Is "Skyrim with Friends" as good as Skyrim? And how to turn ESO into the best MMO of all time.

spoqster

Attention: This is long, but good. ;-)

Now that ZOS has announced Tamriel Unlimited (which is essentially "Skyrim with Friends"), it's time to compare the core single player experience of ESO to Skyrim.

There are many threads about endgame content, the Champion System, balancing issues, the economy and now about the new business model. Not many people talk about the leveling experience. But I think the core leveling game itself still has a few flaws that need to be adressed.

The main problem I see is that because you level so quickly, you are constantly over-leveled for your quests and out-level your equipment. As a result it is such a hassle to run around between quests and take care of your equipment.

To give you a few examples:

• I recently started over with an alt, I am now at lvl 25. I am mid zone 2 and I have only done 50% of the quests from zone1. These are all now out of date and don't give me xp any longer.
• To make matters worse, my quest log (limited to 25!) is full, so I am likely to abandon them and that is a terrible experience. Not fun but frustrating.
• I like crafting in general, but it takes so damn long to go to a crafting location and then back to the city to enchant the stuff. And then you are missing a few mats. And then there is all the hacking around with the small inventory. As a result you spend almost as much time crafting a full set of gear as it takes to out-level it again. I don't want to spend as much time crafting as I play. It's frustrating.
• All the mobs are so easy to kill. With my alt I managed to do all the content, all dolmens, all public dungeons and all world bosses by myself. Seriously!? Granted, I had green set gear crafted by my main, but come on!
• This easiness devalues the wonderful quest content. Think about it, the storyline of the whole zone revolves around one main villain. You finally get to him after hours of play and then you just pop your defensive spell, spam a few spells, block three times, drink a potion, pop another defensive spell and pop your finisher two time to kill him. That totally breaks immersion.
• There is no dialogue with the quest bosses. The most important part of every James Bond movie - Bond interacting with the main villain prior to the conclusion - simply missing. You find the boss, he has a red aura and you start whacking. No immersion here.
• Set pieces are really one the coolest things in the game. Unfortunately they are next to useless prior to lvl 50 (I mean the dropped sets). Why? You level much faster than it takes to find these set pieces. Let's say you find your first piece at level 17, the second at 19 and so on. By the time you get to lvl 24 you only have 4 pieces. And then you are outside the level drop range for that set. Useless. And frustrating.
• Mob spawning is terrible. Either it happens too quickly, so that you never get the satisfaction of clearing an area, or it happens too slowly and you waste your time waiting for a boss to spawn (I am looking at you, Cyrodiil delves!).

Skyrim solved some of these problems quite well. Granted it's not an MMO, so they have more options. And also Skyrim did a few things not so well. But let's take a look.

• Thanks to mob scaling, you constantly have a challenging combat experience. I don't believe mob scaling would be the answer, though. As soon as I had my character overpowered (around level 40) everyting became ridiculously easy and I slowly lost interest.
• But I had some great fights in Skyrim. I remember one of the early Dragon fights. The dragon caught me unawares, I didn't have enough potions or good enough gear, but because I didn't want to come all the way back I had to kill him. I think it took at least 30 reloads until I had finally figured out how to beat, by using the few potions at the right moment and changing my gear mid-fight. Boy was that fun! People love this. Why do guilds spend days and days to figure out on how to beat a dungeon? If we had this kind of challenge on random fights, wow, that would be fun!
• The gear in Skyrim is level-free and you can upgrade it with mats. Of course you can't upgrade one type to another (no elven to daedric, f.e.) but you could stick with your carefully crafted set for a few levels by upgrading it as your crafting levels increased. That was fun!
• I loved and still love Skyrim's "Dungeon Clear" sound. Hearing that is so satisfying. This feeling is part of why I play these games. You spend 2 hours in a dungeon, exploring, sneaking, fighting, dying, reloading, and then finally you hear that sound and find a big master chest. BAM! That is fun! In ESO you run into a public dungeon, fight your way through and find the same mobs on the way out. And the instanced dungeons are missing the reward at the end. There is no cool sound (like you get in Skyrim for killing a dragon), you just kill the boss and talk to the npc and get your reward. No fanfare, nothing.

