Living in the Era of Robots

It's as if the gaming companies don't care anymore; hey, Microsoft and Zenimax, I am talking about you! The bots are running rampant, as the in-game-video I shot back in Aug shows... only now it is even worse than it was when this video was shot, two months ago.



Since I published Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Home of the Scammers, Cheaters and Bot Farmers, back in July, in which I outlined the problems of bots in great detail, prices for a large number of the raw materials farmable in Tamriel have seen a sharp decline. Kutas, Tempers, Ore, Ancestor Silk and even alchemy reagents like Bugloss have plummeted in the last two months.

Yet when I made the post and share it with the community, the community lashed out at me, called me a whiny bitch (as well as other, even less appropriate, names). Yet the things I outlined as long term problems with the Bot Farmer advancement (bots becoming mobile, farming other nodes once considered harder to come by, becoming combat ready, and even expanding their farming areas, saturation of the market, prices falling, etc.) are now starting to ruin the game for everyone, as I predicted.

I love this game. It is one of the rare games that I have actually played for such a long period of time, so consistently and even sunk some money into it without balking about microtransactions. But let's be honest... the game isn't really flush with fresh, new content for those of us who have been playing since the week the game dropped.

To make my point, consider that the Summerset chapter took only about two weeks to play through. New dungeon releases are done the day they drop, and the upcoming Mirkmire DLC will likely only take about a week to complete (it's so, so very small). Even PVP in Cyrodiil is repetitive, take a keep/lose a keep, take a farm, mine, mill/lose a farm, mine, mill...

If this game isn't repetitive, I don't know what is. And they way they combat this lack of new content is to make some achievements in the game repetitive. Take the Summerset Dailies; you have to do the Summerset Delve Dailies 20 times to get the achievement so you can buy a stupid waterfall housing item. So what are they doing to "extend the gameplay"? More repetition.

Making any given task be something that you need to do many times over a long period of time doesn't make it interesting, it just makes it boring.

So really, for a Tamriel Veteran, like myself, and the many other Tamriel Veterans, all with just about every possible class/race combination we can fill our max number of character slots up with, we habe two options; one play repetitive end game content until the new content is finally released. Or we can farm resource nodes to make gold in the game. Gold that is needed to spend on the really expensive stuff that is constantly being released in the game. These are our two options for filling the long periods of time between DLC, chapters and dungeon dropping.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... events... they give us events. Those seasonal events are just more repetition. How many plunder skulls does one need? How many times does it take to breathe fire before the novelty wears off? How many Hollowjack motifs does the average denizen of Tamriel need to feel complete?

Zenimax has proven time and again that they are not interested in protecting the community from toxic elements in their world. If it doesn't hurt them in the only place they really care, their financial bottom line, then they are not going to fix anything. They are actively trying to ignore the problem we face every day, not showing an iota of care for the community; something I call Active Ignorance.

And yet I'm the one still being laughed at by the community for not appreciating being treated so poorly by a company I have financially contributed to over the last three-plus years.

So before I put the controller down and walk away from Tamriel forever, I am calling on the community as a whole, no matter how unlikely it is to happen, to take action in two parts:

Part One: The Social Media Campaign:

It's time to let both Zenimax and Microsoft know that we want them to correct the problems with BOTs once and for all. Automation belongs in Clockwork City... and nowhere else in Tamriel. Reach out to both Xbox Support and Zenimax through you social media connections; use TESOnline and XboxSupport to post your disdain for BOTs in the game and hashtag your post with #EndBotsNow  #EBN  #TESO  and #ESONOBO (for Elder Scrolls Online November Black Out; detailed below).

Part Two: The Elder Scrolls November Blackout

This part of the action is to perform a month long blackout in Tamriel for the entire month of November. What does this blackout mean? It means the following;

• No purchases of crowns
• No purchases of items from the crown store (houses, costumes)
• No purchasing from the luxury furnisher and golden every weekend
• No purchasing bag and bank space
• No purchases or renewals of ESO Plus subscriptions
• No purchases of items from other players
• No purchases of items from guild stores
• No listing of items to sell in guild stores
• No grabbing Zenimax's piddly daily login bonuses; how many poisons, foods and potions does any one character really need?

Basically, if we can show that enough of us are done with their active ignorance regarding the BOT problem in Tamriel, then maybe, just maybe, either Microsoft or Zenimax will take action against the 

BOTs in Tamriel. Or maybe they won't. But we won't know if we don't try.

But then... Maybe... Just maybe.

But then again, maybe I will just garner more ridicule from the community I am quickly falling out of love with.

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Homes of Tamriel: ESO Housing Issues

Housing was one of the most anticipated features of The Elder Scrolls Online for me and many of my friends in the game. It opened the door to a level of depth for many of us in the game. A feature that would allow us to embrace our inner decorator, a place where we could be creative and expressive, and display our achievements in the game. 

And for the most part, housing has not been a let down. We were allowed to own multiple houses and new houses have been getting released over time. But as awesome as housing has been, housing hasn't been without it's issues (more on those below) and I am going to talk a little bit about the issues and limitations of ESO Housing. 

