How is Cross-Play not a priority?

Konstanz

lets get real here...

-Each server has -AT LEAST- 27 million lines of code for EACH server.
-All 3 platforms have a slightly different code set to fit each one.

Making One NA, one EU server or even just a main Single server isn't going to be easy, let alone fast.

There is tweaks, code to check for exploits getting introduced. Figuring out WHAT to do with everyone's multiple accounts who play on more than one platform. How do you deal with hundreds if not thousands of real world dollars spent on accounts for a single player across multiple platforms without making players feel like they got ripped off buying houses, sets, crates, outfits, and all the other crown store goodies for the game? What at that point do you give in compensation to make a Universal Tamriel main account that will keep the majority happy, and not have people leaving in droves?

It's a logistical nightmare for starters, an absolute cluster

---

when you get down to the actual nuts and bolts of doing it.

What happens to accounts that have 20 characters each? if you play all 6 servers on all 3 platforms, and each character is unique, that's 120 characters to handle and figure out what to do with them all. SOME will have to be deleted sure, or never be ported to the Universal Tamriel account for crossplay.

What about leads? Finished content? Gold, current crowns? Guild memberships?

I wish it where an easy solution. ZoS has already admitted making some hard choices very early on that has lead to this conundrum. 10 years ago we could not have foreseen ESO's current outcome.

It's hopeful that they are -AT LEAST- considering crossplay servers. I hope they come up with viable solutions and get it implemented in the next few years. If not, at least it -WAS- considered at all, but it is a near impossible task at this point working with a basic skeleton crew at HQ.

Yours in Service:
Miss K

luc76985

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

Anilahation

Konstanz wrote: »

lets get real here...

-Each server has -AT LEAST- 27 million lines of code for EACH server.
-All 3 platforms have a slightly different code set to fit each one.

Making One NA, one EU server or even just a main Single server isn't going to be easy, let alone fast.

There is tweaks, code to check for exploits getting introduced. Figuring out WHAT to do with everyone's multiple accounts who play on more than one platform. How do you deal with hundreds if not thousands of real world dollars spent on accounts for a single player across multiple platforms without making players feel like they got ripped off buying houses, sets, crates, outfits, and all the other crown store goodies for the game? What at that point do you give in compensation to make a Universal Tamriel main account that will keep the majority happy, and not have people leaving in droves?

It's a logistical nightmare for starters, an absolute cluster

---

when you get down to the actual nuts and bolts of doing it.

What happens to accounts that have 20 characters each? if you play all 6 servers on all 3 platforms, and each character is unique, that's 120 characters to handle and figure out what to do with them all. SOME will have to be deleted sure, or never be ported to the Universal Tamriel account for crossplay.

What about leads? Finished content? Gold, current crowns? Guild memberships?

I wish it where an easy solution. ZoS has already admitted making some hard choices very early on that has lead to this conundrum. 10 years ago we could not have foreseen ESO's current outcome.

It's hopeful that they are -AT LEAST- considering crossplay servers. I hope they come up with viable solutions and get it implemented in the next few years. If not, at least it -WAS- considered at all, but it is a near impossible task at this point working with a basic skeleton crew at HQ.

Yours in Service:
Miss K

There are plenty of games that didn't have cross-platform and added it down the road

NickFirzen

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So crossplay is a priority. As we have noted, we are actively exploring everything that crossplay would touch. Because all of that is additional dev work. We cannot stress this enough, this is a massive undertaking that requires meticulous investigation to make sure we factor in every aspect of ESO. Additionally we will need to building in time to either build or overhaul systems to make sure it works with crossplay without causing a ton of issues. And for an 11 yr old game that didn't have crossplay in mind when it was being build (since crossplay was not an industry feature yet) we would rather take the time to do this right.

I can assure you, if this was a matter of just flipping some switches to get crossplay online, we would have done that a long time ago. We are just as eager to get crossplay online so that you can play with anyone regardless of platform choice. But the time we are taking for crossplay is needed.

Thank you for the continuous insights! However, you may emphasize that we shouldn't expect it in 2026...!

