Studio Director’s Letter: 2025 & Beyond

Tommy_The_Gun

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign.

Damn. I guess I am lucky that I have "stealthed my way" in Cyro, avoiding all of this toxic sudo "want to be serious & competitive" PvP content to get every skyshard & gear set I could, while NB Cloak or Vamp Invisibility was still allowed lol XD
-S

On more serious note.... What about so called "Ball Groups" ? Every single player who ever touched Cyro will kinda confirm that same skill stacking (like healing) and synergy stacking in group environment is the main cause of bad performance in Cyrodiil. Besides, right now (aside from destroying performance), this is pretty much the only meta play-style in the game that was not nerfed nor at the very least addressed even once since the game launched back in 2014.

What is your take on this ? At this point, it is hard not to think that it might be some bias towards this type of play-style on the Dev team. Besides, did you considered that even if performance in Cyro will somehow be fixed, all it takes is a couple more "ball groups" to login to remove those performance again ? Cuz it will gonna happen. If you fix performance & return population cap to when it was, there will be simply more ball groups. Cuz it is a meta play-style that was not ever nerfed & the message so far is - it is nerf proof & will receive only buffs. Do you really want Cyro to be like this ?

JustLovely

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Welcome to everyone in the Elder Scrolls Online community! As the year is drawing to a close, I’m going to take some time to walk you through my thoughts on 2024 – and look ahead to 2025 and how ESO will be evolving to meet the changing needs of the community. 

...

I feel like most of these changes, as with most changes made in recent years have been more geared toward meeting the changing needs of ZOS, not the player base. As a PvP main, I feel like this has been the trend since pre 2020 and this sounds like a roadmap for more of the same.

I very much hope to be wrong on this point. But it's not as if we don't have years of data to form our expectations going forward either.

Tandor

I can't help but roll my eyes when I see some players stating that updating the UI, updating the older and completed zones with improved visuals and new content, adding a new Craglorn-style zone with increased overland difficulty generally, and laying out at last some concrete ideas for fixing the biggest problem in the game, namely Cyrodiil performance, are all clear indications that the game is going into maintenance mode! Really?

My first reaction personally was that the list of changes is actually a list of all the things that players have been asking for, so putting an end to the other regular complaint that the developers never listen to the playerbase.

I welcome pretty well all of it, subject to the following qualifications:-

1. Things like added UI features and increased overland difficulty need to be optional.

2. Announced intentions are one thing, delivery is another. I'm optimistic about the intentions, but let's see how the delivery pans out.

3. While I welcome the concept of experiments and listening to feedback etc, that requires a far greater degree of communication than we've seen hitherto. In particular, there needs to be far more effective two-way communication on the PTS forum.

4. I hope that the Seasons will offer a lot more than just a gimmicky name for yet another "Daily Golden Login Pursuits Endeavour Event" style content.

So in summary, it was a fascinating read, heralding a change in direction that promises a lot, but we'll see how well it is delivered and what the level of communication about it all is as it moves forward.

Zodiarkslayer

Finally! I, and many others too, have been saying this for years: seperate PvP and PvE!

Start with the Abilities.
Proceed with the sets.
Create a seperate login on a dedicated server.

This is the way!

Personofsecrets

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you for all the great questions so far, everyone. We are keeping a list to help inform what we need to answer and explain more later. And we will. One thing we do want to clarify today are the questions about seasonal content. Our plans are not to remove content such as quests, stories, and new areas like some other games do when a season is over.

Stating something plain and simple like "ESO has a long and bright future with many years to come" would go a long way during this time period where we see uncertainty in the game market and other studios going from one blunder to the next.

JustLovely

React wrote: »

Are these "pvp specific" skills going to be animation changes only? Are there plans to change the functionality of cross healing/shielding?

The comments regarding PvP gave me horrible flashbacks to those many months of painful experiments we endured a few years back with the only end result being a couple rounds of lowering the population cap.

Jaraal

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Why is PC's UI fixing being prioritized over console?

Rather telling, isn't it? Remember what they said about being unable to increase the housing item limits due to the restrictions of first gen console performance?

Interesting, indeed!

Tommy_The_Gun

JustLovely wrote: »

React wrote: »

Are these "pvp specific" skills going to be animation changes only? Are there plans to change the functionality of cross healing/shielding?

The comments regarding PvP gave me horrible flashbacks to those many months of painful experiments we endured a few years back with the only end result being a couple rounds of lowering the population cap.