Furnishing Limits

This is been an on again, off again debate. Some houses have more than enough available slots to design some really cool things, but for many houses, even after a larger house is filled up (700/700 slots used) the place looks and feels vacant. 

A recent addition to this vacuous homes list is the Princely Dawnlight Palace. To say this house is huge is a gross understatement. The courtyard is one of the biggest in the game, with two different water features, a wall that is accessible and multiple steps to the main house and landings. The courtyard also features a set of stairs that lead down to the water and beach which could house an incredibly detailed dock.

And then we can enter the palace's main structure. With the highest count of rooms of just about any house out there and a main hall that is just about as big as the entire Serenity Falls Estate there is so much room for creativity that the mind can blow an o-ring just thinking about it.

But then reality kicks in... You have all this space, space that is ripe for creatives minds to design and build in, and you get 700 furniture slots. Only 700 slots for both inside and outside, and that's only if you are an ESO Plus subscriber, without ESO Plus you are stuck with only 350 slots. 

700 slots could be used with just decorating the outside, easily, and still have room for more. And then while the outside is decorated to the nines, the inside is bare bones.

This is not unique to the Princely Dawnlight Palace; 

• Daggerfall Overlook with its secret door to a water area with a huge area that can be accessed, save for the slaughterfish; 
• Mathiisen Manor with its large courtyard and a reflecting pool, 
• Hundings Palatial Hall with its 360 degree courtyard, stables, lighthouse, roof access, and vast beach.
• Grand Topal Hideaway; a private island that is absolutely massive, the most massive in the game
• Hakkvild's High Hall with a massive courtyard, underground tunnel and a large multi-level house.
• Earthtear Cavern - One Big Giant Cave Dwelling
• Several other homes also have huge outdoor areas, like the Strident Springs house or the Cold Harbor house; the later of the two doesn't even include a structure for the 1,000,000g price tag. 

These places are ripe for decorating, but can never reach their full creative potential because of particularly low limits placed on their available furniture slots combined with their massive space availability.

Hey Zenimax, how about looking at increasing these limits. For the larger houses, you know the ones with the huge courtyards and large house structures, how about treating the outside and inside as its own loading zone, so the outside of these places could have 600 slots and the insides could have 600 slots? I know one limit of the housing is that too many items, especially large items, can take a long time to render and load. Sometimes, loading into my haunted house or my Ebonheart Manor can take a good 10 to 15 seconds to load in when it's at max capacity (700/700 slots). But treating each zone, interior and exterior, as it's own load zone could make the loading less problematic while still allowing more overall slots for the house. Just an idea.

Stolen Items

One of the biggest requests I hear from people, second only more furniture slots, is why the hell can't we place stolen furniture items in our homes? How are we supposed to have a true thieves den if we have launder our stolen furniture items before we can place them? 

Furthermore, outside of the fact that some of the items we steal, like Wooden Toys and Hair Creme, don't actually have a rendered object in the game (a tangible 3d model that can be displayed), why can't we use the other stuff we steal as decorating items; armor, weapons, etc, you know, stuff that does have a rendered object in the game.

Armor Stands

This has been requested for so long. We want to display our armor. We can make wonderful pieces of details armor, and stylize these pieces to the Nth degree, but we are not allowed to display them. 

One idea that has been floated in the community is Armor Stands, so that we can display our armor like the heavy armored Knights in British castles. The community would love this and it would add such a wonderful decorative design component, especially to large castle-like homes; Daggerfall Overlook, Earthtear, etc. 

Can you make this happen Zenimax?

Lights

This one is about to be fixed, but still needs to be addressed. When someone comes in and turns off all your lights, there is no master switch for the home owner to turn on all lights again. Sure you are finally giving us the Limited Visitors permission, a year and half after housing dropped, but some people, that are friends, are still pranksters, and if you have over 100 lights in your house finding them all can be a huge challenge. GIVE US OUR MASTER SWITCH ZENIMAX!

Decorating with light is a huge part of many designs in homes. Could you imagine turning off all your lights with one switch, having a bunch of people enter your home and once everything has loaded for them you can switch the lights back on for the big reveal? This is key, especially for lights you bury as part of your design. It'd be like Christmas Vacation when Clark finally gets the lights to work... that ah-ha moment. 

Priceless.


Multiple Houses: 

Zenimax was kind enough to allow us to own multiple houses throughout Tamriel, but, we can't visit all of the houses owned by our friends, except for their primary residence, without them being at the specific house to travel to. 

Why can't we have a primary, secondary, etc., or just have a visit primary residence followed by visit other residence option that we can then choose from a list to visit any of their houses? Many times I have been asked by someone to let them see one of my many themed homes; my wedding house, my Christmas house, my Halloween house, etc., but I am in a dungeon or in Cyrodiil and none of these are my primary home. This leaves the person asking to see my home waiting for me to be available to show it to them. Allowing anyone to see any home I own without me having to be there for a fast travel hitch would be outstanding. 

Zenimax has done some good things with housing like adding storage chests, but there is some refinement needed. We spend a lot of time and gold buying, building and decorating our homes in Tamriel. We need to have the options for decorating and availability of the homes to be accessible. 

Zenimax, please address this.

