Now that U46 is live how are we feeling?

tomofhyrule

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

I don’t like how extreme these poll options are. You shouldn’t force a choice between “best thing ever” and “worst thing ever” since most will end up somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, I’m negative on this patch, and it’s only gotten worse over time. Surprising, since usually even if the new feature seems meh, I usually end up having fun with it. But not this time.

Anyway, piece by piece:

1) The Zone
It’s nice enough, I guess. I’m normally not huge on Altmer or Argonians in the first place, so this definitely wasn’t made for me. Plus I’ll take my cold mountains over beachy dunes any day of the week.

It looked a bit small at first, but it does seem to be about the typical Q4 size. I guess the other half of the zone would make it a full Chapter size by the end of the year. Few dailies though since both questgivers only have 3.

2) The Story
I can’t say much here since I usually wait to do the main story until it calms down. I like the new dialogue options, but even some of the sidequests still come in with the PC being absolutely brain-dead and forcing obvious questions.

But the “worst story ever” bar was set pretty low in High Isle, so I do still think we’ll clear that at least. Still, I can’t imagine anything ever making it to Orsinium-level ever again though.

I am really happy to see Walks-in-Ash back. She and Holgunn were such great characters, but they weren’t ‘popular’ so they never returned. I am really tired of getting the “this character is designed to be a favorite!” characters shoved in my face, and it really only makes me resent them.

3) The Objectives
The world bosses are ok. Gaulm is actually pretty cool since it’s new, while the Crab is literally the Summerset crab boss with Narilmor’s waves and constantly resetting itself. I do enjoy the delves and those quests are nice enough (especially Tainted Leel), but I am salty that the Vale of Revelry quest took me to so many NPCs with unavailable cosmetics (we can’t have Mornabeth’s skin tone for our Orcs, Ambyralion’s eye color for our Altmer, Hraewin’s dress…)

All of the Sanguine stuff is also pretty fun since we don’t see much of him in the first place. But that does land oddly since his is the only Daedric Artifact that has never released, and that should have come out in February.

I do question the Nords though. I mean… I guess? But there is an isolated Nord tribe on an isolated island already (and I hope that if/when we see the Skaal that they make it very isolated and not shoehorn a story in, since not even Thirsk exists at this time), so putting them in was a strange choice. Maybe it’ll make more sense later, but the words “Nord Cultural Exchange” are really scaring me away.

4) The Trial
I felt better about it my second time through.

*So* much trash though. Getting to the first boss was such a slog, and the number of repeated mechanics on many of the bosses (most boss mechanics can be described as “it’s this boss from this dungeon with some things of this other boss from this other dungeon”) was a bit… uninspired? That got better as I learned more about it, but there still is way too much copy-and-paste for comfort.

Granted, it’s tough to follow Lucent since the whole final encounter was really interesting, but Ossein is very meh for me.

5) Subclassing
Ugh…

As I’ve said several times, I am not against the concept. I would have liked if it had been even freer - let players swap all three lines, let players take multiple from the same parent Class, and drop the skill point and XP opportunity costs.

But seriously. Balance this before shoving it on us.

The flippant attitude from the devs really made me hate this. “Oh, if you don’t like these changes, just subclass the line off!” is a dismissal, not a solution. I can’t believe that a developer, in the news article, said “players can drop their tank and support skill lines for more damage-dealing abilities and passives,” seemingly forgetting that only three of the seven classes (aka less than half of them) even *have* dedicated tank/heal/damage lines. I even heard that during initial feedback that the devs were surprised that people may want to play their characters without Subclassing since they liked them as they were.

It really makes it sound like the devs don’t understand the game they make or the people who play it.

The balance is also a catastrophe. I reject the argument of “oh, there are 3000 combinations so of course they couldn’t test them all!” First, it’s 21-choose-3 so only 1330 combinations; and second, the raider discords knew about Subclassing from the leak about 2-3 weeks out and called the OP setups within a few hours, and they were right. I’m supposed to believe that the devs, who knew about Subclassing for a while, never thought about those specific combos when players could call them immediately?

