Official Discussion Thread for "The Season of the Dragon Continues with Scalebreaker and Dragonhold"

ZOS_SarahHecker

This is the official discussion thread for "The Season of the Dragon Continues with Scalebreaker and Dragonhold" blog article.

The Season of the Dragon continues throughout the rest of 2019 with two exciting new DLCs: Scalebreaker and Dragonhold!

Jim_Pipp

I'm really looking forward to seeing how Pellentine looks, I hope it is nicely distinct from the North.

Faulgor

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

I'm really looking forward to seeing how Pellentine looks, I hope it is nicely distinct from the North.

Well, I think that's either Senchal or Alabaster in the screenshot. It's slightly different but still very recognizable.
Just wondering what's up with the Imperial banners.

TheRealPotoroo

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

I'm really looking forward to seeing how Pellentine looks, I hope it is nicely distinct from the North.

"Dragonhold brings a whole new zone to explore in Southern Elsweyr called Pellitine, a lawless wasteland impacted by a deadly plague almost 20 years ago."

allhailskippy

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

frostz417

Sounds fun and all but when are you going to fix the unplayable lag in cyrodiil or bugs that have plagued the game for months such as: stuck in combat, health desync, activity finder, BG’ matches starting with bugged lobbies with incomplete teams, or sliding on the ground after being hit with certain CC’s? Hmm

Delpi

allhailskippy wrote: »

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

It was my choice... oh my god! What I did!!! xDDD

redspecter23

allhailskippy wrote: »

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

Well in that case they can just replace the text.

"Including fan-favorate, INSERT NPC #2824 HERE"

Problem solved!

Fata1moose

Can't wait to see more of the season of the--YEAHHHHHH WOOOOOO

RaddlemanNumber7

I'm not a native German speaker, but isn't that dragon name a bit suggestive "Maarselok"?

code65536

allhailskippy wrote: »

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

Blame the necromancers.

RMerlin

allhailskippy wrote: »

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

Continuity went out of the window with One Tamriel sadly. I was leveling a new necro in Elsweyr, then I went to start on the main questline to get a few skill points, and had to rescue Tharn, despite the fact I had just spoken with him in Elsweyr the very same day...

One Tamriel will also break all kind of continuity where you used to meet certain NPCs in the early zones, and meet them back in later zone, talking about what happened when you first met, etc... Now, people can just jump right in the middle of the "storyline" progression, ending up with dialogs that make absolutely no sense to them. Think about characters like Darien or Naryu which you encounter in multiple quests over your progression through your faction.

This is very unfortunate for those of us who actually care about these kind of details, more than we do about being able to access 20+ different zones right as you start at level 1. I've never really be a big fan of One Tamriel because of this, and also because all the quest content is trivial to go through, being all adjusted for newly rolled characters (Craglorn being the only exception). You can no longer "adjust" your level of difficulty by going after harder mobs, or progressing more quickly than intended through zones.

To compensate for this, ESO needs some form of "level adjustment", where you could have higher risks for higher rewards (and also to avoid being bored by the repetitive overland combat where everything dies with 2-4 skill/spell casts).

I enjoyed going through Elsweyr on my new character because of the quests, but I think I played for over a week before I died for the first time (and it was probably when I went through my third or fourth dragon fight). There was zero gameplay challenge in going through the quest lines. The only time I ever felt challenged was near the end of the zone questline (with the two dragons - I won't say more to avoid spoilers). And that was while wearing only mismatched looted gear, I wasn't even "pimping" this new character using gold or crafted gear from my other characters.

code65536

RMerlin wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

Soooo. What happens if you chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main storyline quest? Might make "including fan-favorite Sai Sahan" a tad challenging

Continuity went out of the window with One Tamriel sadly. I was leveling a new necro in Elsweyr, then I went to start on the main questline to get a few skill points, and had to rescue Tharn, despite the fact I had just spoken with him in Elsweyr the very same day...

One Tamriel will also break all kind of continuity where you used to meet certain NPCs in the early zones, and meet them back in later zone, talking about what happened when you first met, etc... Now, people can just jump right in the middle of the "storyline" progression, ending up with dialogs that make absolutely no sense to them. Think about characters like Darien or Naryu which you encounter in multiple quests over your progression through your faction.

This is very unfortunate for those of us who actually care about these kind of details, more than we do about being able to access 20+ different zones right as you start at level 1. I've never really be a big fan of One Tamriel because of this, and also because all the quest content is trivial to go through, being all adjusted for newly rolled characters (Craglorn being the only exception). You can no longer "adjust" your level of difficulty by going after harder mobs, or progressing more quickly than intended through zones.