So to compare the two:

• ESO's combat system is a lot(!) better. Much more dynamic. The skills are great and well balanced and animated. Going back to Skyrim, where you can only do two things without changing something via the menu, is like going back to the Stone Age.
• But Skyrim creates a much more immersive experience. In Skyrim you don't feel rushed by the world around, being constantly over- or under-level for your quests, your equipment and the mobs around you. In Skyrim you really get the feeling that you can do whatever you want, when you want. In ESO, you constantly have to worry about the level of your quests and your equipment. Sometimes I just want to breeze through the main story of a zone and come back later to do the side quests. Sometimes I want to do it the other way round. But I can't really, because the game forces the quest progression on me. I want to feel happy about reaching a new level, and not feel stressed, because now I have to go craft again and finish those quests that I haven't done yet.

What to do?
I have a few suggestions on how to solve these issues. These mostly revolve around making the game more horizontal and less vertical.
@ZOS_MattFiror‌ @ZOS_PaulSage‌

• The most radical approach I can think of is to introduce a "power cap" at level 20. This means that after level 20 you effectively reach endgame. You would still gain more skill points, so there will be a horizontal progression, but you will not become significantly more powerful. Level 20 is a good pick because it is rougly when you reach the main city in the second zone of each alliance, and it also fits well with the existing progression system - Level 10: Cyrodiil, Level 15: Weapon Swapping, Level 20: Endgame. This solution really offers benefits for pro players and hobby players. The pros reach endgame quickly and can now compete in PVP and endgame PVE while still being able to diversify their characters. And the RPG players get an open world beyond level 20 where they can do everything they want, how they want and when they want. Also this allows to award powerful endgame gear for beating the post level 20 bosses.
• A less radical approach would consist of keeping the current vertical progression for the zones' main stories, but bumping up side quests throughout all zones. For example: Let's say you have 20 side quests in zone 1. Make 4 of them level 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 each. If you are level 10 in that zone you simply can't do the side quests (and kill all the monsters) by yourself. You can either do them with a group of friends (encouraging players to group:-) or you can come back and do them after leveling up (encouraging players to re-visit old previous zones). You leave it up to the players, so that they can play the way they want. Either way, Tamriel will feel much more like an open world.
• I love fixed monster levels. A troll should be hard to beat. Make all trolls in the game level 50. So at first you simply can't beat them. And that's ok, because your character starts out as a gimp. Eventually you can kill him in groups of 15, 10 or 5. And eventually, once you reach level 50, you can take him on alone. If you are good. It's just terrible for immersion if there is this terrible monster and you come back a few levels later and are suddenly able to one-shot the thing. And then you go back to your zone and see the same monster and you can't beat it alone. Btw. Skyrim had the same problem. That's why I don't like mob scaling.
• The most terrible thing about ESO's leveling system is the existence of hidden damage and mitigation modifiers. It's fine if I can't beat monster XY because I don't have enough magicka/stamina/health. So I level up, get better gear and come back. But now I come back five levels later, and I instead of being slightly better, I hardly take damage and kill the thing with a few blows. Why? This is terrible.
• Allow players to upgrade their equipment within the same material. I'll be happy to craft a new steel armor set once I learn to handle steel. But for god's sake let me upgrade my level 4 iron armor to level 12. I don't want to do a crafting marathon every 2 levels.
• Immersion: Introduce spawn camps for mobs, so that they don't respawn where you kill them, but instead run back from their camp after you kill them. That's much more immersive.
• Allow quests to be backwards repeatable. That means the following: You have a standard, non-repeatable quest. You do it once and you can't do it again. But if another player has this quest still open, he can invite you to the quest and you can do it with him. You will get mob xp but not the quest xp or reward again. So you can do the quest again if you get invited, but you can't find it again and you can't get double xp. This functionality can be integrated in an immersive way by packaging it as a memory. Once you accept the shared quest, there is a short animation and a flash of light and now your character remembers the quest he has already done. It can also be packaged as traveling back in time.
• Immersion: Add dialogue for quest bosses, make them harder to beat and play a fanfare when group dungeons are beat.

Skyrim and ESO share one core problem: How to distribute monsters, quests and equipment levels such that the content is fun and challenging but not frustrating? Skyrim uses dynamic scaling, ESO uses a statically scaled system. And here is the problem: Both need to be well balanced. This balancing is a lot of work and is impossible to get right. What a hassle!

