Studio Director’s Letter: 2025 & Beyond

GlassHalfFull

LalMirchi wrote: »

Raising my half-full glass in cheers

Looking forward to these changes with optimism.

I will join you in raising a @GlassHalfFull with optimism!

AzuraFan

Question: What does this mean for ESO+? I know the chapters weren't included, but I'm unclear about if there will be a dungeon DLC. Or will dungeons drop individually at times and ESO+ gets them for free while non-ESO+ have to buy them?

I guess my question is whether changes are afoot for ESO+?

CoolBlast3

Sakiri wrote: »

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

Choices in difficulty is good. But telling people who want difficult overland to just "go do trials/dungeons/etc" is ridiculous. Plenty of people who want difficult overland ENJOY story content and the tales ESO has to give, we just don't like one shotting literal gods with a single light attack.
There's room in ESO for both "normal" and "veteran" overland.

There's room alright, so long as the more difficult one has 0, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO benefit for doing it.

No additional rewards, no nothing. Just the satisfaction of doing something harder.

We'll see how many people actually want it that way.

I want it this way. I don't want to grind for rewards, I just don't want to defeat nearly all-powerful gods by sneezing on them lmao

akinetic

What does the future of trials look like in this new model?

Syldras

It all comes down to what the new content will be, the quality and also the quantity. If the amount per release keeps one entertained for several weeks, I'm totally fine with it. If it's completed within two days, that would be disappointing.

menedhyn

Very interesting indeed! I look forward to reading more about the details and specifics but there’s plenty here to appeal to me. Onwards to 2025!

I_killed_Vivec

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned it, so I might as well...

I'm curious about the $money. How are we going to pay for this?

Chapters were easy - you buy a new version of the game with a new zone built in. Extra DLCs cost extra, unless you have ESO+. But even with ESO+ you still have to buy the Chapter.

Of course there were problems with this when content that would have been available under ESO+ was dropped in favour of "bug fixes". ESO+ was devalued by the loss of content.

Now we have "Seasons" - are they monetized like DLC: you can either buy them outright or get them as part of ESO+? If so, how are they different from DLC? Except probably smaller, less regular, less content, but priced up to ensure ZoS makeup for no longer selling Chapters?

I'm surprised nobody else has wondered how we, the players, are going to pay for everything.

I also get the idea #ProfessionalMoneyMen have walked through ESO's doors and taken one look at the empty alliance zones and decided that all they need is a quick spruce up and a couple of new quests, hey presto, a Season! Certainly saves the devs from creating a new zone every time new content is released, just reuse the old stuff!

And I'd be happy with that providing the price is right (i.e. free with ESO+, and no need to buy a chapter each year!).

Faulgor

Sakiri wrote: »

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

Choices in difficulty is good. But telling people who want difficult overland to just "go do trials/dungeons/etc" is ridiculous. Plenty of people who want difficult overland ENJOY story content and the tales ESO has to give, we just don't like one shotting literal gods with a single light attack.
There's room in ESO for both "normal" and "veteran" overland.

There's room alright, so long as the more difficult one has 0, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO benefit for doing it.

No additional rewards, no nothing. Just the satisfaction of doing something harder.

We'll see how many people actually want it that way.

Nope, that will make it useless and a fail right out of the gate. Never works that way. Doesn't work that way in any other part of the game, either.

But that has been discussed to death in the stickied thread. Nobody is going to produce any new insights here.

OtarTheMad

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned it, so I might as well...

I'm curious about the $money. How are we going to pay for this?

Chapters were easy - you buy a new version of the game with a new zone built in. Extra DLCs cost extra, unless you have ESO+. But even with ESO+ you still have to buy the Chapter.

Of course there were problems with this when content that would have been available under ESO+ was dropped in favour of "bug fixes". ESO+ was devalued by the loss of content.