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Dueling in ESO: The Violent Nature of Tamriel and The Unintended and Unresolved Consequences

In concept, I understand the need for dueling. Dueling is the only way to truly test one's build for PVP before taking it into combat. Sure the DPS test dummies are nice for posting DPS numbers, but the fact remains, those numbers only represent PVE/DPS values. And, since dummies don't fight back, you can test a tank or healer builds.

So from that point of view, the introduction of dueling to The Elder Scrolls Online allowed the broader test of all classes and PVP builds; but, it came at a price; a price that everyone in Tamriel has been paying since the One Tamriel patch dropped. Essentially, what dueling did was bring PVP out of Cyrodiil and into all Tamriel. 

When dueling was released as a part of the One Tamriel patch back in the fall of 2016 it introduced some major issues to the play-ability of the game. The first major issue is that anyone could duel anybody else, anywhere, at anytime and multiple duels could be happening simultaneously at the exact same location. For whatever reason, probably ease of access to easy targets, people chose to duel at way shrines, in major towns, inside and around the Undaunted Enclaves and other locations that required people to travel to for turning in quests, sell/deconstruct their hard earned gear or just pop over to town to rest from their exhausting adventuring.

By allowing dueling in and around major hubs of activity non-dueling players get hit with "Unusually Long Load Times", which is actually not so unusual these days. Quest and pledge givers can take a literal minute or two to load in and not be a black silhouette. Game crashes and locks are still rampant and some major cities, <cough> Elden Root <cough>, and these same cities are so laggy and crash-prone, that they are not the hub they were before One Tamriel.

Dueling also opened the game to bullies. High level characters played by small penis'd people who need to make others feel small to feel good about themselves, picking on new characters (who don't know any better) using the dueling feature as their weapon of choice for their bullying tactics. This is such a problem that Zenimax had to include an auto-decline all duels option for players just trying to quest.

The problems introduced with Dueling are so easy to fix, but Zenimax has not listened to our cries to make it stop. Instead they push forward like they can't hear our tears of frustration falling like Niagara. But let me put on my "Mr. Fix It Hat" and offer some viable suggestions to solve our never-ending saga of dueling woes.

First and foremost, make Dueling an illegal activity, like it is and was (for the most part) in the real world. If a any NPC witnesses a duel, each party responsible will get 2000g bounty and an invincible guard will appear and attack the duelers. This would definitely push dueling outside of towns and into remote locations which would limit the impact on the rest of the players in the game.

Second, see that image above, of what looks like a dueling arena? Yeah, build one of those in each of the lands of Tamriel; a place, an arena if you will, specifically for dueling to take place, legally. Make it open for everyone to go watch if they want to. Make it so the "Invite Duel" option is only available in these locations. Just keep it away from major cities. Zenimax gave us a similar feature in Summerset with the "Colosseum of the Old Ways", and even gave us an achievement for dueling there. Give us these types of locations across all of Tamriel and the unintended consequences of dueling, mentioned above, will go away.

Third, with the introduction of Battlegrounds, why is dueling still needed? Why can't there be 1v1 Battleground Map, that looks like the arena mentioned above, and that when two people agree to duel, are they are loaded into?

Again, I see the value of dueling, but I think it can be done in a way that it minimizes the impact on the rest of us denizens of Tamriel. That's my two cents, which when inflation is factored in, isn't worth a whole lot, but I feel better getting it out.

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Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Home of the Scammers, Cheaters and Bot Farmers

Most online games have problems with scammers, cheaters and automated (scripted) bot farmers and The Elder Scrolls Online is no different. But, one of the main differences is that according Zenimax, some of this activity is not actually against their Terms of Service (ToS). 

One of the most valuable things a player can acquire in the game, second only to experience points, is gold. Gold equals wealth and wealth can get you just about anything in this game. As of the Summerset release, ESO wealth can even buy you items from Crown Store for about 100g per crown.

That's right, now the mostly aesthetic items (mounts, pets, costumes, etc.) that you would have had to pay real cash in the form of crown exchanges, can be purchased with gold. Gold that you can honestly acquired in the game or gold which can be purchased from nefarious sites that run bot farms to harvest and sell resources to get gold to sell for real world cash. I wouldn't recommend the second source of gold, as that can lead to a ban, described below.

And Zenimax does nothing to stop this, because selling gold for cash, nor bot farming is not in violation the ToS. But, do you know what does violate the ToS? If you go buy gold from one of these websites, or directly buy resources from a Bot Farmer, this is considered a violation of the ToS and can lead to your account being banned, known as ZOS dropping the Ban Hammer; something they are infamous for.

Let me explain bot farmers to you in case you don't get the concept.

A person creates multiple Xbox accounts, a relatively simple task.

This person then creates multiple TESO accounts using their Xbox accounts.

This person then uses an official Xbox emulator for Windows, from Microsoft (yes Microsoft actually released an unlicensed tool to the public that allows for this exploit to happen), to run multiple instances of the game on one computer, say ten or twenty instances (whatever the PC is able to handle) in small windows.

This person then trains their bots to run nodes in a given area, or sets them up to farm a known location (Bear Farm, Tiger Farm, Dolmens (for XP), etc.) The farmer sets their bots up to run individually for resource nodes in different instances, or as a group for various animal farms as running animals farms as a group gets a  higher hide drop rate.