To compensate for this, ESO needs some form of "level adjustment", where you could have higher risks for higher rewards (and also to avoid being bored by the repetitive overland combat where everything dies with 2-4 skill/spell casts).

I enjoyed going through Elsweyr on my new character because of the quests, but I think I played for over a week before I died for the first time (and it was probably when I went through my third or fourth dragon fight). There was zero gameplay challenge in going through the quest lines. The only time I ever felt challenged was near the end of the zone questline (with the two dragons - I won't say more to avoid spoilers). And that was while wearing only mismatched looted gear, I wasn't even "pimping" this new character using gold or crafted gear from my other characters.

Well, it's one thing to have problems resulting from not doing quests in the intended canonical order.

It's another to have problems that arise even if players do quests in the intended order.

In this case, it's really a matter of whether ZOS is going to canonize a particular ending of the main questline. It is possible that they could finesse this by some necromantic revival of Sai (which admittedly would be rather distasteful, given the nature of the main questline and his Redguard heritage) or some other form of deus ex machina.

RMerlin

code65536 wrote: »

Well, it's one thing to have problems resulting from not doing quests in the intended canonical order.

It's another to have problems that arise even if players do quests in the intended order.

True. They did a decent job in handling it with Darien in the Summerset chapter (although it felt a bit forced - but that book at the end was still nice), but I can't imagine how they could handle that with Sai Sahan in this case.

Sotha_Sil

I was expecting a bit more info. At least, last year we got some videos. Now, I don't feel excited at all.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

reform the ancient Dragonguard order

Wait, what? We met the Drake of Blades in Imperial City, and her buddy the Drake of Shields, and there was mention of a Drake of Crowns, and there was a fellow in the Emperor's Guide to Tamriel who was heavily implied to be an associate of theirs. Being a spy network, I could see a few isolated agents

like our buddy in Elsweyr, RIP Orlund!

thinking they were the last or one of the last few, but we the players know there are at least enough of them that they still bother with orders and reports.

It's impossible to reform something that's already formed!

Ravena

It's a wasted opportunity if they don't include the Red Dragon from Redguard in this dlc.

That dragon supposedly served the Empire out of self-preservation. His service could begin with Abnur Tharn.

Jayne_Doe

RMerlin wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Well, it's one thing to have problems resulting from not doing quests in the intended canonical order.

It's another to have problems that arise even if players do quests in the intended order.

True. They did a decent job in handling it with Darien in the Summerset chapter (although it felt a bit forced - but that book at the end was still nice), but I can't imagine how they could handle that with Sai Sahan in this case.

There were also other hints about Darien, starting with (I'm totally blanking on her name) wondering what happened to him after the events in Coldharbour and that there was no body. You encounter the alchemist, that was working with you and Darien in Glenumbra, in Wrothgar and if you talk with him at the end of the zone quest at the palace, you can ask him about Darien and he says he believes he's not dead. You also encounter the (still blanking on her name) in the Anvil Mages Guild looking through stacks of books in her efforts to locate Darien, as she believes he's still alive. So, it wasn't really that surprising to me that he showed up in Summerset.

But, I agree that they either have to find some way to handle Sai's sudden resurrection for players who chose him during the main quest or just leave it as a glaring inconsistency.

JadonSky

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

RMerlin wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

Well, it's one thing to have problems resulting from not doing quests in the intended canonical order.

It's another to have problems that arise even if players do quests in the intended order.

True. They did a decent job in handling it with Darien in the Summerset chapter (although it felt a bit forced - but that book at the end was still nice), but I can't imagine how they could handle that with Sai Sahan in this case.

There were also other hints about Darien, starting with (I'm totally blanking on her name) wondering what happened to him after the events in Coldharbour and that there was no body. You encounter the alchemist, that was working with you and Darien in Glenumbra, in Wrothgar and if you talk with him at the end of the zone quest at the palace, you can ask him about Darien and he says he believes he's not dead. You also encounter the (still blanking on her name) in the Anvil Mages Guild looking through stacks of books in her efforts to locate Darien, as she believes he's still alive. So, it wasn't really that surprising to me that he showed up in Summerset.

But, I agree that they either have to find some way to handle Sai's sudden resurrection for players who chose him during the main quest or just leave it as a glaring inconsistency.

Also in wrothgar you can find a note from Darien on one of the bookshelves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3rqtoy/spoilers_read_all_the_bookshelves_in_orsinium/

RMerlin

JadonSky wrote: »

Also in wrothgar you can find a note from Darien on one of the bookshelves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/3rqtoy/spoilers_read_all_the_bookshelves_in_orsinium/

That is awesome I never finished Orsinium personally for various reasons.