Would that be logical assumption, or do you think it's a possible timeline after all?
I mean we are aware that you usually have content/work planned for a year or two (three?) ahead, but this is a yet unknown undertaking in scope after all... Or comes when it's ready?

MISTFORMBZZZ

I hope crossplay comes really soon but doubt its in next two years

Anilahation

NickFirzen wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Would that be logical assumption, or do you think it's a possible timeline after all?
I mean we are aware that you usually have content/work planned for a year or two (three?) ahead, but this is a yet unknown undertaking in scope after all... Or comes when it's ready?

To my understanding they are working on it but it isn't like #1 priority so it probably will happen way long down the road... like 2030

fizzybeef

wonder who will play the game still in 4 years

wolfie1.0.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So crossplay is a priority. As we have noted, we are actively exploring everything that crossplay would touch. Because all of that is additional dev work. We cannot stress this enough, this is a massive undertaking that requires meticulous investigation to make sure we factor in every aspect of ESO. Additionally we will need to building in time to either build or overhaul systems to make sure it works with crossplay without causing a ton of issues. And for an 11 yr old game that didn't have crossplay in mind when it was being build (since crossplay was not an industry feature yet) we would rather take the time to do this right.

I can assure you, if this was a matter of just flipping some switches to get crossplay online, we would have done that a long time ago. We are just as eager to get crossplay online so that you can play with anyone regardless of platform choice. But the

Erickson9610 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Ulvich wrote: »

Image having to change your name after 7 years because someone else has had it for 8. What would you do?

That's simply not going to happen. The character data is still distinguished by which server and platform it's on.

"Adam (PC/NA)" is different from "Adam (PS/NA)" and "Adam (XB/NA)". The most intuitive solution is to place a symbol next to the name, just like how other games with crossplay manage it.

Another solution would be to allow duplicate character names in general — we already have account names as special identifiers. Any duplicate account names are then distinguished by their platform.

And then "Adam (PC/NA)" goes to his housing storage to get some gear, but sees "Adam (XB/NA)" items in there. And ... oops ... it is now all bound to "Adam (PC/NA)". Should that happen? No. But I have no idea how normalized ESO's databases are or how rigorous they are in maintaining primary and foreign keys. I am guessing there are a lot of places for data corruption to sneak in.

The data for each platform/region is still separately maintained. If Xbox servers go down for maintenance while PC servers are still up, "Adam (PC/NA)" cannot visit "Adam (XB/NA)"'s house until the Xbox servers come back online. The associated data for all accounts on Xbox is stored separately from the data for accounts on PlayStation and for accounts on PC.

What Crossplay does not do is allow account merging. You cannot access your Xbox account from your PC account, or vice versa. If you made significant progress on Xbox and recently moved to PC, you have to start over again, as your PC account will not allow you to continue where you left off with your Xbox account.

The sole purpose of Crossplay is to allow PC, Xbox, and PlayStation accounts to play together — that means that, while you could trade items between accounts like you can already do on your platform/server, you cannot actually overwrite your account with someone else's. Visiting another person's house doesn't make it your house, because both your account and the homeowner's account are treated as two distinct accounts.

That wasn't the point the previous poster was trying to make.

Obviously, the way you report it is how it should work. But can you guarantee - beyond the shadow of a doubt - that there is an absolute 0% chance of mixing the files ever happening? The way the servers are currently architectured would likely require a 'crossplay' server to be a merged PC/XB/PS megamegaserver, so that seems like a likely scenario if they go that route.

That's what people are scared of. Bugs making the entire capstone event of 2025 practically uncompleteable for a large percentage of the paying population are one thing, but if it ever came out that a player's characters/gear/stuff was deleted because of an accidental merge?

Even if player data was accidentally overwritten, we know that it can be fixed. I mean, just look back at what happened when the PTS data was accidentally copied over into Live.

I can't say "beyond the shadow of a doubt" because I don't know firsthand how ZOS structures their game servers. I just gather that because these databases are separate — and ZOS most likely uses some form of data correction or backups to prevent permanent data loss — it all boils down to how ZOS implements Crossplay. We know ZOS is taking their time with this feature, so they are going to perform several tests as they develop it.


