The 30 minutes underwater discussion on ESO Live.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

On the next Armchair Developer. Underwater Crafting!
(specifically the weaving of baskets underwater).

doggie

Sevalaricgirl wrote: »

You actually believe that? Just because they make a lot of money doesn't mean that they're going to reinvest it.

Yes, I don't think there is any change at all they make 100m$ on just lotro alone. Warner Brothers purchased Turbine 5 years ago for 160m$.

I checked their financial report on hoovers, they're listed as having 140 employees and 20m$ revenue, that's a far more realistic number.

bertenburnyb16_ESO

gw2 had alot of underwater stuff and combat, it was frouned upon by the mayor playerbase and generally avoided as much as possible...
we dont need under water combat, we need fixes and improvements, together with new content, and for that there is enough of tamriel and daedric planes left to discover, pls dont be wasting time on underwater stuff

FireCowCommando

It makes me sad how little we get to hear from the developers to begin with.

It seems the only way to get any sort of contact to them is through the forum managers like Gina.

I felt a little insulted with this last cycle of ESO live considering the suffering of the PvP player base, and load of other current issues that could have even been mentioned in the slightest.

I also dont understand why when we get no information about the future, when there is a developer sitting and doing an live stream there isnt at least the smallest glimmer of something they are actually working on?

I get they are busy, but they are literally sitting right @#%#@% there, and there truest fans that actually try to get a glimpse into the current/future state of the game get nothing from this current ESO Live design.

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO

CP5 wrote: »

Making that work in game is far more complicated than that.

How so?

My question isn't a challenge. I genuinely don't know enough about the subject to understand why it wouldn't work.

To my untrained eye, I see the game keeping track of my character's position in space when I jump, and I don't understand why that wouldn't work when going underwater.

Unless the game engine treats the surface of water the same way it treats the ground?

I dunno; I'm just spit-balling because I'd like someone with a bit of technical know-how to explain it.

Faulgor

Gidorick wrote: »

Oh, and by NO means does being underwater mean that we MUST now be able to be in the sky. Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion all had underwater with no flying.

Bro, do you even levitate?

NadiusMaximus

So, this in in store for when? 2017-18?

Wolfshead

I think it is funny that OP that claim to been play mmorpg for 15 year dont understand the point the was try to show us and that OP dont seem to understand how much work it take to make thing and after 15 year he/she should know this by now.

Other example is WoW as soon as expansion is release blizzard already have a Dev. team work on a next expansion and as soon the new expansion are on live server the are already on planing stage on expansion the make after the expansion the Dev. team work on and as close the get to release that expansion the put more and more people to work with new expansion just so the can keep expansion come in.

Point is that make thingm feature ro expansion take time and the just not work on 1 thing at sametime many dev. people work on many thing at sametime.

And what the community need to know that what we ask for today dont mean it will be add with 6 month after we ask for it may be add in 1 or even 3 year from now if it even go to be add at all.

Lava_Croft

Having a pointless 30-minute discussion about a feature you are most likely never going to add to the game looks like a great way to spend your time as a ZOS employee. I mean, the game itself is functioning perfectly fine, right? Development, release and reception all went A-OK!

CP5

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Having a pointless 30-minute discussion about a feature you are most likely never going to add to the game looks like a great way to spend your time as a ZOS employee. I mean, the game itself is functioning perfectly fine, right? Development, release and reception all went A-OK!

Because a 30 min segment where the devs demonstrate their internal thought processes is a complete waste of time and that 30 min could have magically fixed all the games problems. Honestly, they are doing something that could turn out to be a very interesting and insightful segment, why is everyone so bent about this being a bad thing?

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Making that work in game is far more complicated than that.

How so?

My question isn't a challenge. I genuinely don't know enough about the subject to understand why it wouldn't work.

To my untrained eye, I see the game keeping track of my character's position in space when I jump, and I don't understand why that wouldn't work when going underwater.

Unless the game engine treats the surface of water the same way it treats the ground?