There is a much better, much simpler way.

• Create a huge world, filled with monsters of levels 1-70, distributed through all zones in the world.
• Let your players level from 1-50.
• Let them find their own way through this world. Let them get smashed to pieces by a level 50 mob when their character is still young.
• Let them decide how to beat the content, it should be their decision to either group up or level up.
• Help players find their way by creating level-specific quest lines through the content jungle and help them measure their progress by letting them know which areas they still need to beat, but don't take them by the hand and lead them all the way through.
• Don't force players to grind or farm to be able to reach endgame. Let them reach endgame quickly and then allow them to diversify their character. Reward players with vanity achievements for beating content with lower level, gear or group size than average.
• I promise you, players will love you to death for giving it to them!

It's probably too late now. But the game I described above is the Tamriel Unlimited I would like to play on my XBox.

Syntse

Was bit of TL;DR even though read some of the beginning... on topic itself.

I'm sure new players will look that wow this looks nice. Then they slowly start to notice that it is not Skyrim. Like people did when all started. Next thing is that they got advertised that play with your friends. So they try to do quests with friends and will face the issue still not fixed that they are phased out of each other and actually cannot play with friends.

Lordstarfox

As a new player i can relate to these:

• I recently started over with an alt, I am now at lvl 25. I am mid zone 2 and I have only done 50% of the quests from zone1. These are all now out of date and don't give me xp any longer. Im constantly 5-7levels above the content,i would probably be higher level,but i think im getting reduced Exp (also stopped using maras ring because it was basically useless to me and was eating valuable ring slot). Scaled quests were godsend, didn't progress on mainstory much (did until lv 20 or so) before lvl 45. To be honest im not sure how they can change this without making leveling too grindy. Reduced quest exp doesnt sound too good.
• To make matters worse, my quest log (limited to 25!) is full, so I am likely to abandon them and that is a terrible experience. Not fun but frustrating. I do every quest anyways,i just don't get much out of them.
• And then there is all the hacking around with the small inventory Not much to add to this. Hopefully provisioning change will help a bit.+pets and trophies not taking space. Should also get bit better once i finish researching my crafting traits,i seriously have like 40 items waiting in my inventory/bank (stupid timesink)
• All the mobs are so easy to kill. + hidden damage and mitigation modifiers (higher levels mobs have WAY increased miss chance, and ONLY because you are lower level). Me being overlevel probably has something to do with the easy mobs,but i think they are still too easy
• Set pieces are really one the coolest things in the game. Unfortunately they are next to useless prior to lvl 50 (I mean the dropped sets). Why? You level much faster than it takes to find these set pieces. I feel like crafted sets are pretty useless during lvl's 1-50 as well,you outlevel them so fast that there isnt much point upgrading them.
• In ESO, you constantly have to worry about the level of your quests and your equipment.

I feel like ranting,so one more.
Generic quests and too easy puzzles.
Every quest feels the same and there are only few memorable quests. For puzzles you basically read a book that is conveniently located next to puzzle and click the buttons that book tells you to, some kind of riddle or lore reference would be nice. In skyrim (since this topic seems to be comparing ESO to skyrim) you at least had to think a bit (and that is fine).

4th button was one of the constellations that wasn't mentioned in the book, NPC even told me that i had to choose carefully and read the book nearby.
Well,quests are still better than in lot of games,but they could be improved greatly.

Syntse wrote: »

Was bit of TL;DR even though read some of the beginning... on topic itself.

I'm sure new players will look that wow this looks nice. Then they slowly start to notice that it is not Skyrim. Like people did when all started. Next thing is that they got advertised that play with your friends. So they try to do quests with friends and will face the issue still not fixed that they are phased out of each other and actually cannot play with friends.

Didn't run into too much trouble myself, probably because i play exclusively with my friend. Some (2-3 so far out of 100) quests bugged ( i guess this is what you prefer as phasing out) and we had to retake them. And during some of the quests progress wasn't shared,so we had to do everything twice (for example gather twice the resources).
Hopefully ZOS takes all this into account when designing new quests.

spoqster

Lordstarfox wrote: »

I feel like ranting,so one more.
Generic quests and too easy puzzles.
Every quest feels the same and there are only few memorable quests. For puzzles you basically read a book that is conveniently located next to puzzle and click the buttons that book tells you to, some kind of riddle or lore reference would be nice. In skyrim (since this topic seems to be comparing ESO to skyrim) you at least had to think a bit (and that is fine).

