Crossplay needs to be looked at more seriously for the health of ESO

M0ntie

I would love to have cross platform play.

I started on PS4 and moved to PC NA.
Players seem to be dropping off and in some time zones it is getting more difficult to fill trials.
The big barrier would be add ons on PC. ZoS should implement some of the most common ones on Console. Eg logs, combat alerts, mini map.
Theoretically Issues like resolving duplicate ids can be resolved. Eg. If there is a 5 digit id, change it to 6 digits reassign PC NA to have the same id with a 1 at the start, PC EU to have a 2 at the start etc and then commence the combined id allocation at 700001. Lots of room for mistakes tho.
I suspect tho that ZoS haven’t used ids to uniquely identify objects hence a merge may require a major rearchitecture and be unfeasible alas.
[snip]
[edited for minor bashing]

zaria

Twohothardware wrote: »

A lot of the big name multi platform game titles releasing today have moved to being crossplay enabled including Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny, ect. Is this being looked at for Elder Scrolls Online?

For me one of the biggest selling points of ESO has always been the PvP side but on Playstation numbers, especially during non peak hours, have really fallen off the last couple of years. The main Cyrodiil Campaign used to be full population on all three Alliances all throughout the day and now that only happens during a few hours prime time at night. The rest of the Campaigns are completely empty. I believe it's even worse on Xbox.

Having a large active player base improves the PvE aspects as well because with more players it's easier to find a group for any type of content you want to run regardless of your skill level. It also feels more like a social game when you enter well populated zones instead of zones where you're the only player there.

Have Zenimax made any official comments for or against crossplay in the future of ESO?

Call of Duty, Battlefield and Destiny and other shooters are not MMO's but instanced games.

Crossplay in ESO would probably require an server merge. who brings other issues. We all know how the game behaves then lots of people online, well this would now be the new default.

Yes it might be possible to do limited crossplay say for Cyrodil and battlegrounds as you play as one character there and its pretty instanced.
It would be pretty hard to implement however.

Twohothardware

zaria wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

A lot of the big name multi platform game titles releasing today have moved to being crossplay enabled including Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny, ect. Is this being looked at for Elder Scrolls Online?

For me one of the biggest selling points of ESO has always been the PvP side but on Playstation numbers, especially during non peak hours, have really fallen off the last couple of years. The main Cyrodiil Campaign used to be full population on all three Alliances all throughout the day and now that only happens during a few hours prime time at night. The rest of the Campaigns are completely empty. I believe it's even worse on Xbox.

Having a large active player base improves the PvE aspects as well because with more players it's easier to find a group for any type of content you want to run regardless of your skill level. It also feels more like a social game when you enter well populated zones instead of zones where you're the only player there.

Have Zenimax made any official comments for or against crossplay in the future of ESO?

Call of Duty, Battlefield and Destiny and other shooters are not MMO's but instanced games.

Crossplay in ESO would probably require an server merge. who brings other issues. We all know how the game behaves then lots of people online, well this would now be the new default.

Yes it might be possible to do limited crossplay say for Cyrodil and battlegrounds as you play as one character there and its pretty instanced.
It would be pretty hard to implement however.

Crossplay doesn't mean every person has to be together running on one server. ESO can create separate instancing in PvE and you might be say in Auridon instance #1 while your friend is in Auridon instance #2 and you have to group and travel to him. Alliances used to be separated by instances back in the day before they were merged.

blktauna

Probably still works that way, however, you are back to the same issue. the player on PC and the player on xbox have the same name... crash. There's noo way to resolve that. ell I ean there probably are with aliases etc but it will be inefficient and processor heavy.

Won't happen

Twohothardware

blktauna wrote: »

Probably still works that way, however, you are back to the same issue. the player on PC and the player on xbox have the same name... crash. There's noo way to resolve that. ell I ean there probably are with aliases etc but it will be inefficient and processor heavy.

Won't happen

Obviously if Crossplay was done there would be a database update to fix the issue of players sharing the same names. You would assign a unique identifier to each player in the game. If your characters name is "John Smith" it would be logged on the server as say John Smith @userID1234

This would not only enable Crossplay but it would fix the issue of naming your character for new players who come in and don't realize that every name listed publicly on the internet has been previously taken by someone on ESO lol. You could name your character whatever you want. You wouldn't need to use weird characters or invent names.

blktauna

You're a braver dev than I to want to fool with this archaic DB without knowing their current schema

Twohothardware

blktauna wrote: »

You're a braver dev than I to want to fool with this archaic DB without knowing their current schema

They've been talking these past couple of years about re-writing the code for ESO. I think they've backed off it recently but this would be another good reason to do it.

tomofhyrule

I think there's still a lot they'd need to iron out before they even think about this.