I took part in those "experiments" and while most of them were horrible, one was really good. In one of those "experiments" they removed cross-healing & I think also heal stacking or something like that. The result was pretty much no ball groups were playing and also, surprise, surprise with ball groups gone - lag was gone. Game worked. It was more or less 2014 PvP Experience. Huge army vs army fights. No lag and no cheese... But oddly, despite player feedback, ZOS ignored this...

Juomuuri

Woah, I'm blown away by how cool all this is! I just wanna know if the "Seasons" are behind a paywall, or if they can be obtained for free within some time window when they're new? No other burning questions here.

edit: fixed a typo

JustLovely

DeathStalker wrote: »

So what I read is,
1. no more big content releases.
2. bigger focus on pvp.
3. make things harder.

If that is the goal, do not be surprised when the population of this game decreases even more. This game's content should be made easier, not harder. PVP should not be a primary focus ever. All I read from this is a disaster in the making. Please stop listening to the vocal minority or you will lose a lot more people.

When I think of the "vocal minority" I think of people who try to make the case that PvP should not be a primary focus for the end game player community.

Dithieon

Jaraal wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Why is PC's UI fixing being prioritized over console?

Rather telling, isn't it? Remember what they said about being unable to increase the housing item limits due to the restrictions of first gen console performance?

Interesting, indeed!

I would be happy if consoles could just get a mini map.

AzuraFan

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Why is PC's UI fixing being prioritized over console? Console does not benefit from add-ons. There are a large amount of fixes that people enjoy that massively improves the game that console never gets to benefit from. In addition, there are things that are improvements to the user experience that only pc gets for no discernible reason.

Addons aside, the PC UI is vastly inferior to the console UI. I see them both. I get the PC UI when I hit a key on the keyboard, even though I use a controller (which means I see the console UI most of the time). The PC UI looks like a game out of the 90s. Tiny font. Cramped interfaces. Just horrible. It needs an overhaul badly.

As for the rest of the letter, the seasonal content sounds promising. As someone who predominantly likes to quest, I like the fact that I'll get new content more regularly, rather than only once a year. I've been saying that I'd consider quests in existing zones new content, and I meant it. That includes the guilds too. I'm excited to see how this actually rolls out and how much we get each season. Hopefully it won't be overpriced.

Harder overland - I feel that more difficult overland is one of those "be careful what you wish for" things. It could really backfire in terms of the population. I'll wait and see how this is actually implemented. If overland turns into a slog, it'll be bye-bye ESO. I'm not interested in having to slog through mobs that take longer to kill just to get from A to B, or mobs that have annoying mechanics when all I want to do is get to the woodworking survey spot. But if it's just a slight uptick, or it's limited to wandering bosses that don't engage you unless you engage them (like the guys in Telvanni Peninsula), or if it's optional, then okay. So this is a wait and see how they do it item, but a very important item for me because I spend so much time in overland. If they get it right, great. If not, I'll exit the game.

Of course, the letter describes what ZOS intends to do in the best possible terms. I'll wait and see how it actually plays out.

Tommy_The_Gun

Juomuuri wrote: »

Woah, I'm blown away by how cool all this is! I just wanna know if the "Seasons" are behind a paywall, or if they can be obtained for free within some time window when they're new? No other burning questions here.

edit: fixed a typo

My guess it will be basically tiered season pass. Basic with ESO+ and additional behind another form of sub or payment, while Story DLC zone (most likely smaller than right now) will be at the end of they year. I don't think I like where this is going....

Jierdanit

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I look back on 2024’s content and updates, and am very satisfied with our story, content, and systems updates.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

We have been able to keep up with the times, make hard decisions and big changes when it was time to make them. Looking back on all the changes that have gotten us here, it is pretty clear that we have generally made the right decisions at the right times for our game.

Its always funny how every year these letters manage to act like ZOS has been doing a great job the whole time.
It would be much more believable if you would actually admit to all of the mistakes you still make all the time instead of acting like everything is perfect.

AlCiao

I will miss the giant new zones each year, as that's a highlight for me, but I'm also open-minded and excited to try out some of these changes.

That said, there's one thing I don't like. Please don't make overland content more difficult. Overland content is not meant to be difficult at all, but casual. I don't want overland quests to turn into a grind of wearing down hp-sponge enemies. And also remember that overland enemies aren't as easy to fight for brand new players, who don't know what they're doing and don't have thousands of champion points.

drip_fromtheinkwell

DeathStalker wrote: »

So what I read is,
1. no more big content releases.
2. bigger focus on pvp.
3. make things harder.

If that is the goal, do not be surprised when the population of this game decreases even more. This game's content should be made easier, not harder. PVP should not be a primary focus ever. All I read from this is a disaster in the making. Please stop listening to the vocal minority or you will lose a lot more people.