But that book at the end of the Summerset quest line had me grinning like an idiot at my screen. It's these kind of little continuity details that truly enriches the experience. Hopefully they won't screw it up too badly with Sai Sahan. We did have a Loremaster change recently, so who knows what kind of impact it could have on continuity throughout the game.

(that is not intended as an attack on M. Tuttle, more like a kudo to the amazing job Lawrence did all these years, while we still don't know yet what we can expect out of our new Loremaster).

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

There were also other hints about Darien, starting with (I'm totally blanking on her name) wondering what happened to him after the events in Coldharbour and that there was no body. You encounter the alchemist, that was working with you and Darien in Glenumbra, in Wrothgar and if you talk with him at the end of the zone quest at the palace, you can ask him about Darien and he says he believes he's not dead. You also encounter the (still blanking on her name) in the Anvil Mages Guild looking through stacks of books in her efforts to locate Darien, as she believes he's still alive. So, it wasn't really that surprising to me that he showed up in Summerset.

@Jayne_Doe Gabrielle Benele is the lady you're thinking of I believe.

Don't forget the bit in Cath Bedraud way back in vanilla Daggerfall Covenant questline where (IIRC) Darien got attacked by vampires with no effect and was weirdly resistant to the evil mists. They foreshadowed him being something other than a normal mortal human a loooong time before he showed up in Summerset.

TheNightflame

Still no mention of instanced pve content in dragon hold...

JobooAGS

I am curious as to how zos is going to deal with Sai. His story continuation isnt an issue if you sacrificed Varen like I did, but it will be interesting for those who sacrificed Sai.

Krym

RMerlin wrote: »

Continuity went out of the window with One Tamriel sadly. I was leveling a new necro in Elsweyr, then I went to start on the main questline to get a few skill points, and had to rescue Tharn, despite the fact I had just spoken with him in Elsweyr the very same day...

the continuity is still there. it's not zenimax' fault you played the content out of order. it's especially disingenuous considering the npc for the main story shows up right after the tutorial and you chose to ignore it till later.
sure, zenimax could lock you out of the content till you do all of cadwells + dlc + morrowind + cc + summerset + mm, but you can bet the minute they do you'll have people making a post why they can't play the content they bought.
so they give you a choice. you just decided differently.

RMerlin wrote: »

This is very unfortunate for those of us who actually care about these kind of details, more than we do about being able to access 20+ different zones right as you start at level 1. I've never really be a big fan of One Tamriel because of this, and also because all the quest content is trivial to go through, being all adjusted for newly rolled characters (Craglorn being the only exception). You can no longer "adjust" your level of difficulty by going after harder mobs, or progressing more quickly than intended through zones.

and by doing so break any quest continuity by skipping quests to have harder mobs. you said you actually care about these kind of details, how does that fit together? you can't have your cake and eat it too.
it's also like you forgot how it was before TU where veteran ranks made people quit in droves (while still being braindead easy) and playing together was a pain in the *** since you constantly had to restrain yourself from not outleveling your friends and other headaches.

scaling might not be the perfect solution (there isn't really any, so the point is moot anyway), but it sure as heck is an improvement to before.

RMerlin wrote: »

I enjoyed going through Elsweyr on my new character because of the quests, but I think I played for over a week before I died for the first time (and it was probably when I went through my third or fourth dragon fight). There was zero gameplay challenge in going through the quest lines. The only time I ever felt challenged was near the end of the zone questline (with the two dragons - I won't say more to avoid spoilers). And that was while wearing only mismatched looted gear, I wasn't even "pimping" this new character using gold or crafted gear from my other characters.

you are playing a new class that's strong to the point of OP in a game you know the in and outs of. of course it's easy.
overworld content was always easy, even with a complete mishmash build you could still do quests, the only difficulty was in the main story. scaling probably has made that a bit easier, but it's still it's own thing. a new player also won't have access to any champion points.

RMerlin

the continuity is still there. it's not zenimax' fault you played the content out of order. it's especially disingenuous considering the npc for the main story shows up right after the tutorial and you chose to ignore it till later.

