on the table at the ZOS Headquaters

tsaescishoeshiner · July 7

Hopefully we hear soon, crossplay seemed like a very longterm goal (not even being on 2026's roadmap).

agelonestar · July 7

I'd be willing to bet that cross play will be a priority. It's a hard thing to retro-fit into an existing game, and to get it right, but once in place it helps generate the kind of long term efficiencies that Microsoft will be chasing.

It would also be a big PR win, a great news story, while also making the player base appear much larger - the aim of any MMO.

Where I think we should be worried is the development of new content (new material, not tweaks to existing content and systems). We have already seen the minimisation of new content creation, and I wonder how much further new content can be pared back as a means to achieve economies. Knowing MS as I do, and their incessant desire to do absolutely everything with AI, I suspect we'll see a decline in new material and a drop in quality too.

Eldovar · July 7

They said multiple times this is a giant undertaking and already would take a long time with release 2027 at the earliest.

If they could create more content and release the class reworks sooner with the limited resources they have now, I am very sorry for some players, but I think that would be better resource allocation for most people and for the game. We managed a decade without it, so I would put priorities elsewhere.

Microsoft is also going back to 'a big focus to our own platform' like they said yesterday in their official post , so playstation releases and servicing competing platforms like playstation will probably be way less frequent apart from Call Of Duty. The also announced a return to platform exclusives recently. SInce they already have ESO on the Xbox app now and their cloud streaming service, I bet prorities for another platform like Playstation are probably lower on the list now to invest in because it does not line up with their renewed focus of 'most daily active users on our own platforms (Windows/Cloud/Xbox)

But we will see what happens. I wouldn't have high hopes if I were you.

StackonClown · July 7

to me its gonna be scrapped

DrMedBorn · July 7

think about it for 1 second.

CptTekashi · July 7

half the teams gone ... Crossplay is gone ...

MJallday · July 7

crossplay was unlikely to happen before this started.

id say its basically a non starter now

Orbital78 · July 7

The population is healthy on PC, so non-issue to me. It would almost definitely be delayed like everything else long-term with such cuts I'd assume.

rothan117 · July 7

There seems to be strong undercurrent coming from MS that indicates they are moving away from consoles altogether, so I would not be surprised if they cancel any further investment into crossplay for a platform they are looking to radically reconfigure or outright abandon.

Freelancer_ESO · July 7

I'd assume that would happen as my impression is they have already put in a fair bit of work towards it and it can help cover for some losses of population.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · July 7

I would think so but it wouldn't be the first time they put on the chopping block something huge they've been working on. Id still rather see them just combine the consoles. Many issues will arise from merging those with PC.

freespirit · July 7

With all the layofffs and potentially more to come, I feel crossplay just got canned too.

Reading Jess's pinned post from yesterday did not fill me with confidence either!

When the team is in a posistion that they need to re-evaluate the roadmap after Season 1, so even what's going to happen this year, things that were already stated to be long term surely have to be in doubt.

Lydawobbles · July 7

The only way I think it would still be worth it for them is if they planned on sticking all of NA on one server and all of EU on another. Saving server costs renting 2 instead of 6.
If thats not their plan, I doubt itll happen

allochthons · July 7

Lets give the remaining Devs a few days before making demands, shall we?

amiiegee · July 8

I think the answere to this question will come in the roadmap. It should be priority anyway

IZZEFlameLash · July 8

This should be pushed back. If it was actually coming. They really need to focus on what they can achieve with the current size and can bring back user base such as class reworks and combat refresh. Start relatively small then think about releasing smaller contents such as solo dungeons.

fizzybeef · July 9

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

This should be pushed back. If it was actually coming. They really need to focus on what they can achieve with the current size and can bring back user base such as class reworks and combat refresh. Start relatively small then think about releasing smaller contents such as solo dungeons.

Dont think it should be pushed back, it should be prioritised even more.

Seraphayel · July 9

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

This should be pushed back. If it was actually coming. They really need to focus on what they can achieve with the current size and can bring back user base such as class reworks and combat refresh. Start relatively small then think about releasing smaller contents such as solo dungeons.