The idea of a unified server per region is interesting, but wouldn't that suggest that Crossplay wouldn't harm the data anyway? If the issue is that accounts could get their data overwritten due to some accounts having similar identifiers or names, then merging those databases safely would mean there'd be no chance of data being overwritten, as each unique account would still be uniquely identifiable. It's a very basic test to determine if the number of accounts is incorrect when adding the entries from each database together, and primary keys are unique.

What I think will happen is that each of the databases will remain separate, but each server will interface with one another. For instance, when a player on PC wants to trade items with a player on Xbox, the PC and Xbox servers need to communicate which items are being traded from/to which player on which server. You don't need the data to be stored in the same database, because with Crossplay, the servers can request data from databases other than their own.


Every part of the game that involves referencing a character or account (from item sets to Tales of Tribute to leaderboards and so on) would need to be updated to the new standards imposed by Crossplay.

You just brought up the ONE event that has us all scared, and what COULD happen again. Only repeatedly.

PTS is completely isolated from live, and yet it was somehow connected to LIve for a brief moment in time, with weeks worth of clean up resulting and, to a relatively few number of accounts based on a percentage of the player base. Now imagine that happening on a grand scale, what do you think the impact would be?

I would rather have 1 or 2 pts cycles of testing cross play before they release such a feature keeping in mind that ESO was developed in a time where crossplay was not really a feature or desired option.

Maitsukas

fizzybeef wrote: »

wonder who will play the game still in 4 years

Where's Epic's data? And ESO Store version's data?

tomofhyrule

Maitsukas wrote: »

fizzybeef wrote: »

wonder who will play the game still in 4 years

Where's Epic's data? And ESO Store version's data?

Not that I really want to get into this debate much, but I always see these arguments: "Oh, someone showed the Steam Charts numbers, but that doesn't tell us how many people are playing on the Launcher/Epic/PS/XB versions so it's irrelevant!"

There's a difference between absolute numbers and trends. We don't need to see an entire sample to see how it's trending, but that assumes that the population polled is representative of the greater whole. It's the reason that e.g. political opinion polls exist when they say "55% of people favor candidate [X] even though nobody asked you specifically.

Steam Charts can't tell us how many people are playing. But if we assume that the population playing on Steam is similar to populations playing on other storefronts, the trends can be extrapolated. Granted, this doesn't account for something like everyone transferring their account to XBox so then Steam would go down and XB would go up, but that's unlikely. But if the players across all storefronts are similar, then a change in players in Steam (which we can see) can be assumed to be similar to the changes in the playerbases on other storefronts as well.

Erickson9610

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

You just brought up the ONE event that has us all scared, and what COULD happen again. Only repeatedly.

PTS is completely isolated from live, and yet it was somehow connected to LIve for a brief moment in time, with weeks worth of clean up resulting and, to a relatively few number of accounts based on a percentage of the player base. Now imagine that happening on a grand scale, what do you think the impact would be?

I would rather have 1 or 2 pts cycles of testing cross play before they release such a feature keeping in mind that ESO was developed in a time where crossplay was not really a feature or desired option.

The feature will be tested — that much is clear. Though, I don't think the PTS will actually be all that useful for testing content. Not enough people actually test things on the PTS, much less the things ZOS wants them to test.

If something shows up on the PTS, it'll most likely be pushed to Live, anyway. Just don't expect ZOS to announce Crossplay until several years of internal testing have passed.

Darkmage1337

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So crossplay is a priority. As we have noted, we are actively exploring everything that crossplay would touch. Because all of that is additional dev work. We cannot stress this enough, this is a massive undertaking that requires meticulous investigation to make sure we factor in every aspect of ESO. Additionally we will need to building in time to either build or overhaul systems to make sure it works with crossplay without causing a ton of issues. And for an 11 yr old game that didn't have crossplay in mind when it was being build (since crossplay was not an industry feature yet) we would rather take the time to do this right.