The sell their items for gold, then sell the gold for real money through their websites.

So that is how the bot farmers work; basically speaking.

How big is the problem? Well, the problem and its impact are both huge.

Bot Farmers are the reason Hide Scraps and Dreugh Wax are up to the 50% cheaper than their black smith and woodworking counterparts. And this really, from a basic economics perspective, should not be the case. Woodworking materials have a very limited use; make bows, shields or staves. The most any one character would need of these would be two items (two bows, two staves, two shields), one for each the front and back bars while the clothing materials (cloth and leathers) can be used to make chests, head, shoulders, hands, legs, and feet.

This means that for each character, there is a 3 to 1 ratio between what the demand for clothing and woodworking materials should be. Looking at this, again from an economics point of view clothing materials, like leathers, should be 3 times higher in price than woodworking.

And guess what; Ancestor Silk is nearly 2x much more expensive over woodworking and yet hide scraps are not. See, until recently bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes so they weren't flooding the ESO marketplace with Ancestor silk, which is why it remains between 18k and 22k a stack. But they have been farming bears, tigers, wolves and other animal farms for years. Which is why Leather materials are nearly half the price of their cloth counterparts. And while bot farmers had not figured out how to farm resource nodes in the past, they have now, in just the last few months, so the market place is about to change, drastically over time; and, you may already be seeing that change.

For the past three months, bot farmers have been figuring out how and where to farm resource nodes and they have fine tuned this ability. As a result, they are beginning to devalue the entire marketplace. Ore, Wood, Runestones and even clothing materials are beginning to drop in value, some of them rapidly; Bugloss, once the creme of the crop in the market place, 300g to 400g each, is now down to 200g each and falling right along with other alchemy materials.

I wish fixing this issue was as easy as everyone stopping their buying from Bot Farmers, but Bot Farmers are everywhere. They are online, they are wandering advertising insanely low prices in the different realms, they are even in guild stores; yes, guild stores.

And I'm not talking about one off guilds that are out in the middle of Nowhere, Tamriel. No, I am talking about guild stores in Daggerfall, Wayrest, Mournhold, Craiglorn and yes, even in Elden Root. I have seen these bot farmer's account myself, first hand, in some of the biggest and best known guild traders.

The thing is, guild traders aren't motivated to boot the bots either. They have received assurances from ZOS that they won't be punished for providing bots a channel to sell in and the bots, with their sales, bring money to the guild bank via the house cuts and dues. But the guild traders who allow bots in their guilds are hurting their members and the community as a whole. That needs to sink in to the minds of the Guild Owners across Tamriel. Your acceptance of bots into your guilds is hurting the game, the community and your members. Please consider that.

And while Zenimax couldn't give two spits about this, this BOT activity is against Microsoft's ToS and while reporting it to Zenimax won't produce any results, I have seen evidence that reporting it to Microsoft will. I was watching a certain, very unique bot farmer, who ran around with Kallopi's Essence on, making the bot wearing it nearly invisible. I followed this bot for a short while across multiple days, and watched the patterns of a resource bot (mentioned below). I reported the bot to Microsoft and the very next day the bot was not there. And the bot has not been back to my farm location since. I have been successful reporting these bots to Microsoft with multiple bots in the location with the same outcome... a day later I never see that particular bot again.

Here is what to look for with BOTS before reporting every Tom, Dick and Jane in the game.

1. Most bots will have simple names; XVNIIW. And groups of bots, like the animal farm bot-clusters, will have similar names within the cluster; XVNIIW, XVNIIX, XVNIIZ.
2. Resource bots will look very similar; they will be within the 4-7 level range character wearing prisoners garb. This is 90% of the time, as I have found a few bots that were slightly higher levels, or slightly differently dressed, or in the case of one them, invisible.
3. Animal bots will all look the same, Lightning Form, flame staff and in large numbers (ten or more) all casting the same skills, having the same pets up, and in some cases all moving in the same directions at the same time.
4. Resource bots will farm in areas with low NPC enemy counts and high resource node counts; think beginner areas. 
5. Animal bots will be where there is a large quantity of animals (bears, tigers, durzogs, etc.) that re-spawn rapidly.
6. Resource bots important detail; the resource bots are running off a script, so that means they will run to a specific location a resource is known to be at, even if it isn't there, in an attempt to farm said node. Follow them for a minute and you will definitely see this pattern and so can Microsoft if you report them.
7. When you see this pattern bring up the radial dial, like you are going to trade with or report them to Zenimax, and instead look at their gamer card, like you are going to friend them. This will show you an abbreviated Xbox Profile... and look at their G Score. The G score represents their achievements and a score of zero means that they have never gotten a single achievement, in any game, ever. And G Score of 5 means they got the only achievement of getting out of the first area. Combine that information with the fact that they know where every resource node in the game is, even when it's not available, and this pattern screams BOT.
8. From this same screen, the gamer card, you can report them Microsoft, put a comment in the report, Bot Farmer, and submit.

Again, Zenimax won't do anything about this. You have to report them to Microsoft. It takes a few seconds to do this, but if we all address this, as a community, when we see them, we can begin policing the lawless land Zenimax abandoned long ago.

