[PAX] Dark Brotherhood Round Table Transcript

Paulington

Hey everyone!

I know most people were not able to attend the PAX East event and myself included would love to have known what was said, thanks to @Dominoid and his recording that is possible but not everyone can listen so my partner (@JasminaChillibeaner) and I have transcribed the audio for you guys to read. There may be a mistake or two in which case we apologise, just point it out and we will correct it! We may have gotten a speaker wrong here and there but often it's hard to understand exactly who is speaking, apologies to you guys if we did! Thanks to @ZOS_GinaBruno for hosting a great Q&A. .

For formatting, the questions are numbered and the speakers are:

RL: Rich Lambert @ZOS_RichLambert.
MF: Mike Finnigan. @ZOS_Finn.
HP: Heather Powers.
JC: Jared Carr.
JS: Jeremy Sera. @Jekerl.
LS: Lawrence Schick. @Lawrence_Schick.
UK: Unknown speaker.
QA: Question Asker, used for follow-up questions.


Q1: It's very exciting that it will be on the PTS but what about console players? They don't have a PTS.

RL: You don't. Part of that is our console partners don't support that. And so that'd very hard to go through that approval process, it takes a while. We needed to iterate on it as quickly as possible.
HP: If we could, we would!
RL: Absolutely.


Q2: What the removal of Veteran Ranks will do to currently owned VR level gear.

RL: The current gear that you have will be converted to Champion Points. So a VR14 piece of gear will changed to CP140 gear. If you are a player that stopped playing before CP were introduced and you are VR14 without the CP required to equip that gear then we will give you the CP required. You will always be able to wear the gear that you have currently which I think is a really important thing.


Q3: With the VR removal are you going to make older sets such as the Aetherian Archive/HRC Trial sets scaled up to what would have been VR16 now or are they going to be not the best?

MF: So we want to keep the loot drops that happen in those Trials the same as the level. If it drops at VR12 because the mobs are VR12 then the gear will be around Champion Rank 120 or so. That being said because SO is being upgraded (or scaled) that gear will drop at maximum champion point.


Q4: Can you give us an example of the size of the zone coming with Dark Brotherhood in terms of how many delves and world bosses there will be?

RL: In Dark Brotherhood? The overall land mass is bigger than TG as we wanted to really stetch things out and make it feel like there is more space. I think the number of delves/world bosses is the same as Thieves' Guild.


Q5: Is it going to be as large as Wrothgar is or is it more like a snakey-vertical-exploration zone like Hew's Bane?

RL: It is not as big as Orsinium but it is bigger than Abah's Landing.
LS: Part of the reason for that is like in Thieves' Guild there will be missions associated with the DB that take you out of the area of the Gold Coast. So it's not just Gold Coast missions and you will be going all over Tamriel "solving problems".


Q6: Is the DB going to have its own skill line like Thieves' Guild?

RL: So, it does have its own skill line. A big part of that skill line is the Blade of Woe. A lot of the executions that you saw were using the Blade of Woe.
QA: So, I should start saving up my skill points now?
RL: Or you can run around and find a bunch more.


Q7: So let's say my characters are all goody-goodys because I'm in the minority. Is there a lot of stuff for me to do in Dark Brotherhood without playing a different role?

RL: Without playing a different role? Without killing people?
MF: All the people you kill are bad people.


Q8: I just wanted to know what you could share on the Blade of Woe?

RL: The Blade of Woe? It is a tool that gets given to you by the speaker when you first join the guild. Mechanically the way it works is that it's a synergy.


Q9: Since you just said that there will be missions taking you out of the Gold Coast and I am a big Argonian fan is there going to be some more lore towards Shadowscales?

LS: There is a bit more lore towards Shadowscales revealed in this upcoming content but I will not spoil it. Tis not about the vanilla Dark Brotherhood (nor the liqorice DB) this is about the basic DB and Shadowscales are a thing unto themselves that we will explore in greater detail another time. So we have not done all the DB stuff yet.


Q10: One of the things going into this update is poison making, what are the mechanics of poisons and could you give some examples?