They've said over and over (and over and over and over...) again that ESO, unlike many other MMOs, was designed with a megaserver architecture. That means that everyone on the same megaserver can play together, but that also means that you can't cross megaservers.

We get people asking every other week for account transfers (which they've also said is not possible in the current structure). And that would just be to pull one account (and its associated references) out of one place and somehow hook it into another.

The only, only, time we've seen server transfers are when copying to a blank database. They did that for consoles before the console databases were spun up, and then they do it twice an update on PTS. It's not a case of "hey, you can get your NA and EU characters on PTS at the same time!"

In order for them to even start thinking about crossplay, they'd need to first make account transfers 1) possible and 2) seamless and without bugs. Then they might be able to look at crossplay between NA and EU on the same system. Then maybe they could pull Xbox and PC together, considering Sony'll have their own legalese there (and we all know how well Sony plays with others).

Note that all of that needs to be perfect first before they even consider going forward. If any one step creates a bug that deletes a character or their inventory (or someone's whole account that they spent loads of Crowns on...), well, I don't think that would go well for the affected party. As it is now... ZOS added an expansion to the game that ended up introducing a quest that breaks the ability for players to do any story quests (which is a large portion of the content), and now the latest update left that bug in, but also accidentally deleted the voice lines as well. And we're not scheduled to have another fix for an entire month, so that means that most questing is either figuratively or literally broken for a large percentage of the players (and Elder Scrolls fans are not generally the kinds to think "meh, I don't care about the lore and questing experience).

I do admire the number of people who are here who seem to know exactly how the ESO server systems work and explain to us how easy it would be to set it up. Might I suggest that you use that knowledge for good, and join ESO's team to get these gamebreaking bugs fixed first, and then you can directly work on merging the servers yourselves since y'all evidently know how to change the foundational code of the game without introducing any bugs at all.

I know I'd be perfectly open to crossplay if my game could work again and I still got to keep my screenshot addons. But forgive me if I doubt any merge would go as smoothly and seamlessly as you suggest.

Lumsdenml

Can you imagine xbox and ps players waking up on the first day of cross play and finding 1 Chromium Plating now costs 465,000 gold?

mb10

Stncold wrote: »

Nah I actually like ESO being one of the few games now where I'm not forced to play with consolers. Whenever crossplay happens console players always get some sort of built-in aid like aim assist or whatever that gives them an advantage over mouse and keyboard. Knowing ZOS they'd do something like buff the damage their abilities do or remove the healing reduction from battle spirit for them.

yeah because using your whole arm + mouse and a keyboard of over 30 buttons isnt an advantage over using two thumb sticks and a very limited number of buttons.
Not to mention all the add-ons, graphics and gameplay enhancers etc

PC players always seem to moan but have every advantage there is over console players

mb10

Can confirm PS EU non peak hours of PVP are really bad.

You'll wait over 15 mins for a battlegrounds game and cyrodiil is genuinely a ghost town on the main server.

Forget any other server too, theyre ghost towns even in peak hours.

Btw if you played ESO in 2015ish times, you'll know when an alliance was "full" it was MUCH more capacity than it is now. "Full" now is a fraction of what it used to be and makes the game seem busy

MashmalloMan

So many naysayers lol.. face it, cross play is the future of gaming. It's revitalized queuing systems for so many games and brought communities together. That can't be understated.

There is so many games that die out because of the snowball effect where their online player base can't support fast queue times, so people inevitably quit because the average consumer doesn't have 5-15 minutes to wait in a queue just to spend another 45 minutes with inexperienced players they were forced to play with due to a low population pool to pull from.

I for one would take all the "negatives" to get cross play so I can get better matchmaking and queue times.

- Economy? Whatever, it's already messed and needs a reset. More players to make and spend money.

- Guild traders? We've had 9 years of 2 zones and a base game worth of traders. There is plenty. The real issue is the fact that we're still using guild traders or should I say.. TTC because let's be real, anyone at endgame is using that, not running to each zone to roll the dice.

- Names? UserID's. I don't care if I see another character with Dragonborn, I purposely hide the character names in the first place because most people have 5-10 alts that I know. Allow each system to have 1 of each name.

- add-ons? As someone with 40+ add-ons, almost all of them are flavour and don't actually give me an edge in pvp. The biggest advantage was skill timers on our bars and that's base game now.

