Any new news on spellcrafting?

IcyDeadPeople · February 2015

MornaBaine wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

Yep. They not totally abandoned it, but I wouldn't expect it in any time soon.

Yep, this is basically correct. Spellcrafting isn't actively being worked on, it's just on the back burner for now.

For the love of all that is sacred... WHY???? This was the ONLY thing I have been looking forward to in this game. It NEEDS to happen. Is it being dropped simply because the company hasn't yet figured out a way to monetize it in the cash shop? Is everything that SHOULD be an overall game update now going to be abandoned unless ZOS can figure out a way to put a price tag on it?

I don't think it has anything to do with the Crown Store, you are talking about a massive gameplay change that requires a lot of work and internal testing. ZOS is following a roadmap with certain other features coming first.

starkerealm · February 2015

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

Yep. They not totally abandoned it, but I wouldn't expect it in any time soon.

Yep, this is basically correct. Spellcrafting isn't actively being worked on, it's just on the back burner for now.

For the love of all that is sacred... WHY???? This was the ONLY thing I have been looking forward to in this game. It NEEDS to happen. Is it being dropped simply because the company hasn't yet figured out a way to monetize it in the cash shop? Is everything that SHOULD be an overall game update now going to be abandoned unless ZOS can figure out a way to put a price tag on it?

I don't think it has anything to do with the Crown Store, you are talking about a massive gameplay change that requires a lot of work and internal testing. ZOS is following a roadmap with certain other features coming first.

Honestly, and, I say this as someone who watched Cryptic mutilate a game they loved, I think there's a lot of people on these forums that are way too trigger happy about saying everything cool will be going in the crown shop. It's almost to the point where it's a meme on these boards. "Blue and black or CROWNSHOP!"

It could go that way, but there's no points to be gained from saying, "everything's going wrong from here forward" and then having one or two examples a year ago that you can point back to and say, "ha! I was right about one thing once!" "Yeah, but Steve, you also said they'd send live iguanas to consume their foes."

glak · February 2015

MornaBaine wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

Yep. They not totally abandoned it, but I wouldn't expect it in any time soon.

Yep, this is basically correct. Spellcrafting isn't actively being worked on, it's just on the back burner for now.

For the love of all that is sacred... WHY???? This was the ONLY thing I have been looking forward to in this game. It NEEDS to happen. Is it being dropped simply because the company hasn't yet figured out a way to monetize it in the cash shop? Is everything that SHOULD be an overall game update now going to be abandoned unless ZOS can figure out a way to put a price tag on it?

Spellcrafting adds another layer of balance difficulty and monetizing it would not make QA'ing it any easier. But some things in 1.6 made spellcrafting easier to balance. For instance, these have been balanced:

Sorcerer: master at arms
Templar: master at support
vampiric tanking in kevlar-beaded skirts & staves w/ Permablock on
all Magicka builds versus One Hand & Shield DPS
zergballing
Sorcerer: 1vXXX
buff stacking and related bugs
DK: master at fire
DK: paratrooping dragonstyle
DK: master at ultimate

This balancing gave better scafolding for new features.

No, wait, looks like they are still working on some of those. Once those are fixed, then they can get back into Spellcrafting.

Artheiron · March 2015

I think after console release they'll finally be able to focus on truly what they supposed to do.

Right now, with update 6, I loved killing npcs or stealing from them etc and thanks ZoS for fixing some of these cheap looking animations. But there's no jail, there are no pve quests or pvp events to support the justice system yet. The technology is here but it feels empty. I believe they'll give a purpose to justice system first (thieves guild maybe?) then the other stuff like spellcrafting.

It's good to the see game is slowly turning into an old fashioned elder scrolls game which is played online.
"Slowly."

olsborg · March 2015

I really hope spellcrafting comes soon. Its what im counting on or I probably wont stay too long in this game as a subber.

Messy1 · March 2015

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

Yep. They not totally abandoned it, but I wouldn't expect it in any time soon.

Yep, this is basically correct. Spellcrafting isn't actively being worked on, it's just on the back burner for now.

With the expression "backburner" what does that translate to in terms of number of staff at ZOS working on it?

Seraphyel · March 2015

olsborg wrote: »

I really hope spellcrafting comes soon. Its what im counting on or I probably wont stay too long in this game as a subber.

You can be sure that Spellcrafting won't come soon. It's been put on the back burner.

glak · March 2015

Messy1 wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

AshySamurai wrote: »

Yep. They not totally abandoned it, but I wouldn't expect it in any time soon.

Yep, this is basically correct. Spellcrafting isn't actively being worked on, it's just on the back burner for now.

With the expression "backburner" what does that translate to in terms of number of staff at ZOS working on it?

What happened:
Spellcrafting is based on 1.5 code without console UI. They stopped working on it to get 1.6 out and the console work done.

What does that mean:
Essentially they'll have to redesign and rewrite Spellcrafted abilities into 1.6 and nobody is tasked with thinking about doing that right now. Think of Spellcrafting as a throw away proof of concept.