This problem would also be addressed with my solution - at least partly. ZOS can't go back and rewrite all those quests. But if the world were more open and would not force you to do the quests when you have the right level, then it would be much less annoying. In this system you could simply leave the boring quest behind - for now - and come back later when you don't mind doing it. Another problem solved simply by providing a more open world.

daneyulebub17_ESO

The WHOLE problem with your ideas for the game is... once a game goes F2P (or P2P) they invariably become LESS challenging, to keep the short term players from quitting out of frustration. The game becomes easier, and easier--a face roll. They would NEVER risk anything that would reduce the quantity of players (the less skilled, the better) from hanging about as long as possible, staring at that blinking STORE button. One of the MANY reasons Free to Play kills games in the long run.

Tapio75

Oh... If only this game would have truly been Skyrim with friends it would have been best game ever..

But sadly it is just a Skyrim skin with rather general themepark MMO gameplay.

Naturally they could change it over time but since they want more profit than truly a game true to their former games... Oh well..

Do not get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with profit... I would just love to see a game developed by people who just want to bring out a new game that is not branded an MMO but a true TES online.

Tapio75

Sorry but i forgot to say that i like your ideas, many of them are similar to what i wish for and asked in the beta for the first time.

Let us hope that they will do something in this way.

One thing that would drastically improve game for me at least, is if our characters would scale to content they are in the similar way they scale to Cyrodil..

With this, i could finally start playing a Nord and start from Windhelm and go from there..

Make the whole world as one open world like in WOW or LOTRO for example and i could at last, make an adventurer who just travels across Tamriel, selling small shiny things from my backpack..

Give us minigames like horse racing you talked about.. Give me sailing ships to start sailing around Tamriel and found small islands to adventure.. I would love to start with small skill and slowly learn to sail a great trade ship with my friends..

Expand questing in the way that when you reach level cap, you dont have to change faction but you can continue to aid your own faction from that point..

Remove levels and replace it with oncoming Champion system, only remove account wide points so that Champion system will work as characters progression..

Mandragora

I think Skyrim was more immersive because it was more realistic - in ESO you have bandits and spirits next to each other with a village just behind a corner and it doesn't bother them.
I had problem with levelling - I did quests only, I didn't spam kills and I was always around 3 levels under the mob levels.
My solution was to make different kind of quests fitting to roleplaying or different kind of playing style, so it would encourage alting.
So there would be plenty ways how to reach lvl 50 you could choose from and it would be fun - not random quests in random zones with no pattern to follow and you have to do all of them with every alt to be able to level up.

Valencer

spoqster wrote: »

• I recently started over with an alt, I am now at lvl 25. I am mid zone 2 and I have only done 50% of the quests from zone1. These are all now out of date and don't give me xp any longer.

I think a lot of players coming from Skyrim or similar won't try to 100% every zone in the game. I've had a couple of friends (Skyrim fans) try the game before and they tend to cherry pick what they do. Generally just enough to stay at-level for the general area they're in. Exploring and doing some stuff that looks cool.
I mean, you weren't really expected to completely finish all of Skyrim's quests.

So I don't think it's that much of a problem. It only really becomes an issue if you're dead set on 100%-ing every zone immediately (I know I am)

MissBizz

They did mention all new content would be scaleable. seems to be something brought up in this thread quite often. I personally am torn with the idea though. I like having the "hard" and "easy" areas, but at the same time I have not been able to explore Craglorn at all due to running multiple toons and just not being at the level yet. My concern with scaling is how it actually works, mostly in a group setting, with others that are not my level.

I do like your ideas and it just seems they wanted a bit of both audiences and therefore had to make choices at points.. They couldn't have it both ways.

RSram

I believe that all of the main quest lines have delves that scale to your character's level.

Yes, the leveling is too quick; i I easily reached level 10 in the starter zones and then reached level 20 in the following zone. Currently, I have a level 20 dragon knight in Auridon and still have several quests, a public dungeon, and one world boss left. I'am usually five levels ahead in each zone.

The solution to out leveling armor, weapons, and other items is simple:

Think outside the box! Don't put level limits on item!