Now we have "Seasons" - are they monetized like DLC: you can either buy them outright or get them as part of ESO+? If so, how are they different from DLC? Except probably smaller, less regular, less content, but priced up to ensure ZoS makeup for no longer selling Chapters?

I'm surprised nobody else has wondered how we, the players, are going to pay for everything.

I also get the idea #ProfessionalMoneyMen have walked through ESO's doors and taken one look at the empty alliance zones and decided that all they need is a quick spruce up and a couple of new quests, hey presto, a Season! Certainly saves the devs from creating a new zone every time new content is released, just reuse the old stuff!

And I'd be happy with that providing the price is right (i.e. free with ESO+, and no need to buy a chapter each year!).

I wondered this as well. Especially the ESO+ part. I’ll probably just unsub until more info is dropped.

Sakiri

Faulgor wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

CoolBlast3 wrote: »

Choices in difficulty is good. But telling people who want difficult overland to just "go do trials/dungeons/etc" is ridiculous. Plenty of people who want difficult overland ENJOY story content and the tales ESO has to give, we just don't like one shotting literal gods with a single light attack.
There's room in ESO for both "normal" and "veteran" overland.

There's room alright, so long as the more difficult one has 0, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO benefit for doing it.

No additional rewards, no nothing. Just the satisfaction of doing something harder.

We'll see how many people actually want it that way.

Nope, that will make it useless and a fail right out of the gate. Never works that way. Doesn't work that way in any other part of the game, either.

But that has been discussed to death in the stickied thread. Nobody is going to produce any new insights here.

Because of course no one wants to do it unless there's a benefit to doing so.

That means they don't really want it.

Eclipse318

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Sometimes I'd like harder stuff, sometimes I just wanted to log in and laugh with friends in discord while doing stuff and sometimes I just wanted to sit back and relax while questing. If you are forced to harder content only, that's going backwards.

As the guild master for a casual social guild, I completely agree. Sometimes I want to run around solo and pick flowers while I relax with some wine. Sometimes I want a fun lightweight experience with a couple of guildies, like farming a lead or recipe drop in a delve. Sometimes we want to do an easy random normal dungeon. Sometimes we want to try really hard stuff to see how we do as a group. But it should be our choice, on how we want to play, not the devs' choice on how they think we should play, or what they think everyone wants based on min-max end game DPS players.

Mods, can someone please clarify what is meant by "harder overland content" because I'm seeing two takes on it: Everything being ratcheted up, including skeevers, imps, wolves, whatever... or adding a "hard mode" or more WWB's that can be avoided, or that aren't triggered unless attacked (like in Telvanni Penninsula with the floaty guys).

For example, you've listened to the min-max DPS players and all the world bosses in recent zones are getting progressively harder with each release. There are some that my guild refuses to even do, and a lot of dungeons we bail from, because we're not that kind of player group.

And I have to echo what others have said, that consideration is not being given to people who are unable to be those god-mode DPS players due to using an older computer, being disabled, not having great internet, choosing roleplay over damage numbers, or many other reasons.

Playing a game should be fun. I know that means different things to different players, but please don't cater to one type of player by sacrificing everyone else.

Cominfordatoothbrush

I'm unsure how I feel about "seasonal" content, I guess I'd have to see the form it takes, although anything except a battle pass will have my attention for sure.

On the other hand though, while vague, a lot of this stuff looks like a personal wish list come true. Returning to old zones, visually upgrading them, continuing old storylines, making overland more difficult... all music to my ears.

Although I would suggest making overland difficulty a toggle. I may want everything to be veteran-arena-like-difficulty, others and especially new players may not

AzuraFan

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

I'm surprised nobody else has wondered how we, the players, are going to pay for everything.

I did ask about ESO+ a few posts above you, probably while you were busy writing yours.

As for how we pay, I assume that all the new content they're talking about will go into the crown store. But yeah, details would be nice.

LatentBuzzard

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

they already said the content is not going away after its released

Not quite. You need to read what they actually wrote and if they have to caveat what's not going away after a season then that implies that some things are.