Also why are the promos for Subclassing using the old versions of the two most controversial skill changes in their promo art: old Jabs and old Blastbones? That just puts salt in the wounds.

There were ways Subclassing could have been balanced. They did none of them, and then pure classes got nerfed on the chance that they could Subclass. The fact that the devs essentially are coercing people to Subclass or lose power is really bad.

6) The Patch
Again, a tale as old as time: players complain about a lack of communication, ZOS promises to do better, and then ZOS does *even worse.*

I understand that nobody wants to wade in to deal with “angry forum whiners.” But the PTS is designed to collect feedback. There are official feedback threads in which people are posting screenshots, videos, and full CMX data on issues. And it was all ignored.

Seriously, the Necro blastbones issue was there since week 1 and was reported in week 1 (technically it’s an even older issue, but the reduced pet limits made it obvious). It literally broke an entire Class in PvP. And this was not responded to until it went live. This is unacceptable. Feedback was given early, on the forum and in game using the /bug command, and the devs just ignored it completely.

We also got Matt’s letter assuring us that they would be more responsive and not rush to release anything. And yet, the UI was (and is!) clearly unfinished. Subclassing feels like a rush job. What gives?

Also remember the plans for doing Q&As on various topics? We’re still waiting for the last part of the PvP one. And then other topics.

ZOS, nobody believes you when you say you’re working on communication. It’s time to start actually doing stuff instead of just saying you will.

7) The Value
Not worth it. At all.

Let’s just compare to Necrom two years ago. For $40, we got:

• Two zones which share 6 delves, 6 WBs, 2 PubDungeons
• New incursions
• New Class, including one free character slot
• Two Companions
• One new Tribute deck
• One new Trial

Solstice came with:

• One split zone which share 6 delves, 6 WBs, 2 PubDungeons (assuming Q4 is the size of Q2)
• No new incursions
• No new special feature (Subclassing is basegame, so it is not included in the value of Solstice)
• No Companions
• No new Tribute deck
• One new Trial

All for $10 more than Necrom. So… less content for more money.

Now it is true that the 2025 Pass includes the Dungeons, which Necrom didn’t. However, that isn’t really a good value, since there isn’t generally much overlap between people who bought Chapters and people who buy dungeons a la carte. In fact most people either get the dungeons through ESO+ or just don’t get dungeons to keep their random queues basegame only, so including the dungeons devalues ESO+ and forces people to get something they may not want.

I’ve also seen a lot more griping about the value than I ever have before. If ZOS doesn’t put in an exclusive Chapter-selling feature next year (like a new Class), I can see way fewer people willing to shell out for it.

The conclusion:
There’s a lot this patch could have done better, and I’m putting a lot of that on ZOS. Even when testing on PTS, the brick wall we were talking to just destroyed any hype I may have had about this, and honestly Solstice in my mind will always be tainted by that.

But on a larger scale… I am known in my friend group as the bugfinder. If there it a game breaking bug, I will get hit by it. I lost all of my storage chests (and all of my trial gear) a few years back with the deleting-a-character-below-level-10-deletes-your-storage-containers-somehow bug. I lost my entire quest progress and got stuck with Red Mountain permanently erupting with the completing-the-kill-20-Arcanists-borks-quest-progress-across-the-whole-game bug. I got caught in the 11-day PTS planemeld temp-ban.
And yet, even with all of that, nothing has gotten me closer to uninstalling than U46.

I know people don’t like anecdotal stuff information, but I have already seen guilds fold. I’ve seen the bleedout of population in PvP and endgame PvE. This is not sustainable. Stick your head in the sand all you want, but an MMO cannot survive without a constant stream of people… and a revolving door of casuals is not going to keep their random queues game supported much longer. And if ESO ends support, it won’t be like Skyrim where we can still boot it up 16 years later and still enjoy it - after all, where can you go if you want your Legends fix anymore.

ESO needs its endgame as much as it needs its casuals, and you can make an argument that it needs the endgame players even more. And because of that, ZOS needs to stop pushing them away.

Renato90085

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I don’t like how extreme these poll options are. You shouldn’t force a choice between “best thing ever” and “worst thing ever” since most will end up somewhere in the middle.