Scams are everywhere and yes they are here in Tamriel as well. Nobody likes to be ripped off so here is my advise to prevent and address scams and scammers.

Before you trade anything with anyone in the game; get an agreement between you and the other player via in game TEXT chat; "this item for this much gold, do you agree?" and wait for their response in text chat. Not voice chat, not a message via Xbox Live, but in game TEXT chat, via direct chat message to the person, a whisper. Think of the in game text chat as a written contract. If you do get scammed, Zenimax can use the text chat to confirm your side of the story and refund your gold or gear that you were scammed out of; they cannot do that via voice chat nor Xbox Live messages.

If you get scammed, do not give them a piece of your mind. Ask them to fix the situation and if they refuse, or as is usually the case, they just ignore you, go directly to report the incident to Zenimax. Capture a screenshot of the agreement you made in text chat with the person. If you have the agreement captured in the in game text chat, you will get your stuff back. Telling someone off, especially using swear words, racist statements an threats will likely mean Zenimax will punish you, instead of the other way around. Keep calm, cool and collected. This is the one area where Zenimax will actually resolve the issue.

This is especially true when dealing with paying gold for some to gift you a crown store item.

Here are some things you consider guidelines, thing I do, to protect yourself from being scammed in the first place.

1. Buy from/sell through guild traders whenever you can.
2. If the offer sounds to good to be true, it probably is.
3. Always use the C.O.D. mail system, send the item to the person with a request for gold in the same message.
4. Always check the attachments to all C.O.D.s you receive before you take the attachments, if they did not send you the item agreed upon, return the mail to sender.
5. Always verify the items they are posting in a trade screen; make sure it the right name, the right color, the right level.
6. Always count to five before you confirm a trade. Some scammers will use a quick switch trick, switching out the item just before you confirm.

Cheats in ESO come in many different flavors, but for the most part are simply players exploiting poor design by the developers. My only advise is:

DO NOT EXPLOIT THESE FLAWS IN THE GAME.

Doing so will result in the ban hammer falling on you. If you find a flaw in the game, stop exploiting it and report it to Zenimax immediately.

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The Elder Scrolls Online: The Daunting Task of Shopping Guild Stores

One of my biggest personal issues with the overall user experience in the game is not being able to search stuff in guild traders, you know, recipes, set armor items and motifs etc. I know that crashes, glitches and other problems with the games have a much more significant impact to the gaming experience in Tamriel, but not having an ability to search for specific things I need by just typing in Ring of the Red Mountain instead of having to scroll through 16 pages of rings would be a huge improvement to the user experience in the game.

This is especially if you are looking for a Silken Ring Swords Motif... just filtering for Purple in motifs still leaves you with 10+ pages to look through, only to find that the guild trader doesn't have it. The incredibly long list of items in a guild store, pages and pages and pages of things you have scroll through to find what you are looking for is a daunting task; one I generally hate undertaking.

Hence my use of of the above gif... the complete overwhelming nature of of finding anything specific in a guild store is far too daunting of a task.

Let's be honest, we can search the crown store through the housing interface's purchase tab to find a chair, not just any chair, but an Breton Pew, Windowed and we don't have to scroll through all the chairs across all the different types of furnishing (praxis, plans, blueprints nor Dining, Parlor, etc.) but after three years we still can't search the guild traders? I mean housing is only a year and half old, guild traders came into existence a short time after the game launched.

I realize that Zenimax makes money, as in REAL COLD HARD CASH, off people buying crowns and using those crowns to purchase furnishings (and other crown store items), but seriously, can't Zenimax just copy and paste the search code from the Crown Store Furnishing interface and apply it to the guild trader interface?

Is it really that hard?

Wait... I just realized what I asked and how what I asked relates to who I asked it of.

Of course it is hard for Zenimax.

First; they don't have any incentive to develop it. They get gold in the form of tax with each sale in a guild store, but gold really means nothing to them since, unless you are bot farmer, has no real world monetary value.

Second; they have proven time and again that whatever they touch breaks everything else in the game. So if they were to develop this search capability in guild stores, it would likely make it so anyone who did damage in PVP would produce a message that the player is sending too many messages, kick them out of the game and crash them to the home screen, remove all player's character's an ability to weapon swap, change the stats of training gear to proc a 100% chance of 1000% weapon damage for any damage is delivered and give us all 17 minutes of "Unusually Long Load Time" screens with every 18th step a character takes.

Third; Zenimax has made it their mission since before Summerset to not make anything easy.

I want to talk about that last point a little bit more because it is an important point. See, Zenimax reads peoples comments regarding the game being boring and not enough new content to keep us busy between releases; this is about player engagement. But rather than work to deliver more value added content, deeper content, what they choose to do it read those player's comments and see them as things were too easy. And while some things remain easy in the game; grinding levels = easy, leveling alchemy/provisioning = easy, etc., but they their idea of more content is to make it harder to complete many basic things in the game.

Let's look at some examples. First, jewelry crafting research. They have made the jewelry crafting line without a skill bonus in Lapidary for increasing the number of items you can research at one time. This means you can only research one necklace or ring at a time, not a ring and a necklace at the same time, like you can Metallurgy Skill in the blacksmith skill line.