I dunno; I'm just spit-balling because I'd like someone with a bit of technical know-how to explain it.

As for this i'll outline a few of the large things that come to mind that would make this insane to add. A lot will likely be what was brought up in the show but if it weren't then I somehow saw something the group didn't or simply got to a point they didn't have time to reach.

As far as I know yes, the game treats water as a flat surface, a surface that looks like water and where your player runs a "swimming" animation on.

To make you go underwater they would need to implement a way vertical movement system, alter the games expectations that all players fall down onto a single plane, change how the game detects players boundaries for detecting hackers or people falling out of bounds, alter how players aim skills to make up for this versatility, create new animations for all movement directions, skills and reactions to skills, alter how the server keeps track of objects as anything in water is likely to move (see the part where they discuss looting bodies in water).

Just to put the above blerb into a finer point, the game is built around the idea that everyone is on a flat playing field. The large number of animations made would all need to be altered and added to in order to work under water, many visual and audio effects would need to be implemented and maintained over the server, the checks the server makes to know what to allow players to do would need an entire rework so our clients couldn't request to swim out of the map or loot objects well out of reach, and this isn't a finer point at all is it...

In short(ish), what they described in the segment is a massive amount of work and if under water/flying content were to be added, it would have needed a framework set up much earlier in development as many very core mechanics would need to be completely changed. To change those now would make the game incredibly unstable and take a massive amount of time to implement properly, and sorry if I came off as agitated earlier, people going on about how easy this is or how bad the segment was got old real fast.

publicradioheadub17_ESO

complete waste of time

phreatophile

So this is why we don't have a basic feature that the three GOTY Elder Scrolls managed going back 17 years or so, and WOW has with their woefully outdated graphics. Because it's hard?! It's not hard. Somebody decided that half Finnished was good enough.

Underwater, thieves guild, dark brotherhood, spell crafting, justice all are part of a finished Elder Scrolls game. 1/5. It's no wonder we ended up B2P. They released half the game.

Gidorick

Faulgor wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

Oh, and by NO means does being underwater mean that we MUST now be able to be in the sky. Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion all had underwater with no flying.

Bro, do you even levitate?

I stand corrected.

Gidorick

phreatophile wrote: »

They released half the game.

I can't say you're wrong.

wrlifeboil

CP5 wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Having a pointless 30-minute discussion about a feature you are most likely never going to add to the game looks like a great way to spend your time as a ZOS employee. I mean, the game itself is functioning perfectly fine, right? Development, release and reception all went A-OK!

Because a 30 min segment where the devs demonstrate their internal thought processes is a complete waste of time and that 30 min could have magically fixed all the games problems. Honestly, they are doing something that could turn out to be a very interesting and insightful segment, why is everyone so bent about this being a bad thing?

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Making that work in game is far more complicated than that.

How so?

My question isn't a challenge. I genuinely don't know enough about the subject to understand why it wouldn't work.

To my untrained eye, I see the game keeping track of my character's position in space when I jump, and I don't understand why that wouldn't work when going underwater.

Unless the game engine treats the surface of water the same way it treats the ground?

I dunno; I'm just spit-balling because I'd like someone with a bit of technical know-how to explain it.

As for this i'll outline a few of the large things that come to mind that would make this insane to add. A lot will likely be what was brought up in the show but if it weren't then I somehow saw something the group didn't or simply got to a point they didn't have time to reach.

As far as I know yes, the game treats water as a flat surface, a surface that looks like water and where your player runs a "swimming" animation on.

To make you go underwater they would need to implement a way vertical movement system, alter the games expectations that all players fall down onto a single plane, change how the game detects players boundaries for detecting hackers or people falling out of bounds, alter how players aim skills to make up for this versatility, create new animations for all movement directions, skills and reactions to skills, alter how the server keeps track of objects as anything in water is likely to move (see the part where they discuss looting bodies in water).