Anyway, I’m negative on this patch, and it’s only gotten worse over time. Surprising, since usually even if the new feature seems meh, I usually end up having fun with it. But not this time.

Anyway, piece by piece:

1) The Zone
It’s nice enough, I guess. I’m normally not huge on Altmer or Argonians in the first place, so this definitely wasn’t made for me. Plus I’ll take my cold mountains over beachy dunes any day of the week.

It looked a bit small at first, but it does seem to be about the typical Q4 size. I guess the other half of the zone would make it a full Chapter size by the end of the year. Few dailies though since both questgivers only have 3.

2) The Story
I can’t say much here since I usually wait to do the main story until it calms down. I like the new dialogue options, but even some of the sidequests still come in with the PC being absolutely brain-dead and forcing obvious questions.

But the “worst story ever” bar was set pretty low in High Isle, so I do still think we’ll clear that at least. Still, I can’t imagine anything ever making it to Orsinium-level ever again though.

I am really happy to see Walks-in-Ash back. She and Holgunn were such great characters, but they weren’t ‘popular’ so they never returned. I am really tired of getting the “this character is designed to be a favorite!” characters shoved in my face, and it really only makes me resent them.

3) The Objectives
The world bosses are ok. Gaulm is actually pretty cool since it’s new, while the Crab is literally the Summerset crab boss with Narilmor’s waves and constantly resetting itself. I do enjoy the delves and those quests are nice enough (especially Tainted Leel), but I am salty that the Vale of Revelry quest took me to so many NPCs with unavailable cosmetics (we can’t have Mornabeth’s skin tone for our Orcs, Ambyralion’s eye color for our Altmer, Hraewin’s dress…)

All of the Sanguine stuff is also pretty fun since we don’t see much of him in the first place. But that does land oddly since his is the only Daedric Artifact that has never released, and that should have come out in February.

I do question the Nords though. I mean… I guess? But there is an isolated Nord tribe on an isolated island already (and I hope that if/when we see the Skaal that they make it very isolated and not shoehorn a story in, since not even Thirsk exists at this time), so putting them in was a strange choice. Maybe it’ll make more sense later, but the words “Nord Cultural Exchange” are really scaring me away.

4) The Trial
I felt better about it my second time through.

*So* much trash though. Getting to the first boss was such a slog, and the number of repeated mechanics on many of the bosses (most boss mechanics can be described as “it’s this boss from this dungeon with some things of this other boss from this other dungeon”) was a bit… uninspired? That got better as I learned more about it, but there still is way too much copy-and-paste for comfort.

Granted, it’s tough to follow Lucent since the whole final encounter was really interesting, but Ossein is very meh for me.

5) Subclassing
Ugh…

As I’ve said several times, I am not against the concept. I would have liked if it had been even freer - let players swap all three lines, let players take multiple from the same parent Class, and drop the skill point and XP opportunity costs.

But seriously. Balance this before shoving it on us.

The flippant attitude from the devs really made me hate this. “Oh, if you don’t like these changes, just subclass the line off!” is a dismissal, not a solution. I can’t believe that a developer, in the news article, said “players can drop their tank and support skill lines for more damage-dealing abilities and passives,” seemingly forgetting that only three of the seven classes (aka less than half of them) even *have* dedicated tank/heal/damage lines. I even heard that during initial feedback that the devs were surprised that people may want to play their characters without Subclassing since they liked them as they were.

It really makes it sound like the devs don’t understand the game they make or the people who play it.

The balance is also a catastrophe. I reject the argument of “oh, there are 3000 combinations so of course they couldn’t test them all!” First, it’s 21-choose-3 so only 1330 combinations; and second, the raider discords knew about Subclassing from the leak about 2-3 weeks out and called the OP setups within a few hours, and they were right. I’m supposed to believe that the devs, who knew about Subclassing for a while, never thought about those specific combos when players could call them immediately?

Also why are the promos for Subclassing using the old versions of the two most controversial skill changes in their promo art: old Jabs and old Blastbones? That just puts salt in the wounds.