RL: Yeah, so, poison making is an extension of alchemy. The way it works mechanically is that if you want to make a potion you use water but if you want to make a poison you use oil. So all the mixing and matching of various combinations are built into the system already. One of the things I'm really excited about is there are definite ways to start to drain resources from other players in PvP which changes the game play up a bit, so it's a really complex system.


Q11: One of the things that I really wanted to see in ESO was the PvP Justice System and I was wondering if there was anything specific that you discovered during your balancing that makes it entirely impossible forever doing this or is it maybe there might be some way to figure out how to do it at some point?

RL: So, nothing's impossible. Right with the justice system the PvP portion of it specifically there are a lot of edge cases. We have a lot of really creative players who run around in Cyrodiil and when you see what they're doing and how there doing it and y'know we have to be very careful that we don't break what we've got already. PvE portion of the justice system is really popular and everyone loves it and changing that, well, I've heard a lot of suggestions like just let players opt-in well as soon as you do that the less scrupulous players start to play with that and find some loopholes and so we decided that rather than go down that road we'd focus our efforts elsewhere. But nothing's impossible.


Q12: So, the mechanics of poison if you are playing a race with an innate resistance to poison is the player-owned poison going to be treated the same way as poison from a monster or will there be a reduction in the resistance as far as PvP?

RL: Umm, I don't know off the top of my head. I know that the snakeblood passive in the Alchemy line actually has an effect on poisons as well so my assumption is that it does but I haven't tested it personally. That's a question I can go back and ask Wrobel.


Q13: Um, craft bags. How much stuff can I stuff in it?

RL: A ***-ton.
LS: Using a technical term!
QA: So like, my entire bank is food which I would love to clear up because I have one character which I have to hold the maps you get at the beginning of the game and so I have to relog a lot which means I'd love to be able to use my bank for other things. Is there a limit?
RL: There is a limit, it's a really really really big number. I think it's something like 42-billion or something like that. It's insane. I am sure someone will figure out a way to fill it completely but it's unrealistic!


Q14: In the future will there ever be smaller scale PvP? Either arenas or something set up where we can actually train if you suck like I do?

RL: Yep, it's something that we've talked about publically that we will be doing. Unfortunately I can't tell everyone when but we are working on it right now.


Q15: In regards to housing is there anything you can share about guild or personal housing? What direction you intend to go in?

RL: So, right now the team is actually building the editor for how it's going to work and we're establishing the permissions system so we're a way off from nailing all those things down so I don't want to commit to what it will be right now because we have to iterate on it.


Q16: With the are removal of VR can you tell us how Veteran zones and Craglorn will be handled?

RL: That's a very leading question! Open-ended. I would like to do something with Craglorn but that won't be there for Dark Brotherhood however we are converting the Gold and Silver zones over to Champion Points as well or rather changing the balance in there. You go through the first few levels of CP really quickly and you earn them at a different pace compared to silver progression so we are rebalancing this.


Q17: Um, stamina balance changes were mentioned. What are the plans for that? I have always played a stamblade even from launch.

RL: So, there are a bunch being made. Wrobel is not here and he is the one that knows the most about it but an example I can give is with the Fighter's Guild we are the FG skill-line more on stamina because the Mages' Guild is more focussed on Magicka. So we're doing things like that.


Q18: Can you use poisons and potions at the same time? Or if I use a potion will I have to wait until my timer runs out to use a poison?

RL: Poisons are equipped in a different slot than in your quick slot.


Q19: So I have two questions, first of all for players that are the supernatural persuasion will there be any unique execution options, say if you are a vampire for example? Second question are there any new player interactions that are coming with this DLC?

MF: The assassination stuff from the Dark Brotherhood is exclusive to the Blade of Woe.
MF: No, I don't think so.
RL: Define player interactions?
QA: In PvP for example.
RL: Assassinations are purely DB, you won't get to kill other players outside of PVP but we are making some changes to the Imperial City, we are putting district capture in so that is going to offer a big change there and incentivize people to go back there. We've added some new things to the Tel Var merchants also.