What Matt said would be in the season

"themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more."

What Jessica said would stay

"Our plans are not to remove content such as quests, stories, and new areas"

So some of the seasonal content will be tied to events, store items, dungeon content etc. and Jessica doesn't say that's all staying after the season ends. If all the content were staying afterwards, they would have never have used the term "Seasons" and would have instead said something like "mini updates" or "smaller content drops". The very concept of a season is that there's an end after which the season ends and some of the content dissapears. If nothing was dissapearing at the end of ZOS's season and you'd be able to continue getting everything that you would have whist the season is active, then Jessica would have said so instead caveating the statement. Also, "no plans" is never the same as "we're not going to".

So what ? those events, store items and dungeon content will roll around again eventually ? Probably but then how is that any different or improved to what we have now ? They'll be taking what we already have and reselling it as "new and improved" ?

AzuraFan

Sakiri wrote: »

Because of course no one wants to do it unless there's a benefit to doing so.

That means they don't really want it.

Agreed. The "we want challenge" request doesn't compute if extra rewards are a required or nobody will do the content. The challenge should be the reward.

virtus753

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Do these new UI updates on PC include fixes for some of the significant bugs specific to gamepad mode?

1) Unnecessary physical wear and tear due to the input delay issue:

The game is causing unnecessary physical wear and tear on controllers because we have to reconnect them in order to fix the delayed input issue acknowledged back in March by Kevin: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8067424/#Comment_8067424

Prior to this issue, I reconnected my controller fewer than 10 times per year (i.e. only when I travelled). Since March, I've had to reconnect it every time I load a character on whom I need to do things in a timely manner. (You can imagine how not being able to rez in a timely manner impacts a tri prog.) I've had to replace my controller cable multiple times already this year due to this problem. Usually it's once every other year. It feels bad to have to spend additional money on fixing our hardware due to issues caused by an acknowledged bug.

2) In-game functionality issues:

To the best of my knowledge, these are all still restrictions that only affect gamepad mode:

We cannot use any consumables from the inventory menu in combat in gamepad mode. We have to do so from the quickslot menu, which means the item(s) in question must have been slotted in advance. Keyboard mode has no such restriction.

We currently cannot take a treasure map in gamepad mode if we already have a copy of that map in our bank. In keyboard mode, you can take a treasure map if a copy is in your bank only so long as it is not also in your inventory. For those who know they can switch modes to take the map, taking the time to do so may result in not being able to get the map if someone else comes by to take the contents of the chest or trove while we're fiddling with the UI mode to work around this issue.

We currently cannot see the contents of a guild bank in gamepad mode unless we also have withdrawal perms. This hinders the functionality of guild banks where we intend guild members to be able to see and request things while also protecting the bank from bad actors. Several of my guildmembers have thought it is simply intended not to be able to see the contents of a guild bank, when in fact it's a problem with the UI mode they're using.

There are tooltips accessible in keyboard mode that are not accessible in gamepad mode. It's not ok to withhold explanatory information from players based simply on their UI mode. (I'm not speaking of numeric meters or specific point values but actual explanatory text that is important to understanding the functionality of the game.)

Since Matt also mentioned Cyrodiil specifically in his letter: the population meters frequently differ at the same moment when switching between keyboard and gamepad mode. (When populations are very high or very low, as when campaigns are locked or empty, they will likely be shown the same way. This is more noticeable with populations in between.) While this is more of a UI issue than the rest above, it has actually caused arguments (plural) in zone chat between people who do not understand they are being fed different information by the game about the same objective fact based on their UI mode.

Most of these have been issues for many years now, and it's especially problematic because some gamepad mode users are using that UI mode for accessibility reasons. All of these issues have been reported multiple times, both on the forums and in game, to no apparent avail.

Please remind the team(s) responsible that these continue to be impactful issues in need of being addressed. Thank you.

xXCJsniperXx7

I dont like this new concept. When it starts I may still be here, or I'm gone.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

I admit after reading the letter I’m mostly confused why so many are excited (outside of the Cyrodiil crowd - Cyrodiil has been massively neglected).