There were ways Subclassing could have been balanced. They did none of them, and then pure classes got nerfed on the chance that they could Subclass. The fact that the devs essentially are coercing people to Subclass or lose power is really bad.

6) The Patch
Again, a tale as old as time: players complain about a lack of communication, ZOS promises to do better, and then ZOS does *even worse.*

I understand that nobody wants to wade in to deal with “angry forum whiners.” But the PTS is designed to collect feedback. There are official feedback threads in which people are posting screenshots, videos, and full CMX data on issues. And it was all ignored.

Seriously, the Necro blastbones issue was there since week 1 and was reported in week 1 (technically it’s an even older issue, but the reduced pet limits made it obvious). It literally broke an entire Class in PvP. And this was not responded to until it went live. This is unacceptable. Feedback was given early, on the forum and in game using the /bug command, and the devs just ignored it completely.

We also got Matt’s letter assuring us that they would be more responsive and not rush to release anything. And yet, the UI was (and is!) clearly unfinished. Subclassing feels like a rush job. What gives?

Also remember the plans for doing Q&As on various topics? We’re still waiting for the last part of the PvP one. And then other topics.

ZOS, nobody believes you when you say you’re working on communication. It’s time to start actually doing stuff instead of just saying you will.

7) The Value
Not worth it. At all.

Let’s just compare to Necrom two years ago. For $40, we got:

• Two zones which share 6 delves, 6 WBs, 2 PubDungeons
• New incursions
• New Class, including one free character slot
• Two Companions
• One new Tribute deck
• One new Trial

Solstice came with:

• One split zone which share 6 delves, 6 WBs, 2 PubDungeons (assuming Q4 is the size of Q2)
• No new incursions
• No new special feature (Subclassing is basegame, so it is not included in the value of Solstice)
• No Companions
• No new Tribute deck
• One new Trial

All for $10 more than Necrom. So… less content for more money.

Now it is true that the 2025 Pass includes the Dungeons, which Necrom didn’t. However, that isn’t really a good value, since there isn’t generally much overlap between people who bought Chapters and people who buy dungeons a la carte. In fact most people either get the dungeons through ESO+ or just don’t get dungeons to keep their random queues basegame only, so including the dungeons devalues ESO+ and forces people to get something they may not want.

I’ve also seen a lot more griping about the value than I ever have before. If ZOS doesn’t put in an exclusive Chapter-selling feature next year (like a new Class), I can see way fewer people willing to shell out for it.

The conclusion:
There’s a lot this patch could have done better, and I’m putting a lot of that on ZOS. Even when testing on PTS, the brick wall we were talking to just destroyed any hype I may have had about this, and honestly Solstice in my mind will always be tainted by that.

But on a larger scale… I am known in my friend group as the bugfinder. If there it a game breaking bug, I will get hit by it. I lost all of my storage chests (and all of my trial gear) a few years back with the deleting-a-character-below-level-10-deletes-your-storage-containers-somehow bug. I lost my entire quest progress and got stuck with Red Mountain permanently erupting with the completing-the-kill-20-Arcanists-borks-quest-progress-across-the-whole-game bug. I got caught in the 11-day PTS planemeld temp-ban.
And yet, even with all of that, nothing has gotten me closer to uninstalling than U46.

I know people don’t like anecdotal stuff information, but I have already seen guilds fold. I’ve seen the bleedout of population in PvP and endgame PvE. This is not sustainable. Stick your head in the sand all you want, but an MMO cannot survive without a constant stream of people… and a revolving door of casuals is not going to keep their random queues game supported much longer. And if ESO ends support, it won’t be like Skyrim where we can still boot it up 16 years later and still enjoy it - after all, where can you go if you want your Legends fix anymore.

ESO needs its endgame as much as it needs its casuals, and you can make an argument that it needs the endgame players even more. And because of that, ZOS needs to stop pushing them away.

in fact..at first pts 2 week ago,i have a guild member post leakage discord about first pts change and all subclass rule ...,so we only use 50 min know u46 meta will be arc/nb/necro or arc/temp/nb...