Use the character's skill level to set the level of the item; for example, I find a legendary heavy armor chest plate that gives me 260 armor, and 100 health , but because my character only has a heavy armor skill level of 20, I don't get the full 260 armor protection, but only get 104 instead; so as my heavy armor level increases so the my armor protection. This can be done for ALL items in the game. So once you purchase or craft a high value item, it can be used by anyone of any level, but not with the same effect.

A simple ratio formula can be used to adjust the item's value to the player's skill level. Using the previous example your get:

Adjusted Value = (260 Max Armor Value * 20 Armor Skill) / 50 Max Armor Skill
= (260 * 20) /50
= 5200 / 50
= 104

Using the same formula on the health buff, we get 40 health, so when a player with an heavy armor skill of 20 wears an armor rated at 260 with a 100 health buff, the armor is down graded to his skill level of 104 armor and 40 health.

This concept in theory would eliminate the level requirement to use an item, and adjust the item to the player's skill; so your ability to take full advantage of an item increases as your skill XP increases in that particular skill set.

This would change how items are crafted; for example, when crafting heavy armor, instead of the using different metals for each level, the different metals would just change the armor rating, not the level rating.

Ourorboros

Umm......seem to recall that there were so many complaints about leveling too slowly in the beginning that they changed the game so it no longer begins on starter islands.....you have to go back there on your own. As far as the leveling goes, they had it right and changed it to satisfy complainers. Oh well, matters little to me. As long as I'm having fun, I don't pay that close attention to your level of detail, and take whatever comes my way.

UrQuan

spoqster wrote: »

[*] I recently started over with an alt, I am now at lvl 25. I am mid zone 2 and I have only done 50% of the quests from zone1. These are all now out of date and don't give me xp any longer.

I could be wrong, but I thought the quests still gave you XP when you've out-leveled them, you just don't get any XP from anything you fight that you've out-leveled. I'll test this tonight.

spoqster wrote: »

[*] Set pieces are really one the coolest things in the game. Unfortunately they are next to useless prior to lvl 50 (I mean the dropped sets). Why? You level much faster than it takes to find these set pieces. Let's say you find your first piece at level 17, the second at 19 and so on. By the time you get to lvl 24 you only have 4 pieces. And then you are outside the level drop range for that set. Useless. And frustrating.

Yeah, the only dropped set pieces it's worth trying to grab while leveling are the jewelry ones - and that's just because you can't craft your own jewelry sets, and the set bonuses are often worth keeping them for several more levels rather than replacing the jewelry with higher level stuff.

spoqster wrote: »

[*] The gear in Skyrim is level-free and you can upgrade it with mats. Of course you can't upgrade one type to another (no elven to daedric, f.e.) but you could stick with your carefully crafted set for a few levels by upgrading it as your crafting levels increased. That was fun!

It would be nice if there was some sort of way to upgrade existing gear to a higher level through adding mats to it. A new crafting passive in each crafting skill line that allows it, perhaps. The balance for this would have to be thought out carefully, though, because otherwise it would devalue tempers. Maybe something like you can only upgrade it to the max level of that type of material, and each 2 level upgrade costs 50% of the basic materials to make a new piece, along with 1 temper of the same quality as the quality of the item (so if it's gold quality you can only upgrade it by spending some mats and a gold temper, if it's purple you need to spend mats and a purple temper etc).

UrQuan

Mandragora wrote: »

I had problem with levelling - I did quests only, I didn't spam kills and I was always around 3 levels under the mob levels.

I'm always surprised when I hear people say things like this. With all of my characters I don't grind, I don't try to kill everything I see, I don't necessarily do all of the world bosses, dolmens, or group dungeons (although I do some of each of them as it suits my whim at the time), I don't PvP. At least 90% of my game time is just doing quests and exploring. With every single one of my characters (and I've got 16 characters I actively play) by the end of the first full zone (Glenumbra, Stonefalls, or Auridon) I'm out-leveling the mobs and quests by about 3 levels, and that continues up until VR.

UrQuan

Valencer wrote: »

I mean, you weren't really expected to completely finish all of Skyrim's quests.