The main quest line quests involving Tharn only show up once you reach a certain level (you get access to a new main quest every 10 levels or so if I remember). So even if you were to play it "the way it's intended to", in the order the quests are offered to you, you still would have met Tharn in Elsweyr before you ever meet him in the main quest line. The only way for these to make any sense is to reach level 50 outside of Elsweyr before starting Elsweyr.

and by doing so break any quest continuity by skipping quests to have harder mobs. you said you actually care about these kind of details, how does that fit together? you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Playing out or order and skipping content are two totally different things. In fact if you do skip content, the quests will take that into account, and they won't make any reference to the quests you skipped. ZOS actually took steps back then to ensure that quest dialogues still made any sense, as references to past encounters were only made if you did actually meet that NPC before. It's something they can't easily do now with out-of-order content, due to very large amount of potential variation in the quest order. With the previous level tiers, you could hardly skip two entire zones as the difficulty level would be prohibitive, and the majority of players would also rarely go back to skipped grey content, unless they are just doing it for the sake of completion. You'd have illogical quest dialogues only if you tried really hard to do things in the wrong order, including coming back to complete grey level quests.

you are playing a new class that's strong to the point of OP in a game you know the in and outs of. of course it's easy.
overworld content was always easy, even with a complete mishmash build you could still do quests, the only difficulty was in the main story. scaling probably has made that a bit easier, but it's still it's own thing. a new player also won't have access to any champion points.

It was definitely harder before One Tamriel if you were taking on either equal or slightly higher level content. Now, you don't even have the option of doing that higher level content to feel at least some level of challenge - everything is leveled to the bottom.

Anyway, the original complain (to bring back to this thread's topic) stands - ZOS will have to come up with some way to explain Sai Sahan's presence particularly for those who chose Sai Sahan at the end of the main quest line.

disintegr8

frostz417 wrote: »

Sounds fun and all but when are you going to fix the unplayable lag in cyrodiil or bugs that have plagued the game for months such as: stuck in combat, health desync, activity finder, BG’ matches starting with bugged lobbies with incomplete teams, or sliding on the ground after being hit with certain CC’s? Hmm

Basic economics - there's no money in fixes.
We'll also distract everyone from the current 'expansions' problems by promoting the next DLC as early as possible.

TheNightflame

@ZOS_GinaBruno any chance we'll get a sneak peak at this year's ability altering weapons (fingers crossed for a nice/meta-for-healers force siphon altering resto and weakness to elements altering destro) at quake con in july?

TokenIntellect

So, I'm confused. (Not really, but it seems nicer to pretend to be confused than to just be ticked off and disappointed.)

How can the new dungeon DLCs be "compelling stand-alone stories that tie into the Season of the Dragon?" They're either stand-alone or part of a year-long storyline.

It seems an awful lot like ZOS listened just enough to realize that half the expansions to their year-long event were excluding a significant segment of their player base— but not enough to actually give a flip. This way they get to say no one is missing anything if they don't want to make a team and do the dungeons. At the same time, they also get to say that anyone who does is getting this great story that "ties into" the SotD. And it is pretty clear that team play is on their mind.

"...two new dungeons for you and your team to conquer.."
"...pitting you and your team against Dragons like the ones you faced in Elsweyr."

It's also pretty clear they know that the people who will play the new DLCs aren't actually interested in the "stunning new environments, challenging battles, and compelling stand-alone stories" but need to be enticed by "powerful new items and unique collectibles as rewards." Well, maybe the battles, but the stories and the scenery don't seem like big draws for the dungeon DLC crowd.

Once again, solo and casual players are left out in the cold.

Thanks, but no thanks.

allhailskippy

TokenIntellect wrote: »

So, I'm confused. (Not really, but it seems nicer to pretend to be confused than to just be ticked off and disappointed.)

How can the new dungeon DLCs be "compelling stand-alone stories that tie into the Season of the Dragon?" They're either stand-alone or part of a year-long storyline.

Are you for serious complaining that an MMO doesn't care about solo players? It's a game designed to play with other people. If you're too salty to befriend 3 people, then perhaps you're in the wrong game.

And stand-alone means you don't have to play the storyline in order to know what's going on, not that you can do it on your own. The stories are related to the ongoing theme, but are separate enough that they don't directly affect each other.

While I agree that the typical dungeon running people don't give a damn about why they're there beyond farming gear. There are definitely those of us who do in fact give a *** about the stunning environments and story inside of them. Too bad you're so set on playing with yourself that you don't seek them out.

albesca

TokenIntellect wrote: »

Once again, solo and casual players are left out in the cold.

I play mostly solo and I'm not a hardcore players by any stretch of the imagination, but really saying that solo players are left out in the cold because half the DLCs in a year (but hardly more than 10% of the content released) are group oriented is a bit too much

NordSwordnBoard

Relax, it's Jai Sahan, his unmentioned twin brother. He just chills out at the Skooma plantation until the horn is needed. Working out the lungs.