Q20: I got two questions. First one is for stuff like costumes, will we eventually be able to dye them? Second question, I have ESO+ since it came out on consoles but for some reason I have to contact support to get my Crowns. Will this be fixed?

HP: Dying costumes? Maaaaaybe. He's not allowed to confirm or deny that we will allow you to dye costumes.
RL: How about "/lurk"?
RL: Crowns on Xbox? We are working with Microsoft to fix this issue.
HP: It's an Xbox known issue that we are working hard and very closely with Microsoft to take care of as soon as we can.


Q21: So from the posted articles we had a pretty good idea what was happening in Q1 and Q2, is there anything you can tell us about Q3 and Q4 without giving away everything?

RL: I'm looking at Heather because every time I say something she shoots daggers at me.
HP: We can't say anything just yet about Q3 and Q4 but there will be a lot of cool stuff coming and I am really looking forward to engaging the community more than we have in the past and if you are a superfan coming to stuff like this you will know stuff first and early and be able to work with us on it.


Q22: So how is crafting going to work with VR removal? How are stats going to scale on armour, can I craft CP 500 gear as that would be gamebreaking in certain cases.

RL: So, you won't be able to craft CP 500 gear right off the bat. We're going to cap it right now at around 160 which means current level, we wanted to get through this conversion process, make sure it all worked and then go crazy.


Q23: Okay, I guess a couple of poison related questions. First you had mentioned they are based on oils rather than waters, are the existing reagents still being used for that? Are there any additional passives? Is it going to be based on the old Skyrim where you poison a weapon? As long as that poison is equipped does it effect the use of that weapon?

RL: Yep, I am pretty sure there are additions to the Alchemy skill line.
JS: There is actually a new slot right next to your weapon and you equip it right into that slot and then as it processes the poison it takes the stacks.
JS: The way the setup is working is that there is an equip slot for Bar 1 and an equip slot for Bar 2 so you can have different poisons on each bar but it's there and it's equipped which is treated like equipment so you can't swap it over in combat.
JS: It's similar to the way weapon enchantments work now that the poison isn't hitting every single time but procs like an enchantment does.


Q24: Can the poisons eventually be exhausted when they are equipped?

RL: Yep, the poisons have charges.


Q25: When we have to kill someone in the DB do we have to use the Blade of Woe or can we design the way we're going to go about killing them ourselves?

JS: Uh, it depends on the quest. In general you do not have to use the Blade of Woe but in a number of quests it is a bonus rather than a requirement.


Q26: What factors do you consider when deciding to scale down difficulty of dungeons?

MF: So, we actually think a lot of these decisions are data-driven as well as feedback driven. We get feedback from people saying this is too hard or not too hard and then we got to the data to decide and we take a look to see how many players are accepting the quest how many players are abandoning the quest, how many players are starting but not able to complete and we go through this process. We have target numbers that we wish to hit for these values and so if 0.1% of the population is able to complete a dungeon that took us quite a long time to do that's not the target number want. We want to get more players involved in doing those dungeons and so we look at those kind of factors when deciding how or when to reduce difficulty.


Q27: Are crafting bags just for ESO+ members?

RL: Yes.


Q28: Okay so if you are like me and forget to renew your credit card and happen to miss the date it expires what happens to the stuff in your crafting bags and your sub lapses?

RL: You can't put anything into the bags but you can take stuff out as required.


Q29: My question is PvP related. I would like to know what is your opinion on the outcome of the Vicious Death set?

RL: What is my opinion? I think it's really effective and I think that what we intended it to be hit the mark. It might be a little strong but overall it's pretty cool. I do think that we looked at proxy det and how that works or scales and it is really strong on that initial burst even on one player so we are going to look at that but overall it's pretty cool.


Q30: Do you guys have anything planned in that same field for the stam builds?

RL: We have a lot of stam changes coming up including stamina based sets.


Q31: I have the problem where we want to do all of the unbelievably amazing content that you do but we have the problem that we are now overlevelled for almost all of the content that we play and with the new DLC content coming out where you get battle-levelled it is challenging so have there been any discussions about letting you scale your player down to the content so you can still gain XP in a way?