Wait... You weren't? Oops. I played Skyrim wrong

UrQuan

MissBizz wrote: »

They did mention all new content would be scaleable. seems to be something brought up in this thread quite often. I personally am torn with the idea though. I like having the "hard" and "easy" areas, but at the same time I have not been able to explore Craglorn at all due to running multiple toons and just not being at the level yet. My concern with scaling is how it actually works, mostly in a group setting, with others that are not my level.

Yeah, I've been thinking about what they've said about scaling the new content. I'm kind of of the opinion that some of it should be scaled, while some of it shouldn't. That way there's always some content that remains at your level, and some that's just meant for lower levels (so people who are having trouble with content can over-level it and then complete it - hopefully learning how to better use their skills in the process and preparing them for the scaled content), and some that's just meant for max levels.

Alternately, each DLC could be set to a particular level, and when you travel to that zone you select whether you want to play it at that level or scale it to your level.

As an aside regarding your Craglorn concern: maybe a Craglorn questing guild night? I've got VR characters in 2 alliances who haven't done anything in Craglorn yet due to needing to group with others in order to even attempt it (trying to solo Craglorn content as a VR1 or even a VR5 is tough).

spoqster

UrQuan wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

[*] The gear in Skyrim is level-free and you can upgrade it with mats. Of course you can't upgrade one type to another (no elven to daedric, f.e.) but you could stick with your carefully crafted set for a few levels by upgrading it as your crafting levels increased. That was fun!

It would be nice if there was some sort of way to upgrade existing gear to a higher level through adding mats to it. A new crafting passive in each crafting skill line that allows it, perhaps. The balance for this would have to be thought out carefully, though, because otherwise it would devalue tempers. Maybe something like you can only upgrade it to the max level of that type of material, and each 2 level upgrade costs 50% of the basic materials to make a new piece, along with 1 temper of the same quality as the quality of the item (so if it's gold quality you can only upgrade it by spending some mats and a gold temper, if it's purple you need to spend mats and a purple temper etc).

Exactly what I was thinking! It's so simple and doesn't devalue the mats much, since you would upgrade more often than currently. This would open up the option to use purple and golden gear as soon as you hit voidstone. And most importantly, it saves so many trips to these damn remote crafting locations.

DDuke

Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim...

Did any of you actually play the other Elder Scrolls titles?

I believe that dumbed down turd called Skyrim is actually responsible for most of the bad things in this game (e.g. lack of attributes & console-like gameplay).

technohic

I think they could do it much more simply by

1. just having the entire zones scale to level. Tweaks still need to be made there though

2. Having a more drastic day and night cycle. Or maybe its my laptop, but in Syrim the sky doesn't just get dark; the entire area Im wandering around feels darker

3. Leave the current NPCs alone, but add some wandering ones that are hostile or not to you based on quests or maybe if you are a vamp/WW or not. Have them react to some of the other NPCs that are in the game. Don't make it scripted. I have ran into the scripted ones but its still static even if a bit cooler to run into than your average NPCs. Thinking about towns folks hiding as a troll is rooting through their garbage or eating their sheep.

4. Change said wandering NPCs based on time of day. You kind of have that now with the things that turn you vamp and werewolves, but again; non-static. It will make the environment feel alive.

Actually; thats probably not that simple but they don't really need to touch the current content much.

Robbmrp

spoqster wrote: »

It's probably too late now. But the game I described above is the Tamriel Unlimited I would like to play on my XBox.

The game you describe in the OP was exactly the game I was hoping for when I first heard about ESO. Sadly, it isn't even close to that. I hope that ZOS management and developers read this post and take the time to implement most of the suggestions you made into ESO's future.

If Tamriel Unlimited was going to bring these dynamic changes, ESO would have NEVER needed to go B2P. That's the game I would gladly pay monthly for without a second thought... EVER..... I'm betting that most of you would as well.

ZOS, Do you want to offer the BEST MMO to date and a cash cow? Get rid of the Crown Store, turn Tamriel Unlimited into Skyrim with Friends. We KNOW that you can do it IF you choose to....

MissBizz

UrQuan wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

They did mention all new content would be scaleable. seems to be something brought up in this thread quite often. I personally am torn with the idea though. I like having the "hard" and "easy" areas, but at the same time I have not been able to explore Craglorn at all due to running multiple toons and just not being at the level yet. My concern with scaling is how it actually works, mostly in a group setting, with others that are not my level.