If by "make things harder" you mean, "require more than light attacking and sneezing on a major story boss to defeat it", then yes; I don't consider myself particularly sweaty, but after re-playing the base game on EU with no CP or sets... the boost to difficulty is much-needed. They don't have to make overland content nightmarish, and and the difficulty should be able to be toggled off, but having to use more than five attacks to defeat Mannimarco, or Molag Bal, or even the Dark Mane, makes for a more rewarding gameplay experience.

LalMirchi

Raising my half-full glass in cheers

Looking forward to these changes with optimism.

JustLovely

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

JustLovely wrote: »

React wrote: »

Are these "pvp specific" skills going to be animation changes only? Are there plans to change the functionality of cross healing/shielding?

The comments regarding PvP gave me horrible flashbacks to those many months of painful experiments we endured a few years back with the only end result being a couple rounds of lowering the population cap.

I took part in those "experiments" and while most of them were horrible, one was really good. In one of those "experiments" they removed cross-healing & I think also heal stacking or something like that. The result was pretty much no ball groups were playing and also, surprise, surprise with ball groups gone - lag was gone. Game worked. It was more or less 2014 PvP Experience. Huge army vs army fights. No lag and no cheese... But oddly, despite player feedback, ZOS ignored this...

This is a good example of the point I was trying to make. Thank you.

We've been begging ZOS to limit cross healing and shield stacking and that the change is going to positively impact performance, but after more than 5 years of asking, it's yet to happen.

SilverBride

I'd like to address this point: Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat

I love this game and have subscribed for years but this will completely ruin the relaxing questing experience for me. I really don't understand why they would go back to something that came very close to killing this game, especially when it's a small minority asking for it. I'm stunned by this.

The very least they could have done is make a difficulty slider so those of us that do not want more difficulty in the story wouldn't have our experience ruined. Especially when we were supporting sliders to enhance the enjoyment of those that wanted more difficulty, even though we didn't want it ourselves. It didn't have to be just one way or the other.

This is the most disappointed I have ever felt in all my years of playing.

Erickson9610

I am a little disappointed that we aren't guaranteed the same additions to old systems every year (such as Companions, Antiquities, Scribing, Tales of Tribute, etc) but I hope whatever new additions to those old systems are extraordinary!

RaptorRodeoGod

What in Akatosh's name does "Splitting a large zone across multiple updates" mean?

Surely it refers to new zones being implemented, and not splitting existing zones, right?

Otherwise I am cautiously optimistic. The experimental stuff is stuff that's been due for years now. Hopefully seasonal content will be additive without any sunsetting involved.

Hotdog_23

Sounds like less content, more focus on PC and forgetting the console player's. Sure the game needs updates but if is as underwhelming as the quarter 3 fixes of the last year then ESO is in trouble.

Plus I laughed when you talked about listening to player feedback on new ideas. Always thought that's what PTS we for but history has shown ZOS often overlooks most of it.

Oh well was looking forward to crown sale at the end of the year but will hold off on new purchases for now. Keep ESO plus for now, always renew yearly in June. Turned off auto renewal and take a wait and see attitude. [snip]

As long time player from the start of console release to playing daily for the last few years. This doesn't look or sound good given the history of of the past few years. Hope I am wrong.

Stay safe 🙂

[edited for quitting post]

Soarora

This sounds really good, though of course I’m team “lets wait and see”. Overland really is too easy, even as a casual I never struggled with the basic enemies. My main build is terrible and I still 2-3 shot them. I was testing something and I saw that these enemies have interesting skills and mechanics but they’re never seen because they die so fast.

My main concern, as always, is how many dungeons (or dungeon-like content) we will get and the difficulty of those dungeons. 2 a year isn’t sustainable, especially when they’re not very hard trifectas. Things felt better when we had 4 a year.

Jaraal

Poss wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign.

I’m excited to see changes to Cyrodiil and potential fixes to performance, however, I’m VERY dubious about the idea to replace skills however vague you are here.

Performance issues aside, the biggest problem with Cyrodiil is heal, shield and mitigation stacking and the fact this is taken advantage of by ballgroups with absolute zero intention of playing the map. So if it’s only class based skills being replaced, won’t that mean vigor and radiating regen are still going to be available?

My initial thought was more single target only direct damage skills, and less AoE/DoT/HoT skills, as everyone knows that the excessive calculations of some current skills/sets are the main culprit in the performance degradation. That would certainly hurt the organized heal and shield stacking groups the most.

It would also allow ZOS to ban specific problematic gear sets from EC (Experimental Cyrodiil) without touching their effects in PvE. Sort of a hybridized no proc campaign, except instead of banning all procs, they will be able to exclude/include various sets and skills that they felt were contributing to the lag and disconnects.