- keyboard and mouse advantage? NULL. I and many others prefer gamepad on PC. There is 6 skills, this isn't an FPS. The only class that receives a tiny advantage is Sorcs because Teleport + 180ing is easier on mouse. Easy fix, allow for higher gamepad sensitivity. I've never felt outclassed by keyboard/mouse in pvp or pve.

- boss mechanic alerts? ITS PVE. This is the least possible competitive pve game you can play. Learning mechanics and simply listening to the queues is not impossible and if you can't use that, why would it bother you if someone else could? That's already the case now on PC. Not everyone uses every add-on you do.

Tyrant_Tim

MashmalloMan wrote: »

So many naysayers lol.. face it, cross play is the future of gaming. It's revitalized queuing systems for so many games and brought communities together. That can't be understated.

Couldn’t say it better, the fact that we both agree on the necessity of cross-play in 2023, being that you’re on PC, and I’m on Xbox most of the time, speaks volumes about it.

The few vocal minorities trying to discourage the system, don’t represent the vast majority of players that would benefit from this proposed change.

Twohothardware

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Can you imagine xbox and ps players waking up on the first day of cross play and finding 1 Chromium Plating now costs 465,000 gold?

Console players would be rich when we sell our stashes to those mat starved pc players.

Tempering Alloy is like 2k on PS.

blktauna

A. There's nothing wrong with crossplay on a game made to take advantage of it. This is not one of those games.
B. Sorry I don't trust ZOZ to not screw this up horrifically. You might not care if all your stuff gets scrambled/deleted/dropped in someone eles table but I do.
C. I don't care about the ecomonic stuff but I don't think consoles would get what they think.

TaSheen

I wouldn't be happy with this. But of course I'm a minority of one, and my paltry subs aren't a blip on the radar.

Go for it. I'll never know how it works out - or doesn't. There's a point at which I'm just not..... interested..... in "today's gaming". And this is it.

ESO has given me years of fun. But this sort of thing is.... not my idea of a good time. *shrug* There's other things for me to do.....

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Just to defend M&K, my Logitech G13 keyboard and my 8 button mouse can out do a controller, imo, all day.


Also, as far as add ons, I have a lot, and none of them are considered cheating. They are QoL. Helping with crafting, better fonts, maps, tracking rare fish, etc. So saying "Mod cheating PC users" is a little unfair.

As for cross play, who remembers why console launch was delayed almost a year? Because Sony and Microsoft couldn't paly nice when it came to ESO. This was the real reason mandatory subs were dropped. Think they will play nice now? I don't.

Tyrant_Tim

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Just to defend M&K, my Logitech G13 keyboard and my 8 button mouse can out do a controller, imo, all day.


Also, as far as add ons, I have a lot, and none of them are considered cheating. They are QoL. Helping with crafting, better fonts, maps, tracking rare fish, etc. So saying "Mod cheating PC users" is a little unfair.

As for cross play, who remembers why console launch was delayed almost a year? Because Sony and Microsoft couldn't paly nice when it came to ESO. This was the real reason mandatory subs were dropped. Think they will play nice now? I don't.

They wouldn’t need to, Microsoft is partnered with Zenimax, so at the very least, both Xbox and PC could cross-play until Sony jumps onboard.

Maitsukas

Twohothardware wrote: »

Maitsukas wrote: »

Merging databases definitely causes the following 2 major issues:

• Shared character names
• Shared Guild names

How would you work around this?

Attach a unique userID to each player and all their characters names. I don’t know why character names are limited like they are to begin with. It’s like why is only one person on the server allowed to name their character “John Smith” when it could be “John Smith#userid1234” in the database.

Adding an UserID to a character name isn't a solution, since they have to meet the following criteria:

• At least three characters.
• Name cannot start with a space.
• Must end with a letter.
• No more than two of the same letter in a row.
• No numbers.
• No adjacent punctuation characters.
• Four hyphens, apostrophes, or spaces at most.
• No Invalid characters.

Twohothardware

Maitsukas wrote: »

Twohothardware wrote: »

Maitsukas wrote: »

Merging databases definitely causes the following 2 major issues:

• Shared character names
• Shared Guild names

How would you work around this?

Attach a unique userID to each player and all their characters names. I don’t know why character names are limited like they are to begin with. It’s like why is only one person on the server allowed to name their character “John Smith” when it could be “John Smith#userid1234” in the database.

Adding an UserID to a character name isn't a solution, since they have to meet the following criteria:

• At least three characters.
• Name cannot start with a space.
• Must end with a letter.
• No more than two of the same letter in a row.
• No numbers.
• No adjacent punctuation characters.
• Four hyphens, apostrophes, or spaces at most.
• No Invalid characters.