RL: I don't love scaling down. But you have a really good idea. Scaling the existing content that's a good idea.


Q32: How far off do you think we are from seeing text chat on consoles?

RL: We're working on it right now. I've seen the design and I know the UI team has a first cut of it so we are close! It's not for Dark Brotherhood though.


Q33: Could you elaborate a bit more on the district capture system in the Imperial City?

RL: I really wish Wheeler was here. You can capture each district individually much like you capture resources in Cyrodiil and they provide buffs to you whilst you are in there. They also provide respawn points.
JS: So you could have different factions owning different parts of the city.


Q34: Is there any plans currently to introduce more playable races?

RL: Playable races? No.


Q35: When you guys as a creative team are going about developing new DLCs how much do you pay attention to what other MMORPGs are doing in terms of what you guys want to add? Do you guys pay attention to what does or doesn't work in other MMORPGs or forge your own path?

RL: I think you take inspiration from everywhere. I play MMOs like crazy and other types of games. I love going to Flash game sites and seeing what they do. You have to do that in order to be a good developer.
MF: I think when we do stuff for Trials and group content people think we just pull from group related stuff but we don't. We take inspiration from all games, single player and sport games and think "How can we use this to reward the people using our content?" and so we take inspiration from everywhere.
LS: But we also listen particularly hard to our own community because they are the ones who are closest to our heart so we do take from everywhere but you guys come first.


Q36: Do some of the DB quests challenge players to come up with creative ways to complete teh quests and take out enemies?

JS: There are multiple methods for completing the goals in a number of the quests especially when it comes to the repeatables and it is much more up to you how to complete them.

Q37: For the Dark Brotherhood, if you get all your gear and then you go into PvP, can you assassinate an actual player?

RL: No.
QA: So there’s no assassination?
RL: Well that depends how good you are. I’ve seen some streams and some videos where they get blown up almost instantly. The Blade of Woe is purely for PvE.


Q38: I was just wondering if you guys are planning any particular Daedric Lord-themed crafting style such as Malacath and Trinimac, are there going to be Hermaeus Mora or particularly a Molag Bal set?


LS: We work with Concept very closely, in fact with all the art groups that collaborate work with us and we work way out in advance on new crafting styles and new armors. Weird-ass Daedric stuff is very popular so at some point you’re going to see more weird-ass Daedric stuff.


Q39: Can you confirm or deny whether or not we’ll be seeing my friends in the Morag Tong? A particular friend by the name of Naryu Virian. Will you be killed by Heather if you say yes or no?

RL: We can neither confirm nor deny.
HP: I don’t actually know the answer!


Q40: There are a couple of map inconsistencies, such as the fact that Imperial City has somehow been turned thirty degrees and that Skyrim, Eastmarch specifically, kind of cuts into the portion of Morrowind that contains Blacklight. Do you plan on addressing that in the future?

JC: I think they address that a thousand years in the future, don’t they?

LS: As far as borders and things on maps, maps are lore just like everything else in the Elder Scrolls. Maps are to a certain extent represented by how people in the game perceive their areas so borders are a thing of question and not everyone has the same answers, so borders shift. Over time there may be some changes to the displayed maps that you see for gameplay purposes but there are lots of different maps of Tamriel and they don’t all lay over each other perfectly in the same way that our world does not. Imperial City though, that’s all Gerard’s fault.


Q41: As far as weird-ass Daedric *** to wear is fairly far out, how about some weird-ass Daedric quests like Daedric shrine quests. Is that anywhere in the future?

RL: Not in the short-term.
QA: Is it being considered?
LS: The Daedric Princes and their cults are central to the stories of the Elder Scrolls and will have central stories in the future as we go forward.


Q42: They’re not gonna be playable, are we gonna see stuff like the Snow Elves or maybe a dwarf here or there?

LS: You should come back at 5 o’clock.


Q43: I’m a musician and I’ve gotta tell you, one of the things that I’m impressed about is just how awesome the music is so kudos. How are you going to go about coordinating the action and the music together, can you let us know a little bit about what’s the same and what’s different?