AzuraFan

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

I'm not going to subclass my main, who I play 99.9% of the time. So far, subclassing hasn't affected me. If it starts affecting me due to nerfs or my character starts to feel weak, then it will matter.

I recently went into Solstice. It's small, and the population seems low for content that just dropped last week.

Doing some of the quests reminded me of how much I like doing story content in ESO. The lack of beefy chapters compared to past years is why I'm going to become one of those players who shows up when new content is released, plays for a bit, then goes away until next time. That's assuming I remain interested. After being away for months, it could be possible that I'll just lose interest in ESO altogether.

Until the end of this season, I'll be finishing up the achievements I want, trying to get some outstanding leads, and collecting as many lorebooks as I can. Those activities have kept me busy between content drops, but they're not enough when the content drops are so thin. There's just not enough to look forward to.

So... as far as U46 goes, mixed feelings. I like that there's new story content for me to do, and some of the QOL features, but I see now that what made ESO fun for me isn't a priority for ZOS going forward. I feel sad about this because I've really enjoyed playing, but it is what it is.

(I'm not interested in repeating story content on my alts. I prefer playing new stories, not the same ones over and over again.)

shadyjane62

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

Depressed.

Desiato

There are some no-brainer subclassing opportunities. Like for example, if one plays a nightblade dd that doesn't use cloak for stealth, then they can swap the shadow skill line with ardent flame for an easy boost in damage without really losing anything important just by replacing cloak with flames of obvlivion for major savagery/prophecy.

I wasn't surprised to see someone mention they like playing their Templar full classed. Subclassing has shown Templar has very strong skill lines and they were lowkey OP in the right hands prior to u46.

If done randomly or only according to a theme without regard for gameplay, it is certainly very easy to end up with a result that is worse than a full class.

fufu_from_ps4

Hating U46 (Knew / thought it was going to be bad and its exactly what I knew / thought was going to happen)

(strictly pvp perspective)

i just cant get into it man. i keep gaslighting myself, and gaslighting myself.... its cooked. it highlights the broken aspects of each spec, in the most grotesque manner.

nightblades have always had burst. nb and sorc. but they have always been squishy. specifically nightblade, assuming its some sort of brawler spec (ganker and bomber are relatively easy to counter and kill, if you survive impact.). you're LISTENING AND COUNTING THEIR LIGHT ATTACKS for the merciless to proc, and then you're going to work around that. being especially careful not to catch it after an incap. thats literally the gameplay vs nb, avoid/block/shield thru the incap, and dodge or however you are going to mitigate the merciless proc. GOODLUCK doing that if they warden charm you tho, and load up a shalks. maybe they wanna blastbones for the defile, and blood for blood you too? i mean why would you even give merciless/spectral (the names have changed for some skills over the years and sometimes i say the wrong skills sorry) a double proc anyways? 2 stacks? HELLO ?!?!? NOT TO MENTION bro you can literally proc it on somthing random and then CARRY IT AROUND IN YOUR POCKET. it's wild bro. but its not just that, all the cheese that HAD ITS LITTLE BOX can now be combined in pvp to make unavoidable combos.

so now what? you expect me to just accept that some people will burst me if they hit their buttons correctly? this isnt throne and liberty. that game is trash for that exact reason. eso had FLAVOR bro. it took skill. knowledge. in the entire game, before this patch, in my opinion.... there were no unavoidable combos. mayyyyyyyyyybe if a dk came up corrossive and you didnt notice. mayyyyyyyyyyybe if a ganker caught you typing. a laggy day, incap merciless okay. but like... even templars pol meteor jav beam wasnt a guarantee. some of these new specs are nearly unavoidable combos tho. even if you see it coming, you better stun them, break line of sight, say 3 hail stendarr's and hope it doesnt lag. running for trees is not acceptable counterplay.