Just to put the above blerb into a finer point, the game is built around the idea that everyone is on a flat playing field. The large number of animations made would all need to be altered and added to in order to work under water, many visual and audio effects would need to be implemented and maintained over the server, the checks the server makes to know what to allow players to do would need an entire rework so our clients couldn't request to swim out of the map or loot objects well out of reach, and this isn't a finer point at all is it...

In short(ish), what they described in the segment is a massive amount of work and if under water/flying content were to be added, it would have needed a framework set up much earlier in development as many very core mechanics would need to be completely changed. To change those now would make the game incredibly unstable and take a massive amount of time to implement properly, and sorry if I came off as agitated earlier, people going on about how easy this is or how bad the segment was got old real fast.

It's been done in other mmos so it can be done. The question is Why Would It Be Done? Where is the underwater experience or combat in the Elder Scrolls series? Why not have space based combat too?

Cody

so no fixes for the lag and utter lack of balance in PvP?

noted

Gidorick

wrlifeboil wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Having a pointless 30-minute discussion about a feature you are most likely never going to add to the game looks like a great way to spend your time as a ZOS employee. I mean, the game itself is functioning perfectly fine, right? Development, release and reception all went A-OK!

Because a 30 min segment where the devs demonstrate their internal thought processes is a complete waste of time and that 30 min could have magically fixed all the games problems. Honestly, they are doing something that could turn out to be a very interesting and insightful segment, why is everyone so bent about this being a bad thing?

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Making that work in game is far more complicated than that.

How so?

My question isn't a challenge. I genuinely don't know enough about the subject to understand why it wouldn't work.

To my untrained eye, I see the game keeping track of my character's position in space when I jump, and I don't understand why that wouldn't work when going underwater.

Unless the game engine treats the surface of water the same way it treats the ground?

I dunno; I'm just spit-balling because I'd like someone with a bit of technical know-how to explain it.

As for this i'll outline a few of the large things that come to mind that would make this insane to add. A lot will likely be what was brought up in the show but if it weren't then I somehow saw something the group didn't or simply got to a point they didn't have time to reach.

As far as I know yes, the game treats water as a flat surface, a surface that looks like water and where your player runs a "swimming" animation on.

To make you go underwater they would need to implement a way vertical movement system, alter the games expectations that all players fall down onto a single plane, change how the game detects players boundaries for detecting hackers or people falling out of bounds, alter how players aim skills to make up for this versatility, create new animations for all movement directions, skills and reactions to skills, alter how the server keeps track of objects as anything in water is likely to move (see the part where they discuss looting bodies in water).

Just to put the above blerb into a finer point, the game is built around the idea that everyone is on a flat playing field. The large number of animations made would all need to be altered and added to in order to work under water, many visual and audio effects would need to be implemented and maintained over the server, the checks the server makes to know what to allow players to do would need an entire rework so our clients couldn't request to swim out of the map or loot objects well out of reach, and this isn't a finer point at all is it...

In short(ish), what they described in the segment is a massive amount of work and if under water/flying content were to be added, it would have needed a framework set up much earlier in development as many very core mechanics would need to be completely changed. To change those now would make the game incredibly unstable and take a massive amount of time to implement properly, and sorry if I came off as agitated earlier, people going on about how easy this is or how bad the segment was got old real fast.

It's been done in other mmos so it can be done. The question is Why Would It Be Done? Where is the underwater experience or combat in the Elder Scrolls series? Why not have space based combat too?

This is a joke, right? This can't be a serious post.

CP5

wrlifeboil wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Having a pointless 30-minute discussion about a feature you are most likely never going to add to the game looks like a great way to spend your time as a ZOS employee. I mean, the game itself is functioning perfectly fine, right? Development, release and reception all went A-OK!

Because a 30 min segment where the devs demonstrate their internal thought processes is a complete waste of time and that 30 min could have magically fixed all the games problems. Honestly, they are doing something that could turn out to be a very interesting and insightful segment, why is everyone so bent about this being a bad thing?

milesrodneymcneely2_ESO wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Making that work in game is far more complicated than that.