Crossplay basically doubles the amount of players, this should be on the same priority as class reworks.

IZZEFlameLash · July 9

Seraphayel wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

This should be pushed back. If it was actually coming. They really need to focus on what they can achieve with the current size and can bring back user base such as class reworks and combat refresh. Start relatively small then think about releasing smaller contents such as solo dungeons.

Crossplay basically doubles the amount of players, this should be on the same priority as class reworks.

Crossplay is literally only merging console numbers with PC, no? How is it going to be magically doubling the numbers?

fizzybeef wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

This should be pushed back. If it was actually coming. They really need to focus on what they can achieve with the current size and can bring back user base such as class reworks and combat refresh. Start relatively small then think about releasing smaller contents such as solo dungeons.

Dont think it should be pushed back, it should be prioritised even more.

Crossplay in itself is a very much a large project that needs to perform at least as 'good' as it is currently to be successful. For that to happen, it needs far more time to cook as it is a super high risk project because when it enters and makes performance super bad for everyone to the point that they need to add an option to opt-out just like in some ARPG's case, you know what happens.

Seraphayel · July 9

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Crossplay is literally only merging console numbers with PC, no? How is it going to be magically doubling the numbers?

I mean we do not have exact numbers for each platform yet, but when you merge platform A with platform B I think you can say that the player numbers are "doubling".

You're not creating new players, but the amount of players you're able to play with "doubles".

fizzybeef · July 9

Seraphayel wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Crossplay is literally only merging console numbers with PC, no? How is it going to be magically doubling the numbers?

I mean we do not have exact numbers for each platform yet, but when you merge platform A with platform B I think you can say that the player numbers are "doubling".

You're not creating new players, but the amount of players you're able to play with "doubles".

and these people who quitted because it was to dead, might return

tomofhyrule · July 9

Seraphayel wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Crossplay is literally only merging console numbers with PC, no? How is it going to be magically doubling the numbers?

I mean we do not have exact numbers for each platform yet, but when you merge platform A with platform B I think you can say that the player numbers are "doubling".

You're not creating new players, but the amount of players you're able to play with "doubles".

We don't have numbers because of course we don't. They're not going to share that.

However, we can extrapolate it and get some ideas...

The Writhing Wall event pitted the servers against each other, but we know (because ZOS said it directly) that each server had a different target based on its population. As such, we can't really compare them because they each had a different (unwritten!) end goal.

But the Night Market was not a server competition. It gave a set number of Favor points per quest irrespective of server, so we can use that to make some insinuations between server populations. True, this does not account for some servers grinding harder than other servers, but this is the closest we got to actually being able to compare the populations.
And someone collected that data.

Based on this, the EU servers would see few new players. The majority of the EU base is on PC, and only about a third of EU players are on console, with PS having more than half of the console players. NA is a bit more split, in that it's more on PC than consoles, but the consoles together do outnumber PCNA.

Eldovar · July 9

Yeah and even if they would continue crossplay, Microsoft and Sony force game makers to always have an option to opt-out on crossplay. It is mandatory.

When I look at myself, partner and friends most people turn off crossplay explicitly especially when it comes to PvP games.

- PC gamers hate to be paired with console players because they feel they are at a disadvantage.

- Console players don't want to paired with PC players because they have mouse and keyboard with better aim, macros, special mouse etc which gives a huge advantage.

I see constants posts how PVP GH queue is oh so long, putting a second server on it will make that worse as well.

amiiegee · July 9

Eldovar wrote: »

Yeah and even if they would continue crossplay, Microsoft and Sony force game makers to always have an option to opt-out on crossplay. It is mandatory.

When I look at myself, partner and friends most people turn off crossplay explicitly especially when it comes to PvP games.

- PC gamers hate to be paired with console players because they feel they are at a disadvantage.

- Console players don't want to paired with PC players because they have mouse and keyboard with better aim, macros, special mouse etc which gives a huge advantage.

I see constants posts how PVP GH queue is oh so long, putting a second server on it will make that worse as well.

I think a lot of console players would be looking forward to finally prove why even ZOS said consens like they rather think it’s balanced and consoles could easy keep up with pc 😆