that's bad gameplay. its just bad bro. we are not rock paper scissors trash either. dont try to suggest thats the direction we are going. eso used to have good balance, integrity, it was fun to play but its all gone. cheesy cheese combos all day long now, and its impossible to play anything off spec anymore. up til this point it was hard, but possible. now, im fighting to force ties and struggling to even do that. this is vs people who i consider to be similar skill as me. sure, i can still kill people who are on pve builds, or people who havnt invested 5000 hours like i have. but people who ACTUALLY know the game like i do.... its rough bro. i beat them if it lags.

ohhhh but you should just subclass blah blah blah

i feel strongly that classes gave the game flavor, distinction, class.watching someone sit on the back bar until they wanna proc mech and balorg and hit me with an unavoidable combo isnt fun. nor is it fun being proc'd down by someone stacking all damage passives from classes that should never have interacted that way. this is not to mention the plethora of other issues this opens up like ball groups and lag. idk i guess im done complaining. doesnt help anyways.

at least re-name the game to somthing else. this isnt eso anymore.

MasterSpatula

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

I detest subclassing so far. It takes all the staggering amount of mistakes in the gameplay/combat design of the last 6 years (y'all know what happened six years ago) and just plain doubles down on them. They're not just not going to fix what they're doing wrong; they're fully committed to everything they're doing wrong.

However, I must confess I genuinely like the new zone and its story, EVEN THOUGH THEY KILLED MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE NPC. I suppose consequences make for good storytelling (but couldn't it have been ANYONE else?).

On the other hand, considering it's actually quite a challenge to get all six dailies done every day, I kinda feel like maybe I'm the only one loving the new zone.....

Deimus

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

I thought it was a neat idea and could be done right, but looking back at the history of balancing in this game I think they bit off more than they can chew. It would have been easier for them to have just 1 swapped line or let us add a 4th line to our existing 3 class lines. It will be a hit for the audience of overland pve, but will turn into a nightmare to balance for pvp. For them to get this right they're going to need to put in more work, transparency, and PTS changes than we've ever seen and I don't think that's happening.

As a pvp player I'm already over the double spec bow on an ever increasing amount of builds. We knew it was unbalanced and an issue day 1 of the PTS, but it made it to live like other things players brought up that would be an issue. Anyone who has been around and does pvp knows there are some real nb aficionados on the dev team, but seriously some common sense balance is needed. If you're going to push the envelope to a whole new area of power creep it needs to done across the board or brought back to reasonable levels.

Gabriel_H

Inconclusive (Severe mixed feelings about the state of the game. Some love / some hate)

Content is great. Some new mech additions which aren't immunity or stun-lock. Story is reasonable. New trial is sadistic (kudos to the design team). Sub-classing ... it was always a bad idea for an MMO, it will remain so.

They need to look at reverting it and making the sub-classing internal to the class, i.e. specialization. Even that would still be a problem because the base classes and the new classes have different design philosophies.

As it stands with the base classes:

DKs - geared towards Tank/DD but mixed lines
Templars - geared towards Tank/Heal but mixed lines
Nightblade - geared towards DD but mixed lines
Sorcerer - geared towards DD/Heal but mixed lines

As it stands with the newer classes:

The newer classes aren't geared towards any particular role and their lines are distinct - one reason I find them boring and generic.

The three new classes have distinct Tank, Heal, DD lines. Those are mixed together in the base classes, and I honestly don't want that to change as it adds some intricacy and depth to the class, but it does mean that any implementation of any variation of sub-classing is going to run into the problem of two different designs as the basis.

mdjessup4906

Changed my mind from negative to positive about U46 (thought it was going to be a hot mess but its acutally pretty nice)

Mixed feelings but overall positive I think.

Subclassing wise, I personally dont care a whit about "class identity". In fact, coming from the single player games where class is more of a build suggestion than some rigid thematic thing, it turned me off. But I made up some in-character excuses so I could play and got used to it.

With subclassing though, my time traveling Dragonborn arc/nb/Templar-sorc-dk-etc is finally his true polymath self again, and my necro tank now gets to put some of those tricks he learned from his bro Sharp (winters revenge lol) to use:D



Implementation though, could have been way better, to not screw people who don't want to respec. And spend a stupid amount on money on armory slots which is absolutely bs.

Also resource drain banner sux. Its not even a nerf just annoying af.