JC: I think we’re gonna go with soft jazz. That spells Dark Brotherhood, I think.
RL: Our Audio Director over there is working on some new stuff, he’s always thinking up something new every DLC so you’re gonna get some new music.
LS: Not just new toots, he’s very very dedicated to making music work like what’s happening in-game, that’s key to his purpose.
RL: He actually did an ESO Live where he talked about some of the elements musically that he added to Thieves Guild. It was fascinating because sometimes we take him for granted because he’s doing music all the time but to see some of the stuff that he adds, it’s great.


Q43: Are there any plans to do anything with the Whiterun area?

JS: That’s not on our short-term plans, eventually we would like to return to Skyrim because there’s lots of fun stuff we haven’t done there.


Q44: Any chance we might see a no-IC access campaign with a lower maximum number of players per faction? Potentially to escape some of the performance issues?

RL: I would rather fix the performance issues than lower the cap on the number of players in there. We’re addressing those issues right now, we’re kind of attacking it at two angles; we’re attacking it from the latency, or the server performance side, we’ve got a pretty big fix for optimisation going in for how we manage giant lists of data and target sets, to make that a lot more efficient, and then we will talk a bit about the client side and framerate issues.
JC: When we talk about performance there is a clear distinction between latency and framerate, framerate is on the client side. The first change that we made to address issues was moving strictly to DX11. We’ve had support from both DX9 and DX11 but neither were optimal because we were supporting both. That’s why we shifted to exclusively supporting the DX11, optimising that code. We do have another bugfix that’s going in on the next live push, which is May 2nd, and that is going to address the framerate issues some people have been having where you hit a low framerate and just stay there. We’re going to get some better performance on the GPU with the DX11 change and now that we’re on DX11 the client graphics engineers feel like they could now take advantage of that and do something additional, off the grid, in the future. Further, we think we can also move some processes off the CPU onto the GPU.


Q45: I know you said before a bit that we’ll see a little bit of the Shadowscales, will we see anything from the Nightingales?

LS: The Nightingales are strictly 4th Era. They do not occur in the 2nd Era.


Q46: Will Craglorn dungeons ever be added to the Group Finder?

RL: We actually have plans for Craglorn as a whole and it’s a ways off so I don’t wanna go into too much detail on that.


Q47: I know that in Elder Scrolls after a battle with the Akaviri, I was wondering if any other inhabitants of Akavir will make a cameo?

LS: That would be a spoiler. I don’t think we can go there!


Q48: Do you have any timeframe for the console DLC release at all?

UK: Just the PTS on Monday.
RL: It’ll be shortly after we announce the launch date for PC.


Q49: With the removal of Veteran Ranks, how will that affect the different campaigns in Cyrodiil? Will there be different Champion Point caps?

RL: Last time Wheeler and I talked about this there was going to be a no-Champion Point campaign and a Champion-Point campaign. I think we decided on a 49-point campaign but for sure there’s going to be two rule sets.


Q50: I have a bear mount - have you guys thought about doing any other mounts like a llama, a panda bear… an elephant, a flying mount?

LS: No flying mounts! But otherwise, players love exotic mounts.
JS: There will be a new tiger coming with Dark Brotherhood.


Q51: With the Blade of Woe and stuff, are we gonna see more of the weapons come out? Maybe more of the gods and do their quests to get their weapons?

LS: We need to see how it goes over and what the players like and don’t like about it and we can figure out if we can give more.


Q52: Do you have a plan for adding more veteran dungeons beyond “Yes, we want to add more veteran dungeons”?

JS: Yes, we have a plan… but I can’t say. There’s no veteran dungeons coming with Dark Brotherhood (and that’s about up to where we can say) but yes, we are going to add more dungeons for sure. If you’re saying taking the existing dungeons and making veteran versions, we have plans.


Q53: Any plans to adjust the Maelstrom drop rates?

MF: Yes.
RL: There's some changes with Dark Brotherhood. Read the patch notes on Monday.


Q54: I have played console and PC but I was wondering why is there no in-game voice chat for PC?