Sakiri wrote: »

More Craglorn like zones? I freaking QUIT when Craglorn came out. Forced group content like that for the overworld was the absolute worst bloody thing ever and I hated it with the passion of a thousand suns.

I love Craglorn. I went through The Missing Guardian twenty times (not exaggerating) back when Craglorn was forced group content and it’s easily my favorite twist in the entire game. The massive packs of Welwa helped train me to be more combat-savvy and I miss them to this day. And I 100% agree with @Sakiri on this.

Dear ZOS: remember when you remade Craglorn to make the whole story soloable (gutting the most relevant parts of the main story in the process) because it was wildly unpopular? I do!

Jaraal wrote: »

That's kind of what I was envisioning. The newer zones have wandering world bosses that don't really go after every player they see. I could see them adding WWBs to the old zones, and calling it "harder overland."

I wouldn’t mind more wandering world bosses (Coldharbour, at bare minimum, could use a few to increase the level of menace and danger any Daedric plane should have) but they’d be a sad substitute for proper zones.

Frooke

The best thing about ESO is the stories and the questing, increasing the difficulty of the overland will be AMAZING! I want to feel the thrill of fighting a dragon on a quest, in an epic battle and having to strategize and improve my gear to have any chance, finally the companions will serve their purpose! And no... Dungeons, Archive, Trials, they don't have the same feeling as quests and the overland.

heaven13

I'm very wait and see in this. I've only kind of put my toe back into ESO since leaving back during AwA implementation (funny how if that wasn't a thing, players returning from being gone after a long time might have a better idea of where they left off). But if this is going to be a glorified season ALA Diablo where all the content has to be acquired during the season and won't return, consider me out. I know Jess said that the quests and stuff won't go away but what about gear, collectibles, etc, etc?

I also have some big questions about how this will be monetized. ESO+ players got most things, aside from the most recent chapter. Without chapters, are we stuck having to pay for every season if we want to play it during the actual season? Or will it be free and then we have a battlepass? Neither sound great, from a consumer perspective.

Additionally, I am also incredibly hesitant about visual changes, particularly animations. Did you guys not learn after the backlash from jabs? This is a complete 180 from the stated "we won't change stuff" that you have been ignoring when convenient (also see grim focus change). Updating buildings/textures for overland areas, sure. Updating things that affect my actual character - nope.

Overland difficulty seems interesting but will have to see how it's implemented before I decide whether I like it or not.

Hamfast

Let's see... my main is a Stam Blade, started on Day -5, granted to those of us who beta-tested the game. This was before the term Stam Blade had even been coined... Zones were based on character levels and I had to wait in zones below my level to kill delve bosses because I could not kill them on my own... at this point, 10+ years later, that same character has killed every delve boss in the game, many solo...

I hope the overland content overhaul will not return us to the pre-One Tamriel state.

Some overland content should require help, World bosses, for example, should require help for most players... not all players, just most players, because I remember how I felt when I could finally go back and kill those Delve bosses on my own on that same character... and being an altaholic, (Is there a 12 step program?) I had already killed most of them on other characters, but there was always that lingering feeling that my main had not earned it, he has now.

Since One Tamriel things are easier, some may say too easy, but I am not one of them. There are days that easy is good and those that what I am looking for is a challenge... Thankfully both are available, I hope they continue to be.

Some random ideas not connected to my prior maunderings...

Companion quests... I have all 8 companions to level 20 and max rapport so no more companion quests (for that character, the others will get the same quests I have already done quite a few times)... it would be nice if those same companions could have random quests based on skills, background or other events beyond the base 1K, 2K, and 3K rapport events. Zereth-Var for example, would his calling to help the twilight cantors end at 3.5K rapport? or could they call on him (and his friend) now and then to help them with a tough infestation... Dimik-ee, Mevei, or Federo could call on Sharp as Night (and his friend) to help with something...