The criteria for adding a unique identifier to each player can be whatever they re-write the code in the game for it to be.

blktauna

LOL rewrite the code in the game, lol good one!

Twohothardware

blktauna wrote: »

LOL rewrite the code in the game, lol good one!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/617464/code-rewrite-server-re-architecture-is-there-any-update-on-this

A code re-write was already discussed to improve game performance.

blktauna

Twohothardware wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

LOL rewrite the code in the game, lol good one!

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/617464/code-rewrite-server-re-architecture-is-there-any-update-on-this

A code re-write was already discussed to improve game performance.

Please note the last post in that was Nov 2022. Also in their latest 'news' on the subject refers to this as multithreading and that it was not successful with no further information.

Marto

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The only, only, time we've seen server transfers are when copying to a blank database. They did that for consoles before the console databases were spun up, and then they do it twice an update on PTS. It's not a case of "hey, you can get your NA and EU characters on PTS at the same time!"

In order for them to even start thinking about crossplay, they'd need to first make account transfers 1) possible and 2) seamless and without bugs. Then they might be able to look at crossplay between NA and EU on the same system. Then maybe they could pull Xbox and PC together, considering Sony'll have their own legalese there (and we all know how well Sony plays with others).

Yep, this is pretty much what leads at ZOS like Matt Firor and Rich Lambert have said during some interviews. Account transfers between regions/platforms are still very unlikely to be coming anytime soon, but they are far more likely to happen than crossplay.

This sort of stuff takes years to figure. The only old MMOs that offer such services had to do it slowly, over multiple years.

I'm sure ZOS would love to have crossplay, and they don't disagree with any of us. But it's not a matter of how much players want it, it's a matter of how feasible it is.

GooGa592

No thank you to cross platform playing.

Twohothardware

I'll keep saying it that nothing they could change or add to ESO would make a bigger difference to improving the game than Crossplay. It would allow players that have moved to another platform to immediately pick back up where they left off, it would fill the Cyrodiil campaigns again which are empty outside of Gray Host on console, it would reinvigorate the economy by greatly increasing the players looking to buy/sell, there would be new competition to face in every aspect of the game instead of just the same players you're used to seeing at the top.

boi_anachronism_

No thanks. Not down for the economic explosion (and yes there would be one, if you understand basic economics you know this). Add-ons for combat give pc players a sizable advantage in certain areas. For trials they have on screen timers that count down to mechs, they require no call outs for example. A lot of the group play coordination that is required for console is unneeded on pc. They also have free mobile armories that work in trial to optomize better as just a few examples. Na.

Id love to see a console crossplay though. Just not pc. Pc is its own thing.

NuarBlack

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Overamera wrote: »

Didn't they say it's pretty much impossible? I've also heard one of the reason they don't wanna do is because of the difference in economy. For me that's a bad reason for not wanting crossplay. Every single console player I've asked would die for crossplay even if it would mean the economy being ruined. Myself id rather be in a server full of players than in a dead server in the cost of ruining the economy.

PvP on console servers may be dead in the sense of population, but PvP on PC servers is dead in the sense of server performance. Adding console players to the server load on PC would be disastrous, and not just for PvP.

Server performance is much better on PC; the reason PvP is dying is simply because it hasn't gotten any additions besides unfun set additions for about 4 years+

Yeah, infact pvp, died before Morrowind even dropped. The horse riding simulator that was cyro campaigns for the majority of players killed ESO as a pvp game for most players. BGs were too little too late. Also pvp on PC isn't much better the old Miats add on did its damage too.

Vrienda

I'm all for it but without addons it'd be hell for Console players.

loveeso

Twohothardware wrote: »

A lot of the big name multi platform game titles releasing today have moved to being crossplay enabled including Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny, ect. Is this being looked at for Elder Scrolls Online?

For me one of the biggest selling points of ESO has always been the PvP side but on Playstation numbers, especially during non peak hours, have really fallen off the last couple of years. The main Cyrodiil Campaign used to be full population on all three Alliances all throughout the day and now that only happens during a few hours prime time at night. The rest of the Campaigns are completely empty. I believe it's even worse on Xbox.

Having a large active player base improves the PvE aspects as well because with more players it's easier to find a group for any type of content you want to run regardless of your skill level. It also feels more like a social game when you enter well populated zones instead of zones where you're the only player there.

Have Zenimax made any official comments for or against crossplay in the future of ESO?

Yes, the game desperately needs cross-play (or at least cross-save as the first step)… the name issues can be easily solved as described in many other threads. I know it will initially cost ZOS since we will not be forced to pay more than once for the same content but in the long term it will pay off.