But with only 18 traits to research in Jewelry it's not that bad right?

It could take you four months to research all the traits in Jewelry without purchasing reduction scrolls from the crown store, or having an Orc as your master craftsman or having ESO plus with it's bonuses.

This isn't adding more content, or making it harder, it's just adding time to an already arduous time-consuming task; and this get more frustrating for those of us who were already Master Crafters before Summerset dropped.

Now let's look at another example; quests. Zenimax's idea of more content is making quests that require you to travel from one place to another and back and forth doing nothing but talking and conveying messages between two or more NPCs. The game was already a joke due to the lazy nature of NPCs in this game and this back and forth adding load times in a patch that was plagued with broken load screen. A problem we initially experienced in Morrowind.

<Quest>

NPC Farmer: "Run over there and talk to my pig, he'll tell you."

NPC Pig: "Yup, the farmer is right. Now go the bar back in town and talk to the drunk at the table."

NPC Drunk: "Yup, I agree. Now tell that farmer I agreed."

NPC Farmer: "See, I told you. And here is 100g, 3k experience and a green ancestor silk hat."

</Quest>

They took this to an extreme with Summerset. The quests to max out the Psijic skill line, the "A Book and its Cover" quest/no-a-quest/achievement and bouncing and loading to and from the same locations repeatedly. The achievements and housing items that come with the achievements that require player to enter the same three delves and destroy the "new dolmens" called Geysers, over and over and over again for 30 days to get it done.

This are not what players meant by more content. This is not the depth users were asking for. These are mundane, and frankly, boring filler and fluff. The same boring filler that players complained about with Morrowind and even more so with Clockwork City. Repetitive, rinse and repeat game fodder.

Don't get me wrong, the main story line of each of the above mentioned releases was fantastic. Good story telling. Epic adventuring. It was all the shallow side quests. Each release failed to match the quality of the side quests of the base game, not that all side quests of the base game are gold... they aren't, but there are some that were much more fulfilling than others.

Within a couple of days most of the people I gamed with had completed the main story, roughly 8 to 16 hours of game play. Within a week, most everyone I game with had the Psijic skill-line maxed out. Within two weeks, everyone had their Jewelry crafting to 50. Within a month everyone has their Summerset dailies and achievements done. Everyone seriously looking to complete their motifs has done so. After a month, of game play the only thing remaining with Summerset is researching Jewelry traits.. and the game is as boring as it was the day before Summerset dropped.

Okay, I have to admit that wasn't a fair statement. The game wasn't as boring as the day before Summerset dropped.

It is more boring than the day before Summerset dropped, because the day before Summerset dropped, we were excited for Summerset and we don't have that now. We get to deal with bugs, crashes, bot farmers and an extended free play period because the game we paid for, a game that many of us continue to pay for (with Chapters we plaid for now becoming DLC, ESO Plus and Crown Store purchases) is free for anyone with a Gamepass subscription through Xbox.

Now that's some bullshit. 

No, you see, Zenimax doesn't want to make any part of the game more usable, convenient or, dare I say, easy. They don't want that because if it takes an hour and half to find a Minotaur Chest motif, well in Zenimax's eyes, that just "content" to fill the hours while we wait for them to toil away at fixing the stuff they broke and wait for them continue to develop another release filled with repetitive quests, bugs, glitches, crashes and other drivel to keep us busy for a few weeks this fall. All before the next round of unbearable boredom sets in and we get to take another repetitious ride of frustration and disappointment.  

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The Elder Scroll Online - Damage Front Loading and Diminishing Returns

I recently just started a new character, Stamblade Sniper PVP build. And I was shocked when at Level 6 I was able to Hit with a Bow for 35k critical damage using two Skills; Snipe followed by Shadow Cloak. I was one-shot killing most NPCs and by the time I morphed them to Focused Aim and Shadowy Disguise by level 10, I was able to critically hit world bosses for 40k damange. I thought to myself that this was definitely going to be a over-powered build; and it was and remains so at level 30.

But soon I noticed that with each level I gain, I lose damage. So what was once an OP build, is now slowly falling into the range of normalcy and my expectations slowly sank to their normal low. I tested my damage with a similar MAX CP character and I found that I should expect my damage with those two skills and some buffs should be about 19k. Disappointing if you ask me.

In most games we have ever played, as you level up your character the character became stronger; dealing more damage and not dying so fast. But in this game it is quite the opposite... I really have to try to die with a low level character, but can easily be one-shot killed in a vet dungeon or trial with my Max CP Stam-Sorc and my damage, while at about 25k DPS, has never reached 38k like it has with my new Stamblade Sniper. So this confuses me.

What is the point of leveling a character up if you just see the character's damage output drop with each level? When did this happen and why?

The Problem:

When Zenimax decided in its infinite wisdom to release One Tamriel on the community it tried to find a balance between low level players and Max Champion Point (CP) players. But what it did was it created an imbalance and their decision to later front-load damage pushed the new character over the scales balance.

One day I was roaming around my farming location, one of many farming locales I have in Tamriel, and I noticed a Max CP player running around killing enemy NPCs. It would take two or three swings for the player to kill one and would take a fair bit of time for the player to kill two of them.

