Aliyavana wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

I really hope we see Urag

Out of curiosity, where is it coming from that Urag is over 1000 years old in Skyrim?

Looking at the dialogue from Skyrim, he says “I try and make sure as much knowledge is available as possible. We've been keeping this collection since the Second Era.” Since the preceding line shows he doesn’t use the royal ‘we,’ we know that he is currently tending the library (“I try…”), but saying that the College as a whole (not only himself) has kept the collection for that length (“We have…”). It implies there were several people throughout history who have tended the library.
Even the UESP lore page mentioning that he is that old offers no references beyond assuming that single quote above means he alone is the “we” referred to, and thus he is the only librarian the College has ever had. I have my doubts about that interpretation (UESP is a fansite and is subject to fallacy if fans misinterpret) as it is reasonable to think he is not any older than a standard mage and simply the latest in a line of College loremasters.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Urag_gro-Shub

Savos Aren does give some dates back to the late Second Era (which is also past ESO’s timeframe), but concedes that it is likely older so the College should exist, but likely be in its infancy. That does lead to a possible series of “go collect some books for us” quests (do I smell the potential for repeatable dailies that send you all over Tamriel?)

from what syldras posted. went ahead and added it to my original quote

I still have my doubts. After all, how many people right now are saying "I've been killing things in Wrothgar for 386 years and I still don't have my Challenge done!" Does that mean that they're 400 years old? Or that ESO is 400 years old? Or that the challenge to do that has existed that long?
...or is it an exaggeration, since we know ESO is only 12 years old and that specific challenge only popped up on monday.

It is entirely possible that that was a misstatement of his, or even an exaggeration. More likely, in fact, since the only characters in the Elder Scrolls series who have extended lifespans have such because of necromancy (see the Telvanni) or vampirism (Serana). If Urag was a Telvanni-esque necromage, why is that not said literally anywhere else?

I do notice some people take a very literal interpretation of every single thing said or written in the game and completely disregard the fact that people could be stretching the truth or outright lying. Todd Howard himself has even come out to say that the lore is not hard and fast and is tainted by how the characters present it.

So what's the complaint exactly?

That they haven't released the full set of blue arcanist skills yet? They haven't done a full set for any class except for DK so far, and that coincided with its class refresh. So there may be a bit of a wait.

That they released a skill style in an unwanted color? Well, it doesn't have to be claimed or used.

That they released something desirable (to some players) as part of the premium tome? That's kind of the point.

Hopefully the rest of the blue arcanist skills will be made available when their time comes and they will be satisfactory (I'm also looking forward to them).

Aren't you the person who is also promoting the one-bar/HA exclusive guild on PC-EU? Feels like there is more to this than just an apology...

code65536 wrote: »

If the threshold to unlock a page is always higher than the costs of the things on the page, then what's the point of having the cost at all? Why not just make all the things 0-cost?

Tomes should be a pick-your-own rewards system, and what you're suggesting takes one crack in the system and rips it apart entirely.

Really hoping they move away from the autoredemption system and just add a few repeatable things that players can spend their points on. Or have players opt in to the gold exchange early ("I already picked out everything I want, please just give me gold for any extra Tome Points").

I agree that having Tome Points pulling double duty is a bit confusing, but ultimately navigable. If Tome Points were to only have a single role, I think it would be better to go the opposite route. Page progression could be more like "Complete (4) more Weekly Challenges or open a Tome Cache to unlock the next page." And then just have Seasonal Challenges give credit for 2 or 3 weekly challenges.

Morimizo wrote: »

twisttop138 wrote: »

This is the fallout 76 solution. It's a grind. The end of the battle pass is level 100 but the bonus page opens at 150. So, not easy to get but when you get there you have a bunch of points to spend. There's infinite amounts of caps (gold) other in game currency, consumables and even 200 atom packs (their crowns) which I think would also be a big hit here.

FO76 has a much more attractive game board to go through (or at least it did, haven't played for a few years), so a much better UI. I wonder why ZOS keeps deciding to make such mundane new UI elements? And ironically, the plainness is still poorly explained and implemented.

Though it would be VERY popular if crowns could be directly earned through any in-game activity, I think there must be a poster on the ZOS' meeting room wall, perhaps like the Five Tenets written in blood, one of them being, "Thou shalt not even consider directly exchanging crowns for in-game currency, under penalty of being permanently expelled from this studio."

It's the tenet above, "Thou shalt conceive of two to three new in-game currencies per annum, keeping players as confused and off-balance as possible, under penalty of being permanently expelled from this studio."

They unfortunately changed the gameboard. I wanna say 2 years ago, to a more traditional battle pass look called, well, seasons. The UI is still insanely superior to ESO though. ESO borrowed quite a bit from fallout 76 in their quest to make this thing, but theu should've taken the UI as well. Or just made a crown store variant. They've heard our complaints but what they're doing doesn't sound nearly far enough.