I can assure you, if this was a matter of just flipping some switches to get crossplay online, we would have done that a long time ago. We are just as eager to get crossplay online so that you can play with anyone regardless of platform choice. But the time we are taking for crossplay is needed.

I just want to highlight that MMORPG crossplay has been an "industry feature" since 2006, when MMORPG Final Fantasy XI (11) first created crossplay between Xbox 360, PS3/PS4, and PC/Windows; back in 2006, over 19 years ago.
According to @ZOS_RichLambert, ESO began development around 2006, which was the same time that FFXI and other MMORPGs had crossplay already enabled and built into their live-service and product-development pipelines.
If ZOS wanted ESO to be a 10, 20, or 30+ year game, then the guiding development philosophy should have been platform-agnostic from the very beginning. In the context of crossplay on MMORPGs, it is an industry-standard today, and it was so back in 2006, too.

PoveusRonin

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Maitsukas wrote: »

fizzybeef wrote: »

wonder who will play the game still in 4 years

Where's Epic's data? And ESO Store version's data?

Not that I really want to get into this debate much, but I always see these arguments: "Oh, someone showed the Steam Charts numbers, but that doesn't tell us how many people are playing on the Launcher/Epic/PS/XB versions so it's irrelevant!"

There's a difference between absolute numbers and trends. We don't need to see an entire sample to see how it's trending, but that assumes that the population polled is representative of the greater whole. It's the reason that e.g. political opinion polls exist when they say "55% of people favor candidate [X] even though nobody asked you specifically.

Steam Charts can't tell us how many people are playing. But if we assume that the population playing on Steam is similar to populations playing on other storefronts, the trends can be extrapolated. Granted, this doesn't account for something like everyone transferring their account to XBox so then Steam would go down and XB would go up, but that's unlikely. But if the players across all storefronts are similar, then a change in players in Steam (which we can see) can be assumed to be similar to the changes in the playerbases on other storefronts as well.

The problem was the person who posted the steam chart didn't add much of an explanation of why they showed the chart. It was just a who will be playing in 4 years. If you try to say a game is dying, you really do need more than 1 data source since this game is available at least 3 different ways on PC as well as on consoles. Yes, you can read trends from a small sampling but only if the samples are taken from a variety of sources. Gallop Polls and such take samples from different groups and areas to get their information. Yes it's a small sample of the overall total numbers but they do take into account the various groups.

Using just steam chart numbers is like just asking 1 small town their opinion and applying it to the full country. It will give skewed results the might or might not be even close to accurate.

Getsugatenso

First, they need to balance the game with subclasses, bring back quality content, and hire competent people to fix Cyrodiil.

O_LYKOS

Maybe its my pc, but whenever im playing eso it feels so sketchy. The frame drops and lag. Things that have bugged out for years. These are forever on going. They more of a priority imo before we bring the game to a crashing holt with cross play

Anilahation

Darkmage1337 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

In the context of crossplay on MMORPGs, it is an industry-standard today, and it was so back in 2006, too.

I'd give them some slack cause WoW is still not crossplay and wont be until Xbox Series X 2 or PS6.

Only really FFXIV and DCOnline are crossplay to my understanding.

all the other mmos. Star trek, Neverwinter, The Division, Destiny 2 and etc are not crossplay.

fizzybeef

outside of events zones are so incredibly empty. Even craglorn or the main trader zones.
Nobody in chats, only few people arround.

Yesterday was campaign reset and cyrodiil has 1 1 2 bars at prime time

Sad times on PS EU

luc76985

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

Erickson9610

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

Both PC and Consoles have mods now, though. They should both be on the same playing field now, unless one platform simply has better mods than the other.

ESO_player123

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

I'd rather not play with console players if that would mean removing addons. Anyway, this point is moot since addons are already available on consoles.

lillybit

To me it's clearly been a priority for a while - it stands to reason it was the driving factor to console addons and even vengeance seems like something that needs to be there for crossplay, with the focus on large scale battles that there isn't the playerbase to support as it is.

As much as I want to see it live, I'm just as happy they're making sure the needed changes are stable before they jump in.