RL: Partly because we made it specifically for the consoles and part of the reason because there's a lready really good options out there for PC.
QA: They aren't universal though and people in dungeons rarely talk and I don't like that.
RL: You're right they aren't universal but not right now.


Q55: What is this about hats?

RL: Hats!?
MF: They go on your head!
JS: We've added hats.
RL: It's another way to customise your character.


Q56: Character customisation is coming some time this year, is that going to be the same UI as the original character creation or will it be increments of Crowns for each change?

RL: There will be a system by which you can customise your character. But the system is not done. It is being implemented r ight now. You will be able to do things like wear a hat, other costumes, different skin and that kind of thing. You will be able to recustomise what you look like.


Q57: I heard balance changes for VICP/VWGT and I really like the difficulty they're at right now. Are they getting easier or harder?

MF: We are reducing the power a little but of both normal and veteran ICP/WGT/COA and this goes along with an earlier question of what goes into these decisions and just really we took a look at the data and what people were doing wasn't hitting the numbers we wanted. We want more players to complete this content so we made the decision to reduce the power. Now that being said you guys should definitely play it it's not like we've taken a hatchet and dropped it 25%.
RL: It's still hard!
MF: Small incremental changes are what we've made and they go better than sweeping 15% reductions.


Q58: Is there anything about the changes to traits? Could you shed some light please?

RL: We have done a pass on the traits in the game that aren't used very often like exploration. It was good while you were levelling but after that is was useless. So we've changed that so it also boosts your Champion Point XP as well. So it's a useful trait forever and not just during the levelling process so we've done that with all of the traits that you've told us about.


Q59: I'm one of those people that love everything matching my character. Is there ever going to be any new armour options for your mount?

RL: Horse armour!?
JS: We have no plans for a horse barber shop at this time.


Q60: Do you ever plan to add an unarmed skill line or new weapon skill lines?

RL: We're not adding a new weapon skill line for Dark Brotherhood. We have some ideas for other skill lines but we'll see where it goes. But you aren't the first person to ask, it's highly requested.


Q61: I hear that some games are going to be cross-consoles, are ESO thinking about implementing this?

RL: Literally everyone in the studio asked me that question when Microsoft made their announcement and the answer I gave them is that it asks more questions that it answers. We need to do our due diligence on there and find out what exactly that means and we need both of our console partners support this idea until we can start entertaining it. We are excited about it though.


Q62: About the TG PTS and the animation cancelling changes you trialled there, is that coming with DB or are you canning that for now?

JS: We've got to make sure that it's right before we get it out and there are a lot of edge cases with it and it has required a lot of testing so most of the improvements have been made and a lot of it is done but there are still a lot of things left to do like blocking.
RL: Right, blocking. For Dark Brotherhood we have got a few changes to how animation cancelling works in the PTS build and what we've done for the block stuff is make it under the old system where block still takes priority but all the other animation cancelling things are in there. We've also made it so whenever you block you see the effect on yourself and other players. We don't want to make gameplay feel less responsive and that's why we took it out.
JS: We don't want to break anything, so.


Q63: About battle levelling in Cyrodiil. If you can only go up to level 50 now have you adjusted how battle levelling works?

RL: Yes we've adjusted that, it takes into account Champion Points.


Q64: Why doesn't my Imperial steed blink?

RL: I think that question says more about you than it does about your horse!


Q65: Does the term Bloodspawn test mean anything to you? Right now the best way t otest DPS is going to Veteran Spindleclutch and fight it, do you have plans to add a combat dummy instead?

MF: God I would love to.
RL: Yep, I agree.
MF: I'll say that you're not the first person that has asked for that and brought that feedback. IT is definitely something that we're looking at that we really want to do.
RL: I will get in trouble for this but I want to put it in for housing.


Q66: Jewellery and spell crafting, are there any plans to approach these in the future?

RL: That I can talk about? I can't talk about it. I love the idea of spellcrafting and jewellery crafting though we have to do it when it makes sense.