So then, as a level 20, I followed my new Max CP stalker victim, I mean Unknowing Friend, and would do my one/two combo (Focused Aim and Shadowy Disguise) on whatever my new friend was fighting, and I was ravaging the NPCs with one shots, while he would need time to kill them. This must really feels like a let down, to see a level 20 literally dropping NPCs with one shot while you, 730 levels higher, not able to do so.

My question to Zenimax is this; Sure you get a new players attention with huge damage, assuming they know how to build for maximum damage output, and then you let them watch as their damage drops with every level the achiev. Here is this very powerful character and you get to watch it diminish to half the damage by the time it reaches Level 50. Have fun!

The higher I level the less powerful I become. From the perspective of a new player, how is that supposed to keep motivating a player to keep playing the game?

Before One Tamriel, I always looked a Champ (and dare I date myself by saying Vet) level character as what I wanted to be when I grew up. Strong, powerful... a source of inspiration.... motivation to grind. And now there is no role model because if at Level 10 I can out perform a Max CP in dealing damage in normal dungeons or even against world bosses, why would anyone really want to level up?

The Zenimax Fix:
Zenimax needs to give power back to those that have earned it. And I mean truly "earned" it. Low levels should be knocked back to the stone age in strength and power. Take away their participation ribbons. PVE and PVP; neither should be balanced. A Max CP player should never run the risk of losing a duel to a low level.

My first character could not defeat the first quest boss I came across. I died four times trying to kill it before someone else came in and helped. That's what an MMO is supposed to be about. Community helping. Now I can actually level a new character to 20 using dolmens (formerly known as anchors; another phrase dating my gaming origins) without any help what-so-ever.

That's right take away their extra damage and boosted defenses; they haven't earned it. Take away their access to CP until they hit level 50. Make them earn there Tam-Cred, if they don't earn it we just end up with a community of snot-nosed-entitlement-brats.

Their damage should be proportionate to the level they are playing. They should struggle to fight a delve boss alone or take on a mob of zombies. They should look at Max CP players as the demi-Gods that they should be in the game... feared (so that a low level requesting a duel is foolish, not someone who actually might have a chance) and respected (thank you for helping me with that world boss, dungeon boss or quest boss).

Maybe Zenimax can create some new items (weapons, armor, glyphs, etc.), powerful items, for characters that are Max CP. Could you image a two handed sword that does 3700 damage, call it the Champions Blessing Set, Chest pieces that have 3000 armor, rune stones that that are 800+ tri-glyphs (800 Health, 800 Stam, 800 Magicka)? Make it craftable... and can only be made at whatever Max CP is at the time.

This type of armament would truly keep scrubs out of main Cyrodiil campaigns (Vivec), as it should be; leave that to the big kids, you go play in Sotha Sil and Kyne and earn your stripes there.

People don't get to join the Army as a General right out of High School. They have to earn that shit. Zenimax needs to let scrubs and pugs earn theirs as well. Hey Zenimax... why don't you quit handing everyone the world on a silver platter and then complain when the community gets board with the game because they can complete most of it in a month or two without hitting max CP... and grinding is boring with no real reward for hitting max. 

As a new player, it is a long grind from start to max CP, and there needs to be a reward worthy of the grind for first time players to reach the max. Today's culture, particularly in the culture of Tamriel, a culture of participation ribbons doesn't create devotion to the game, just a devotion to how low-level of a character can you use to defeat a Max CP character.... it's a shame really. 

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The Elder Scrolls Online: Lack of Moderation Equals Toxic community

If you have ever played any online multiplayer gamer, you know that communities around these games can get very toxic; to the point of being inhumane at times. The Elder Scrolls Online is no different than the other gaming communities.

The phrase toxic masculinity is one that comes to mind for me when thinking of online gaming toxicity. Toxic masculinity is used to describe certain behaviors that are considered the norm of masculine and these same behaviors are generally associated with harm to society and to the men themselves.

Unrealistic expectations of what masculinity is produces "toxic" effects like; violence (including sexual assault and domestic violence, verbal abuse, overt serialization, excessively risky and/or socially irresponsible behaviors including substance abuse, and dysfunction in relationships; especially online relationships, like those developed in gaming. And traits of toxic masculinity can be seen in our gaming culture and is not restricted to men. Women can partake and contribute to a toxic gaming culture as much as they are victimized by it.

The fact is that many people seem to forget this is just a game. The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game. Say it with me.

The Elder Scrolls Online is just a game.

Let that sink in for a minute... or an hour if you need that long.

Most mature guilds, ones that have been around for a while and are successful, especially those that make money off dues from their members, regulate their text chat and handle toxic gaming culture in their guilds, sometimes harshly. They do this to protect their micro-community; to provide a non-toxic place for their members to communicate, share and have fun.

But this is where the safety net ends. If you leave the safe harbor of a guild, it is the wild west of text and voice chat. Think of this region of the game's communications area as if it is Somalia meets 80s Homophobia meets 90s Porn, meets A Clockwork Orange meets Cannibal Corpse's "Hammer Smashed Face."

Anything goes and nobody gets admonished for it.