Yeah, I've been thinking about what they've said about scaling the new content. I'm kind of of the opinion that some of it should be scaled, while some of it shouldn't. That way there's always some content that remains at your level, and some that's just meant for lower levels (so people who are having trouble with content can over-level it and then complete it - hopefully learning how to better use their skills in the process and preparing them for the scaled content), and some that's just meant for max levels.

Alternately, each DLC could be set to a particular level, and when you travel to that zone you select whether you want to play it at that level or scale it to your level.

As an aside regarding your Craglorn concern: maybe a Craglorn questing guild night? I've got VR characters in 2 alliances who haven't done anything in Craglorn yet due to needing to group with others in order to even attempt it (trying to solo Craglorn content as a VR1 or even a VR5 is tough).

Thanks for the suggestion, but having people to go with is not the reason I have not started Crag. I enjoy questing and have done the silver zone (meanwhile leveling another toon to VR2) and am now working on getting a 3rd toon to 50. If I really wanted to I could go in underlevelled with friends, or just focus on that one toon and be there in no time. Its really a choice made by me. I'd love the check out Crag but just want to do other things at this time

Faulgor

New DLC content like Wrothgar and the Clockwork City will be scaled to your level. Plus, once veteran ranks are removed and level 50 will be max, silver and gold content will all be 'flat', i.e. you will find the same (or no) challenge in all 10 zones after finishing the mainquest.
It's not exactly what you describe, but it will certainly open up the game more than it currently is. Once you reach level 50 (which is fairly quick) by playing through your 5 home zones, the game is basically open - 10 more zones, Craglorn, and at least Wrothgar and Murkmire.

Merlin13KAGL

Problem now is that it just went from "Skyrim with friends" to "Skyrim and friends."

(Check the souvenir shop at the door to your left.)

spoqster

MissBizz wrote: »

They did mention all new content would be scaleable. seems to be something brought up in this thread quite often. I personally am torn with the idea though. I like having the "hard" and "easy" areas, but at the same time I have not been able to explore Craglorn at all due to running multiple toons and just not being at the level yet. My concern with scaling is how it actually works, mostly in a group setting, with others that are not my level.

I do like your ideas and it just seems they wanted a bit of both audiences and therefore had to make choices at points.. They couldn't have it both ways.

I am not a huge fan of scaling. It's good for the instanced dungeons, but it is not the best solution for the over world. First of all it's quite hard to do well in an MMO, and also it doesn't cater well to different player skills. Unless they introduce difficulty settings it's too hard or too easy for most players. And most importantly, I think monster strengths should be a bit more flat. I hate it if they recycle the same monsters at different levels. I'd prefer it if all trolls in the game were level 40, and all mudcrabs were level 1, and all daedra were level 50. That way the monster type actually means something. You see a troll, and you instantly understand its strength. Also it's great to grow your character in a way that in the beginning a mudcrab is a challenge, and then a deer is a challenge and so on. But when you go back to the mudcrab after a few levels it will always be a one shot kill, and you will not suddenly meet a lvl 50 super mudcrab. :-)

You can always achieve any degree of difficulty by adding more monsters of the same type. You need a challenge wall for a level 40 character but you want to use level 30 mobs because of the story, then you can just place 8 level 30 mobs.

spoqster

Faulgor wrote: »

New DLC content like Wrothgar and the Clockwork City will be scaled to your level. Plus, once veteran ranks are removed and level 50 will be max, silver and gold content will all be 'flat', i.e. you will find the same (or no) challenge in all 10 zones after finishing the mainquest.
It's not exactly what you describe, but it will certainly open up the game more than it currently is. Once you reach level 50 (which is fairly quick) by playing through your 5 home zones, the game is basically open - 10 more zones, Craglorn, and at least Wrothgar and Murkmire.

I realize that the Cadwell zones will be flat/open once the vet ranks are removed, and they will introduce a horizontal progression system with the Champion System. I think that's a great way to handle endgame content and I am looking forward to it.

The reason for my post, however, is that I think the 1-50 game can be made a LOT better than it currently is, simply by adjusting mob levels and without adding content. I believe implementing my suggestions will make the game much better and will multiply their earnings.

spoqster

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

The WHOLE problem with your ideas for the game is... once a game goes F2P (or P2P) they invariably become LESS challenging, to keep the short term players from quitting out of frustration. The game becomes easier, and easier--a face roll. They would NEVER risk anything that would reduce the quantity of players (the less skilled, the better) from hanging about as long as possible, staring at that blinking STORE button. One of the MANY reasons Free to Play kills games in the long run.