Q67: As much as I love you guys I did not like it when you took all of my skill points away, are you planning on ever doing that a gain and if so can we opt-in or opt-out instead?

RL: We don't plan on mass-wiping player skill points again.
JS: It wasn't as popular as we'd hoped.

Nahz

I was really hoping to at least see veteran versions of existing group dungeons with this dlc. More monster helm options would be nice considering everyone is essentially pigeon holed into using specific ones. I can understand the theory behind min/maxing, but it's such a shame that competitive builds are so homogenized.

Solid_Metal

thanks for the work dude!

krees28b14_ESO

Q3: With the VR removal are you going to make older sets such as the Aetherian Archive/HRC Trial sets scaled up to what would have been VR16 now or are they going to be not the best?

MF: So we want to keep the loot drops that happen in those Trials the same as the level. If it drops at VR12 because the mobs are VR12 then the gear will be around Champion Rank 120 or so. That being said because SO is being upgraded (or scaled) that gear will drop at maximum champion point.


Sounds like the CP requirement will also bring along different stats on gear. Thus making old gear ... STILL... useless.

Kildayen

Thanks for sharing all that. Reading it has disappointed me though.

mrs_gibbs

New TIGER mount. Yesssss.

Ghrimn

Q7: So let's say my characters are all goody-goodys because I'm in the minority. Is there a lot of stuff for me to do in Dark Brotherhood without playing a different role?

RL: Without playing a different role? Without killing people?
MF: All the people you kill are bad people.

So, yeah... I guess that besides joining the Dark Brotherhood there isn't much else to do in this DLC. Which is bad for people who play a lawful character and don't want to join the faction.

JD2013

The only real disappointment for me is there being the same number of delves and world bosses as TG.

However I can't wait to start my long and healthy career as a contracted killer! Mwahahaha.

ThatNeonZebraAgain

krees28b14_ESO wrote: »

Q3: With the VR removal are you going to make older sets such as the Aetherian Archive/HRC Trial sets scaled up to what would have been VR16 now or are they going to be not the best?

MF: So we want to keep the loot drops that happen in those Trials the same as the level. If it drops at VR12 because the mobs are VR12 then the gear will be around Champion Rank 120 or so. That being said because SO is being upgraded (or scaled) that gear will drop at maximum champion point.


Sounds like the CP requirement will also bring along different stats on gear. Thus making old gear ... STILL... useless.

Agreed. They aren't really getting rid of the Vet System, just masking it into Champion Point system... This is exactly what I feared would happen. Step in the right direction, but down the wrong path.

Sotha_Sil

JD2013 wrote: »

The only real disappointment for me is there being the same number of delves and world bosses as TG.

Yup I am disappointed too but it depends what else there is instead. We'll see tomorrow I guess.

JD2013

Sotha_Sil wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

The only real disappointment for me is there being the same number of delves and world bosses as TG.

Yup I am disappointed too but it depends what else there is instead. We'll see tomorrow I guess.

Agreed bring on tomorrow!

Vaoh

I'm excited for this! The DB major update will be massive for ESO.

Rex-Umbra

I was so excited for removal of vet ranks but this new system sounds exactly the same under a new name.

ShadowHvo

The hilarious part is that the new system with champion points hardly changes the tons of complaints people had about Veteran Ranks.. I just wish they could just leave a level cap, instead of constantly having an increasing one.

Magdalina

So basically their answer to every meaningful/interesting question is "ohmygosh it's really cool and we really like it and we are (maybe) working on it but we can't tell you anything else except it's not coming with DB!^_^"

Awesome.

susmitds

I really liked of getting more options on set choice but that does not seem to be happening. So I will probably run the same thing, as every other stamina build.

WHY CAN'T ZOS MAKE ALL SETS TO MAX SCALE OR AT LEAST GIVE US A WAY TO UPGRADE THEIR LEVEL?

Abeille

I wish they would tell us more about Minotaurs.

I am happy that it seems that the hat goes in an additional slot instead of in the costume slot. I'm a little disappointed that dyeing costumes is still on the "that's something we want to do" stage, though.

shugg

Chanp pionts aint the same as vet ranks, champ points u will start getting at lvl 1 and they are faster to gain and not to mention all toons share, where as vet ranks started after 50 and took so much exp to gain - the point why people didnt like vet ranks was the grind.