THE PROBLEM:
Lack of Zenimax moderators in public area chats (both text and voice) is the main source of the issue. The old saying, locks only keep honest men honest holds true. When people are provided a relatively anonymous way to verbally assault one another with zero moderation (as it is with the whole of the internet), the gloves come off and they usually stay off.

Today we have people, or bots, advertising gold for sale in the game, which is a direct violation of XBox terms and conditions. We have bot farmers clogging up quest areas, we have hate speech and racism being spewed across Tamriel and Zenimax is doing nothing to change it. The fact is, by not taking action to stop it, Zenimax is in fact supporting the hate, misogyny and racism as it provides a moderation free platform for it occur in.

Early in the game there were moderators, known as Game Masters, as seen above, but the last time I have heard of credible report (credible meaning a screen shot) of a Game Master was the 2014 Bot Cleansing. Not only would these Game Masters cleanse those exploiting new features, bot farmers and such, they would moderate the game chats (both area voice and text when it came available). People were kept in check; Game Masters were the locks that kept people honest. But now they are gone and the community has regressed to West World Status.

Today the zone text chat and area voice chat is rampant with racist, sexist and rapist remarks, foul language (no I'm not a prude), threats of assault (including sexual assault), and harassment (yeah, this is where I call out a douche-bag named Ruby). I won't say his whole gamer tag because this is not about throwing shade at individual but Ruby is a real world example of toxicity in the community. People like Ruby are allowed to run around stalking people he feels did him wrong, even with an Xbox account block in place, when in fact he was the one that screwed over a lot of people, including:

• Bragging about stealing from a guild bank that wasn't his own 
• Going into someone's house and moving all his stuff under ground and outside the boundary of the house 
• Stealing guild members from former guilds that kicked him for stealing from their bank
• Misogyny towards female guild members 
• And openly racist remarks in voice chat.

And again, while a lot of the issues I have experienced involve men, women are not excluded from it. I have ran into some very toxic people on both sides of the binary gender line. One woman, who I will not name, but instead reference her as MS. M is known throughout the community for accusing men of trying to have sex with her and then saying she is going to kill herself and then ghosting the community (not just in Xbox, but in Facebook communities as well) leaving everyone to wonder, "WTF?"

While the rest of us try to have some fun, the Ruby's and Ms. M's of the game continue feeding the toxic culture and get away with it; time and again. Ms. M is still in the game, under a different name. Ruby is still in the game with no name change. Some people just want to see the world burn and Zenimax allows these people to roam free setting all the fires they wish to, unchecked by game moderators.

THE ZENIMAX SOLUTIONS:

1. Clearly publishing guidelines everyone has to accept providing what is unacceptable public area communications; anti-bullying, anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-hate, etc.
2. Having Gamemasters in the game would help enforce these community guideline and drive down on this behavior, not just by eliminating it, but by preventing it. A police car in the neighborhood cuts down on property crimes, traffic violations and violent crimes. We need a Gamemaster in the game to act as this police car. We need a lock to keep the honest people honest as it were.
3. Have a reporting mechanism in place. Realistically, Zenimax can't have someone online 24/7/365, even though I think it would be feasible given the money we have all paid them over the last three years. But they could put a reporting mechanism in place so that, for an example, if someone is behaving poorly in zone text chat, typing things racist things, bullying, threatening or otherwise harassing people, that text can be selected, just as it is now, with an extra option at the bottom of the Whisper, Travel To, Invite to Group, etc. options menu, to report that specific text to Zenimax moderators.

THE COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS:

1. Do not feed the trolls. We as a community need to stop engaging the toxic elements of our community as this added negativity just feeds the trolls and rewards their behavior; it given them what they want and encourages them to continue.
2. Until Zenimax puts tools in place to address these community issues, if you find the behavior of another individual violates Microsoft's terms of use; no harassment, threats, abuse, hate speech; Take a screen cap of the activity (hard to do with voice chat, and it is known that Microsoft can't act on things said in voice chat, unless you capture video evidence of their behavior that contains their voice, but they can when it is typed in text chat) report them to Microsoft.
3. And finally block them via Xbox live, which blocks them in game voice and text chat as well. Without an audience, they have nothing to feed from. If nothing else removing this negativity will greatly improve your personal experience in the game.
4. A good guild cuts down on your exposure to this. In the case of Ruby; when his behavior was reported to and validated by our guild, he was kicked out of the guild, a guild he had purchased a (500k) lifetime membership to. They did this because a good guild will not tolerate the Ruby and Ms. M personas of the world.

There are a lot of great people in this community. Hell, I hang out with some of the best, most helpful people in the game. There are some fantastic guilds that don't allow these behaviors from their members. ESO as a community is not all bad, hell it's not even in the top ten most toxic game communities, but the community is getting toxic and it has its toxic elements and those elements are just as bad at the elements in the top ten. There are some awesome people out there; I wouldn't be where I am in the game without help from an outstanding group of people. And it people like you, like the people I hang with in the game that can make a difference. It's not too late for us to clean it up now and prevent it from getting worse.

Let's get this fixed Zenimax. Make the community better and you will retain more members and recruit more... that means more ESO plus subscriptions, more crowns being purchased and more money for in your shareholders... because we know that really what you care about.

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