Every companion has a past, with people, some whom could generate these random quests to allow more interactions with their individual stories...

As it is now, all my characters can see Heavy Sacks, why do I need to work on Zereth-Var any further?

For those that hate companions, I hate PVP, but would never want to remove it from the game, companions are part of the game, why not expand on them beyond the rush to max level and max rapport to get their perk.

Sakiri

Not going to go out here and say I'm not good enough at the game to do harder overland content. I am.

I'm just 99% of the time lazy af and prefer my hard content in instanced, group content. If I'm in the overworld, I'm harvesting or something.

The absolute last thing I want is even more of that dude taking the node you just cleared to because you had to spend more than three seconds murdering something because "you can't do that while in combat". That kinda toxicity needs stamped out, not encouraged. And you know that once it gets more annoying to gather materials, people will start doing this in earnest.

robertlabrie

Continuing to tell great stories

This right here is where you need to focus. There are sooo many locked doors already in the game world, open them up with new content to explore and engage the players. We're excited.

Loves_guars

OtarTheMad wrote: »

I think that people who want harder overland should get it. I've always said they should take an instance of a zone and make one a HM version. To get to it you just have to go to a certain place and press a pillar and a portal open to it. That was my thought... but if they go back to a Craglorn/adventure zone/forced group content like old Crag, old Vet zones... yeah I am out. Those were a nightmare.

Sometimes I'd like harder stuff, sometimes I just wanted to log in and laugh with friends in discord while doing stuff and sometimes I just wanted to sit back and relax while questing. If you are forced to harder content only, that's going backwards.

I'm interested to see how they do it, but cautious.

Agreed, the only problem is that vets wouldn't see beginners in the same area, and I would hate that. I love seeing new players around and help them if I can.

Vyxea

I don't know why all the comments are so excited about this seasonal content change, this sounds absolutely terrible.

Seasonal content is what has absolutely killed Destiny 2 and is well on the way of destroying other games too. Seasonal content has absolutely no place in an MMORPG imo. Forcing people to play content within a limited amount of time or they'll miss it forever - FOMO content is the worst and is why so many people quit Destiny 2.

The other changes sound good but I am absolutely pessimistic about the seasonal content change. Is this not basically introducing less content while making more money?

I'll wait and see how it pans out but I absolutely despise how so many games capitalise on the season pass and seasonal FOMO models.

SilverBride

I have no concept of what seasonal content even is.

Necrotech_Master

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

they already said the content is not going away after its released

Not quite. You need to read what they actually wrote and if they have to caveat what's not going away after a season then that implies that some things are.

What Matt said would be in the season

"themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more."

What Jessica said would stay

"Our plans are not to remove content such as quests, stories, and new areas"

So some of the seasonal content will be tied to events, store items, dungeon content etc. and Jessica doesn't say that's all staying after the season ends. If all the content were staying afterwards, they would have never have used the term "Seasons" and would have instead said something like "mini updates" or "smaller content drops". The very concept of a season is that there's an end after which the season ends and some of the content dissapears. If nothing was dissapearing at the end of ZOS's season and you'd be able to continue getting everything that you would have whist the season is active, then Jessica would have said so instead caveating the statement. Also, "no plans" is never the same as "we're not going to".

So what ? those events, store items and dungeon content will roll around again eventually ? Probably but then how is that any different or improved to what we have now ? They'll be taking what we already have and reselling it as "new and improved" ?