Please dont start comparing the 2 like they are the same

MissBizz

Q67: As much as I love you guys I did not like it when you took all of my skill points away, are you planning on ever doing that a gain and if so can we opt-in or opt-out instead?

RL: We don't plan on mass-wiping player skill points again.
JS: It wasn't as popular as we'd hoped.

But it WAS popular.

Fun fact: I learned all the traits and never paid to respec my character to retrieve those skill points.

NewBlacksmurf

Thanks

Birdovic

ShadowHvo wrote: »

The hilarious part is that the new system with champion points hardly changes the tons of complaints people had about Veteran Ranks.. I just wish they could just leave a level cap, instead of constantly having an increasing one.

Yup, also my hope for old sets to be finally useful like back in the days, is - once again - crushed.

SantieClaws

Khajiit thinks she loves you for this thread!

Yours with happy paws
Santie Claws

ZOS_GinaBruno

Wow, thanks @Paulington! Just a reminder that we will have recordings of all the panels up on YouTube as soon as we can.

dpencil

It seems like the idea of world-wide scaling is the direction the game will eventually get to. At that point, I imagine all the gear will scale the way we were hoping it would with DB. Take the difference between the Sanctum and Hel Ra trials in DB. Actual work was put in to make Sanctum scalable based on champ level, i.e. the monsters will be harder for characters 160+ than for someone with, say, 60 champ points. That says to me that the way they built the vanilla zones and Craglorn originally is not something that can just automatically translate into a new fully scalable world. Hel Ra's monsters will be at the 120 champ strength no matter what the character has and thus have to drop gear appropriate to their strength. Going back through the old content also offers the opportunity to refine some elements that, after the experience they've gained, they can see better ways of making work. Of course trying to balance adding new content and features with this retrofitting process must be quite challenging and may need multiple dlc cycles to achieve.

Honestly, I think if they just announced that this was their plan and that the dlc's would only be of moderate size to accommodate for the extra resources dedicated to retrofitting, the community would be very understanding and less anxious to see huge dlcs being pushed through.

The first step would likely be the remaining trials and DSA, either seperatly or bundled with full Craglorn scaling. Additionally, either in tandum with or after Craglorn, we'd also get the remaining group dungeons to all have corresponding vet versions with new monster helms. Last would come the vanilla zones. This is all just speculation of course, but it makes sense to me based off of what we've seen so far.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Thank you for the transcript!

Awww, just a tiger mount? I thought they were going to do something new...

@Paulington I'm going to sig this thread, so more people find it. Yell at me if that's a problem.

jcasini222ub17_ESO

Thanks Paulington, this was a fun read. RIP my hope for Soulshine at max level but I'll keep dreaming. I'll be excited to see if scaling eventually 'goes wild' with gear once everything switches.

Seraseth

It makes sense they want to do the conversion with as few other scaling changes as possible first, to limit the number of bugs/unexpected issues. Then after the dust settles, then they can tweak around with scaling gear, and areas, etc to their heart's content.

bloodenragedb14_ESO

the vampire question i wanted to be asked didnt get asked, thats irritating

CyrusArya

One of the things I'm really excited about is there are definite ways to start to drain resources from other players in PvP which changes the game play up a bit, so it's a really complex system.

10/10. Super exciting implications for PvP of all scales. Can't wait to hit shield stackers with that "reduce stamina/stamina recovery" poison debuff. First PvP change in months that has me hyped up.

dimensional

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Thank you for the transcript!

Awww, just a tiger mount? I thought they were going to do something new...

@Paulington I'm going to sig this thread, so more people find it. Yell at me if that's a problem.

They are also doing something new, and they never said that it would be "just" a tiger mount that gets released. He simply mentioned that it would be coming. And I think it will be the Dro-m'athra tiger mount.

bloodenragedb14_ESO

Seriously, why didnt anyone ask about the changes coming to vampire gameplay