CoolBlast3

Pitching in to say that I hope the Undaunted also gets some love alongside the "classic" TES Guilds. ESO created a memorable and funny adventurers group that plenty of people adore. I'd love to see some non-pledge/dlc dungeon related quests regarding the Undaunted!

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom
For your questions for later:

1) Seasonal content normally sends some alarm bells for players when it comes to P2W concerns when it comes to 'battle pass' rewards. Will there be gear or skills locked behind the battlepass or will everything be player tradable?

2) The Cyrodiil announcement is a little concerning due to the fact that the 'no proc' campaign proved that players will not transition to a 'non main' campaign to experiment with these rulesets unless forced/highly encouraged. The playerbase in Cyrodiil is currently so low that there are many other problems which should be solved prior to these changes. Namely a) Population based factional scoring adjustments. b) Improved campaign rewards and reward tiers, c) Adjusted mechanics such as heal stacking, group set performance and CC immunity rules (rush of agony).

3) Overworld difficulty, I would suggest rather than modifying overworld difficulty having some standardised 'debuffs' that can be applied to your character to signify a 'hardcore' experience. These buffs would be applied at character creation and would show a small symbol by the players name in identify them, there could be a certain buff which is removed upon death for example and one which is always applied until a player cleanses it at an npc. For example 'hardcore' players also shouldn't be able to make use of CP.

4) Adjusting player skills in Cyrodiil sounds like it could lead to essentially just homogenization of all abilities as is the case with the mag/stam split which players are already unhappy about. Could there be serious though and discussion with the playerbase before a lot of time is spent on this. (PTS test events perhaps?)

5) Will each season pass purchases be 1/3rd of the cost of the chapters (assuming 3 seasons a year roughly) or is this more of a financially driven move to increase player spending above the current subscription + chapter price?

tomofhyrule

Yeah, I need to see what "harder overland" really means.

I like the fact that I can stay a tank in overland and I don't need to Armory myself into a DPS just to get through trash mobs. I like that I can have really fun sets on my alts that are 0% meta but 100% for fun only. I really don't want to go into a mode where you have to be in 100kDPS-parse mode 100% of the time - that sounds exhausting.

Most people blow past the trash in delves or overland because they're just in the way of doing something. I doubt anyone's going around killing three goblins and thinking that's the whole game; they're trying to get to the Columbine node on the other side of them. If farming ends up turning into vMA, that'll really make people annoyed.

Also, I'm a bit nervous about how these Seasons turn out. I usually do most of my questing a few months after it drops to give it time to clear out (also then bosses don't melt since there aren't 50 people doing the same step as me). Yes, we know the content will still be there, but are they going to encourage us to do the content on time in another way (e.g. exclusive cosmetics)?

DeathStalker

drip_fromtheinkwell wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

So what I read is,
1. no more big content releases.
2. bigger focus on pvp.
3. make things harder.

If that is the goal, do not be surprised when the population of this game decreases even more. This game's content should be made easier, not harder. PVP should not be a primary focus ever. All I read from this is a disaster in the making. Please stop listening to the vocal minority or you will lose a lot more people.

If by "make things harder" you mean, "require more than light attacking and sneezing on a major story boss to defeat it", then yes; I don't consider myself particularly sweaty, but after re-playing the base game on EU with no CP or sets... the boost to difficulty is much-needed. They don't have to make overland content nightmarish, and and the difficulty should be able to be toggled off, but having to use more than five attacks to defeat Mannimarco, or Molag Bal, or even the Dark Mane, makes for a more rewarding gameplay experience.

By making things harder I mean increasing the difficulty in any way, form, or fashion. They could have included casual players and players like myself with limitations by talking about opening the difficult content already in the game ( harder dungeons and all trials ) to casual players. they have no interest in anything but pvp and making things harder and that will drive people away even more. call me crazy, tell me I'm wrong, that's fine. but when the population count drops even more don't be surprised.

blktauna

KAT0MI wrote: »

Going with Matt and how he mentioned how players come and go along with the direction of smaller add-ons of DLC, will you ever consider expanding on the Old Life Festival and Necrom with a memorial feature? We have lost many great players over the past few years to cancer and illness and instead of building memorials in guild halls or our personal homes it would be nice to submit their main characters to be entombed in the game for everyone to visit.

What a lovely idea!

SilverBride

Soarora wrote: »

Overland really is too easy, even as a casual I never struggled with the basic enemies.

That was the best part for me. There is plenty of challenging content in the game already. Overland was my relaxing playing through the story time. That doesn't include struggling through the content.