As for free currency on the bonus page. 76 is smaller and seems to rely on it's store for a lot of heavy lifting. I was surprised to see repeatable cash shop currency on the bonus page the first switch to seasons, though they've always been pretty decent about atoms given away. It's in a 200 atom chunk. I couldn't tell you the price off the top of my head but 200 tickets sounds right. Pretty pricey compared to most things on the pass. Also very hard to get to that bonus page. So it seems generous, shows goodwill, but is hard to achieve. I think a similar mechanism in ESO could be popular and a win for the studio. They need some of that.

I don't care. I earn Tome points faster than I can spend them and rarely look at tasks anyway. If I do look at them and see one I fancy, then I may fit it in with my evening in the game, or I may not bother.

It depends on your psychology. I understand that some people feel they have to do their dailies, tasks etc and this is how their mind works. As this is just a game and not at all important for actual living, I may suggest to these people that playing a game that feeds their psychology to the point that it causes stress may consider not playing the game and doing something more constructive.

For everyone like me who never bothers with dailies and just plays what they feel like, it makes little difference. The game has got a whole lot cheaper for me now, we don't have to pay for DLCs and Chapters, and everything we can buy is just cosmetic junk.

Here's my critique about all this: the game has a lot of content within it and someone can literally find themselves never being able to complete main game content. That being said, you can also have the opinion that that's a good thing. So this is a case of the beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Where I stand on this: I think there needs to be more incentive for people to complete main quests or land quests that are not part of events or weeklies or temporary challenges. For example, maybe some quests now Grant endeavor, points or tome points. Or for every 100 champion points you get you get an automatic achievement that grants permanent upgrades. Maybe like more inventory space in the bank or something. There has to be more incentive for non-event and non-weekly quests

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom So, the thing that confuses me about all this:

If the threshold to unlock a page is always higher than the costs of the things on the page, then what's the point of having the cost at all? Why not just make all the things 0-cost? Since the thing that actually matters is the threshold of unlocking each page.

Having items cost things just makes things confusing and muddies the intent that I think you're trying to convey.

So, the first problem is that people are confused about Tome Points to unlock pages vs. Tome Points to redeem a reward. On more than one occasion, I've talked to people who were hesitant to redeem a reward because they thought it would set back their page progress. You're using Tome Points in two different ways, and it's confusing people who haven't gone and read the article or help page (and why should they? systems like this should be intuitive, and if someone needs to read paragraphs to understand how it works, then you've failed the "is it intuitive?" test)

The second problem is that it frames the situation differently, when you assign a cost to individual items. I'm sure you've noticed in this thread a lot discontent over auto-claims of rewards and expiring points. And I'm pretty certain that's all because you needlessly assigned values to these items. By explicitly associating points to these things, you're now getting people to think of these points as a currency that is spent. But that's really not what this system is about!

And because each page's threshold needs to account for both the normal and premium tier things, this means that non-premium users are faced with a huge excess of points that they will then get upset about losing because you're telling them that it's a spendable currency!

This system is about: earning points to unlock reward levels ("pages") in the same way someone would earn XP to unlock levels. That's it. Get rid of the whole notion of Tome Points as a currency. Get rid of the whole notion of spending Tome Points. All of this is unnecessary, confusing, and it's framing the whole system in a negative way.

You need to treat Tome Points like an XP bar, rather than a spendable currency. These Tome Points then unlock levels of reward ("pages"). Each page will have a bunch of normal and premium items. No costs associated with each item. And when a user unlock a page, they can redeem the entire page. This is a way, way simpler way of framing the system. One that's more intuitive and less confusing. And more importantly, it avoids all the problems that you're currently dealing with in this thread: because earning excess XP and blowing past the final level is something that people can understand and wrap their minds around and are okay with. But telling them that they're earning excess spendable currency that you'll then yoink away from them at the end of a season is just begging for pitchforks.

Because the threshold to unlock each page is high enough to "purchase" everything on the page, in the end, the system that I describe is effectively identical to the system that currently exists. Except that you're no longer framing Tome Points as a spendable "currency" and getting all the associated confusion and backlash.

The theme for this Tome is "Dawn and Dusk," so they're adding a "dawn" theme for that one.

Once Arcanist gets its refresh, you will likely get the rest of the blue skills. DK got all of the rest of the blue skills with its refresh, so it seems logical that the 'secondary color' ones will drop with the refresh.

Ok, I owe you all an apology.


Context:

• I used to struggle with 2bar builds before Oakensoul. When ZOS gave us this mythic, my life changed, my love for the game changed, and everything felt better. As some of you may know, I’ve always defended Oakensoul players because I know how good that item used to be.

But:

• I switched from Oakensoul to Arcanist, and since then I’ve mostly played with 2bars, with or without Rakkhat’s. The truth is, I never went back to Oakensoul, not for any specific reason, but simply because I moved forward.

Until today…

• Today I joined vRG with my worst build (Oakensoul), and I already knew it before we even started—I even said it in chat.

So why do I owe you all an apology?
Because Oakensoul… oh boy… it’s bad. Really, really bad. This is NOT the Oakensoul I remember—not even close. I don’t know if it got nerfed again or when the last nerf happened, but ZOS… congrats, you really destroyed this item. lol
This thing feels completely useless now. My god, ZOS… why did you do this…?

I Owe You All an Apology, You Were Right About Oakensoul - @Zaan's