store items i expect them to rotate, we already have that where stuff in the crown store changes weekly, or like crown crates ~3-4 months, events (mini events, or current holiday events) are also always temporary

story content/dungeons/trials etc i expect to remain in game permanently, they likely wont completely block those, that would just be plain horrible thing to do, effectively the same as entirely removing content

thats the way i took it, as in they wont be changing what they are doing now

Q1 could be inside of a season, so they might release dungeons related to the season content, but i have 0 expectations that the dungeon will forever go away at the end of the season, in fact i expect it to remain permanent content in the game like every other dungeon

when i see "seasons" and the way they are describing it, it sounds like instead of an entire year (or 2) devoted to one single zone story arc (and this includes ALL of the content for the year, crown crates, crown store releases, events, dungeons, zones, trials, etc) obviously some of which was only limited release (again namely event or crown store items)

to me it sounds like they could have say a 2-3 month period of content that adds story quests or dungeons, or even a zone/trial or whatnot that is themed around whatever particular story or theme the season is, but i dont see any of that going away

heaven13

Sakiri wrote: »

Not going to go out here and say I'm not good enough at the game to do harder overland content. I am.

I'm just 99% of the time lazy af and prefer my hard content in instanced, group content. If I'm in the overworld, I'm harvesting or something.

The absolute last thing I want is even more of that dude taking the node you just cleared to because you had to spend more than three seconds murdering something because "you can't do that while in combat". That kinda toxicity needs stamped out, not encouraged. And you know that once it gets more annoying to gather materials, people will start doing this in earnest.

When I think of harder overland, what I hope for is more scaled story quests. Fighting the bosses in each zone as you get to the culmination of the story is pretty dissatisfying. They've tried to do stuff about this but the extent of that has been just random invulnerability phases that are boring and annoying because they're not mechanic based, just invulnerable and spawn trash mobs. I'd like to see actual mechanics for these kinds of fights. WWB would also be nice.

What I don't want is just random beefed up trash.

Sadras

Having just returned to the game after a longer break, reading this is incredibly disheartening, and I may have to reconsider the decision.
I can mostly second a lot of points I've read in this thread already, adding my voice to the choir.

Seasonal models have been a bane to every game that I've played that had them and many games that I've heard others talk about, and it's not at all what I'm looking for in an Elder Scrolls game. And if there's a battlepass, that's definitely it for me.

Big story content has already been gutted. I enjoyed the old days, in which there were several meaningful story additions per year, not necessarily related to each other. The flaw with the "Year of the (X)" format was not that there were two story releases but that it generally felt as if one story was being cut in half in order to sell the ending in winter. Meanwhile a complete summer chapter and an also-complete but smaller winter story were great. For the end of the "Year of..." phase, I was hoping for a return to that. More Orsiniums or Murkmires or what have you, independent stories to look forward to. I was hoping for a returned effort in the writing, not lessened further.
Seasonal "content" instead, whatever that may mean, with no more big stories and decreased effort even into new zones to explore, in an Elder Scrolls game, is simply sad.

I also play the game to relax and explore and enjoy the story and world, and I have absolutely no interest in hard overworld content, struggling to finish stories or spending extra effort fighting random daedra or wolves that gather around the runestone I want to harvest from. That sounds the opposite of fun and would also be a reason to quit. Like others have said, for overworld, I want to just have fun with unoptimised builds and stay on a healer build and still get by, etc.
Due to a platform switch I'm also currently picking up an account I have no CP in yet at all, basically a new player experience except for knowing the game more than a new player would, and the difficulty is just fine as it is. The difference to high CP characters is noticeable, and the content can't just be scaled to the latter; one has to actually get there first, and it needs to be enjoyable enough that one even wants to get there.
I've always liked that ESO had a lot of accessible solo content that many people could do that wouldn't be at home in many other MMOs, and it'd be sad and frustrating to lose that aspect.
I also don't enjoy Craglorn at all; a zone like that for those who like it is good for these players, but I hope it won't become the new standard.

Lastly, I really urge the team to pay attention to console players, too. We pay the same subscription and we spend the same time in the game. The lopsided focus on PC above all is frequently frustrating, and this letter bodes ill in that regard, too.

Hamfast

SilverBride wrote: »

I have no concept of what seasonal content even is.

I sort of agree... I am guessing it has to do with updates dropping, but that is just a guess...