I do share your fear. But one of the beautiful aspects about my model where mobs of different level are spread through all zones is that you don't have that problem. There will always be easy and hard content to choose from and people will be able to pick what they want to do. The casual players can just level up and only fight mobs their level and the more challenge invested players can slowly approach more difficult mobs as they get better.

Let's say you're level 15 and you finally managed to defeat a level 15 bear by yourself. The next thing you will try is to defeat two level 15 bears by yourself or a level 20 snow bear. And since in my model there are monsters up to level 70 in the world and the player can only reach 50, there will always be challenging content. Now if they also appended the achievement system so that it awards you with titles or other status symbols or gear if you beat higher level monsters, this system will allow for almost unlimited, player skill based gameplay. And this gameplay in no way discourages solo or group play. It's completely open to the preferences of the players.

Mithe

Lordstarfox wrote: »

Generic quests and too easy puzzles.
Every quest feels the same and there are only few memorable quests. For puzzles you basically read a book that is conveniently located next to puzzle and click the buttons that book tells you to, some kind of riddle or lore reference would be nice. In skyrim (since this topic seems to be comparing ESO to skyrim) you at least had to think a bit (and that is fine).

4th button was one of the constellations that wasn't mentioned in the book, NPC even told me that i had to choose carefully and read the book nearby.
Well,quests are still better than in lot of games,but they could be improved greatly.

Actually most of the puzzles in skyrim involved looking at the Claw and copying the order, or looking behind an object at a wall, and copying the order.

Lordstarfox

Mithe wrote: »

Actually most of the puzzles in skyrim involved looking at the Claw and copying the order, or looking behind an object at a wall, and copying the order.

After some thinking and searching i think you are right,there were only couple with some unique mechanics. Well then, in that case this could be excellent place for ESO to shine. Lots of players seem to have complained how easy the puzzles were in Skyrim.

purple-magicb16_ESO

Forget Skyrim with friends - I want ESO with benefits!

TX12001rwb17_ESO

why do people think ESO is skyrim with friends? not sure if anyone noticed this but the game is more like Oblivion then Skyrim.....

1. Many animals that are in ESO which were both in Skyrim and Oblivion sound like the Oblivion versions

2. Oblivion's music in a lot of areas

3. Vampire's more or less resemble the Oblivion ones with the appearance changing if one does not feed

4.Cyrodiil seems to be the main focus of attention just like Oblivion

5. A storyline involving the Amulet of the Kings just like Oblivion

6. ESO very much resembles the Oblivion Crisis only diffrnece is instead of Mehrunes Dagon you have Molag Bal and instead of Oblivion Gates you have Dark Anchors and instead of Mankar Camoran you have Mannimarco who incidentally is also in Oblivion.

7. ESO has Oblivion's Lockpicking

I can go on....so in truth ESO is actually more Oblivion with Friends then Skyrim with Friends.

DDuke

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

why do people think ESO is skyrim with friends? not sure if anyone noticed this but the game is more like Oblivion then Skyrim.....

1. Many animals that are in ESO which were both in Skyrim and Oblivion sound like the Oblivion versions

2. Oblivion's music in a lot of areas

3. Vampire's more or less resemble the Oblivion ones with the appearance changing if one does not feed

4.Cyrodiil seems to be the main focus of attention just like Oblivion

5. A storyline involving the Amulet of the Kings just like Oblivion

6. ESO very much resembles the Oblivion Crisis only diffrnece is instead of Mehrunes Dagon you have Molag Bal and instead of Oblivion Gates you have Dark Anchors and instead of Mankar Camoran you have Mannimarco who incidentally is also in Oblivion.

7. ESO has Oblivion's Lockpicking

I can go on....so in truth ESO is actually more Oblivion with Friends then Skyrim with Friends.

Skyrim attributes, Skyrim combat (well, this one is not necessarily a negative), Skyrim UI, Skyrim skills (no athletics/acrobatics etc), Skyrim mentioned in pretty much every developer interview.

Yep, "Skyrim with Friends", especially after the B2P cash grab.