Also, I've never known them to announce things all that far in advance. It maybe won't be next year but I'd be surprised if it's too much longer

lillybit

Erickson9610 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

Both PC and Consoles have mods now, though. They should both be on the same playing field now, unless one platform simply has better mods than the other.

PC does have better addons. Consoles are catching up, but it'll take time to match the 11 years of progress PC have had

amiiegee

lillybit wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

Both PC and Consoles have mods now, though. They should both be on the same playing field now, unless one platform simply has better mods than the other.

PC does have better addons. Consoles are catching up, but it'll take time to match the 11 years of progress PC have had

Consoles have the better players thought, simply because they had to learn to play without addons.
Zos wrote in their reddit ama something with the consense; they are not affraid of a disadvantage of consoles, because their data shown different.
Sounds to me like console players are better, based on the data

Majkiy

Crossplay will kill the PvE content tho, it's literally unplayable as of now with puggers, now imagine they have controlers in hand and can't aim spells XD

It's already hard to get a queue into pledges or trials. I seriously doubt PC players will gladly play with console players. And if I am not mistaken they don't have access to the same addons PC has, so talking with them and managing mechanics of trials and dungeons will be even harder, can't wait.

luc76985

Erickson9610 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

Both PC and Consoles have mods now, though. They should both be on the same playing field now, unless one platform simply has better mods than the other.

nah theres no need for them

ESO_player123 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

luc76985 wrote: »

man, we don't want to play with PC players.

I changed my mind just remove all mods from the game and make crossplay a priority lol

I'd rather not play with console players if that would mean removing addons. Anyway, this point is moot since addons are already available on consoles.

That sounds like a good qualifier to me. Deal.

SerafinaWaterstar

Majkiy wrote: »

Crossplay will kill the PvE content tho, it's literally unplayable as of now with puggers, now imagine they have controlers in hand and can't aim spells XD

It's already hard to get a queue into pledges or trials. I seriously doubt PC players will gladly play with console players. And if I am not mistaken they don't have access to the same addons PC has, so talking with them and managing mechanics of trials and dungeons will be even harder, can't wait.

You do know that many of us playing on consoles have managed to clear hard vet content without add-ons?

Majkiy

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Majkiy wrote: »

Crossplay will kill the PvE content tho, it's literally unplayable as of now with puggers, now imagine they have controlers in hand and can't aim spells XD

It's already hard to get a queue into pledges or trials. I seriously doubt PC players will gladly play with console players. And if I am not mistaken they don't have access to the same addons PC has, so talking with them and managing mechanics of trials and dungeons will be even harder, can't wait.

You do know that many of us playing on consoles have managed to clear hard vet content without add-ons?

So? I am talking about puggers in random/pledge dungeons and random trial groups in finder.

fizzybeef

Majkiy wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Majkiy wrote: »

Crossplay will kill the PvE content tho, it's literally unplayable as of now with puggers, now imagine they have controlers in hand and can't aim spells XD

It's already hard to get a queue into pledges or trials. I seriously doubt PC players will gladly play with console players. And if I am not mistaken they don't have access to the same addons PC has, so talking with them and managing mechanics of trials and dungeons will be even harder, can't wait.

You do know that many of us playing on consoles have managed to clear hard vet content without add-ons?

So? I am talking about puggers in random/pledge dungeons and random trial groups in finder.

lmao that arrogance

Majkiy

fizzybeef wrote: »

Majkiy wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Majkiy wrote: »

Crossplay will kill the PvE content tho, it's literally unplayable as of now with puggers, now imagine they have controlers in hand and can't aim spells XD

It's already hard to get a queue into pledges or trials. I seriously doubt PC players will gladly play with console players. And if I am not mistaken they don't have access to the same addons PC has, so talking with them and managing mechanics of trials and dungeons will be even harder, can't wait.

You do know that many of us playing on consoles have managed to clear hard vet content without add-ons?

So? I am talking about puggers in random/pledge dungeons and random trial groups in finder.

lmao that arrogance

nah, just experience

katanagirl1

That doesn’t sound like a very welcoming experience for console players in cross play. Do PC players who use controllers get the same treatment when running in groups now?

EDIT: typo