Launch wasn’t as bumpy as FO76, but it was still pretty bad in the sense that the gaming community realized it was another false-advertising cash grab very clearly built around a microtransaction sales model, which they switched to after the first wave of misguided subscribers realized we’d been duped. They leaned heavily on Skyrim’s success, citing things like combat having that kind of weighty feel - swing a sword into a shield and you get that rebound like two items with real mass just hit eachother. ESO didn’t even attempt to replicate that like they promised, but delivered combat animations that felt more like a bad WoW knockoff, with two models just swinging at eachother but not actually responding to the contact in any way other than the healthbar ticking down.
It’s another example of over-promising and under-delivering. If it didn’t have the Elder Scrolls stamp on it and was marked as the C-tier medieval fantasy MMO that it was, and priced accordingly, it would have been received just fine.
But their initial charge was $60 plus a $15/mo subscription AND microtransaction bs… which for the ‘Skyrim but an MMO’ experience we were sold, many of us stood ready with the wallet open. Didn’t take long at all for the gaming community to notice the difference between the brand new Lamborghini we were sold didn’t exactly match the third-hand Honda Civic we received.
Elder Scrolls enshittified. I won’t complain if they make a comeback, but I’m not holding my breath either.
Mika@piefed.ca 1 week ago
I used to play this game a whole fucking lot, like around 10 characters that are level capped, did pvp, some endgame pve etc. Did the vids about weird bg pvp builds even.
I can’t say the game is shit, cause honestly, the core mechanics wise it’s good.
But.
A lot of buts.
The more I was playing it, the more I was noticing how little shit the devs give. And when I say devs I don’t mean programmers. The whole team that magages and supports the game is atrocious. Most likely there aren’t even many of them there, so the project just funnels the resources elsewhere.
Like, back back in the days, they created Cyrodiil - a huge open space PvP with castles, sieges and shit. It is supposed to be played with lots of players at the same time. The mere size of it and mechanics highly suggest that.
Yet, the engine they have doesn’t allow them to. Since the start of the game they’ve moved all the computations to the backend, which made severe lags when the sides get around 50v50v50 online. Unplayable amount of lag.
Yet, motherfuckers have great performance during the pvp events, which drives even more players (pvers) into pvp due to rewards. Cause you know, if you just put a better hardware into play, there are no issues.
And I remember how they were banning people who were asking about pvp performance community managers on the stream, angrily saying that “they are working on it”, and that it would be there soon.
Yet, when I’ve dropped the game and came back like 3 years later, they just restricted cyro to 30v30v30 or something like this to reduce the lag. There were no core changes ofc.
They treat balance like something that can be fixed without any haste in like 3-6 month timeframe. And I mean there were 4 months of a set that was bugged and dealt twice the damage it should’ve by tooltip, it was everywhere. Then when they nerf things, it’s to the fucking floor, straight into the garbage bin.
And also they randomly rework shit all the time. Like change the numbers on everything across the board cause they ran some spreadsheet math. Or unite weapon and spell damage stats to allow hybrid builds (now all builds are hybrid cause why not). This ruins builds as well as ruining balance, and not always result in a better gameplay.
And yeah also, they don’t listen to any feedback. Even from their beta server. Cause by the time they put it there, they are on the schedule to release it to prod in several weeks and they only do the bugfixes.
So, idk, yeah, they make some new maps, new quests, new ways to grind, but this is basically a lifeline.