How so?

My question isn't a challenge. I genuinely don't know enough about the subject to understand why it wouldn't work.

To my untrained eye, I see the game keeping track of my character's position in space when I jump, and I don't understand why that wouldn't work when going underwater.

Unless the game engine treats the surface of water the same way it treats the ground?

I dunno; I'm just spit-balling because I'd like someone with a bit of technical know-how to explain it.

As for this i'll outline a few of the large things that come to mind that would make this insane to add. A lot will likely be what was brought up in the show but if it weren't then I somehow saw something the group didn't or simply got to a point they didn't have time to reach.

As far as I know yes, the game treats water as a flat surface, a surface that looks like water and where your player runs a "swimming" animation on.

To make you go underwater they would need to implement a way vertical movement system, alter the games expectations that all players fall down onto a single plane, change how the game detects players boundaries for detecting hackers or people falling out of bounds, alter how players aim skills to make up for this versatility, create new animations for all movement directions, skills and reactions to skills, alter how the server keeps track of objects as anything in water is likely to move (see the part where they discuss looting bodies in water).

Just to put the above blerb into a finer point, the game is built around the idea that everyone is on a flat playing field. The large number of animations made would all need to be altered and added to in order to work under water, many visual and audio effects would need to be implemented and maintained over the server, the checks the server makes to know what to allow players to do would need an entire rework so our clients couldn't request to swim out of the map or loot objects well out of reach, and this isn't a finer point at all is it...

In short(ish), what they described in the segment is a massive amount of work and if under water/flying content were to be added, it would have needed a framework set up much earlier in development as many very core mechanics would need to be completely changed. To change those now would make the game incredibly unstable and take a massive amount of time to implement properly, and sorry if I came off as agitated earlier, people going on about how easy this is or how bad the segment was got old real fast.

It's been done in other mmos so it can be done. The question is Why Would It Be Done? Where is the underwater experience or combat in the Elder Scrolls series? Why not have space based combat too?

Its something that needs to be planned well in advance. Adding this would be like saying "I want to change the foundation of my house, without rebuilding the entire house." So many core, key systems would need to be changed and reworked it isn't sane to do. Also, what underwater combat experiences in past elder scrolls games are you talking about?

Nazon_Katts

Sylvyr wrote: »

Oh oh underwater flatulence!!!

OMG who cares about bug fixes if that gets in the game! WOOT!

Bubbles! This one likes bubbles!

GamerzElite wrote: »

Can I use Fire Staff underwater?

This one is not entirely sure that this will prove to be a wise idea right now...

Raash wrote: »

GamerzElite wrote: »

Can I use Fire Staff underwater?

The really big question is what would happen if the flaming horse where to dive into water...

The invention of a steam horse, this one thinks.

Uberkull

doggie wrote: »

Was I the only one who found that discussion disturbing? They were talking like they had unlimited resources, and 200 developers to put on this. Just seems pointless, we all know the facts, the game is not selling well on consoles, and didn't sell that well on PC either. They'll never have the resources to change the game so much.

There are huge issues in the game, like boring crafting, very small player economy, lack of dungeon loot, buggy dungeon finder, and a ton of other things. I would rather like to hear a discussion about something realistic, like how to improve blacksmithing for example, that would be intresting unlike what was going on ESO Live.

I've played mmorpgs for 15 years, and I'm just so tired of devs making content for their CV instead of nailing the problems in the game, "fixed dungeon finder, added to crafting" dosen't sound so good on linkedin as "developed breakthrough underwater combat for eso".

Could we have more realistic discussions?

So I'm late on this discussion because I just watched the ESO Live section with Underwater challenges.

The discussion was rather overboard, seriously over-complicating the aspect of another 3D plain. Seriously, WOW had this day one. Water isn't anything more than another plain...but slowed down. New animation sure, but my gawd...a few more animations, we don't need 10 more per character. Combat? big deal...just slow everything down.

'Underwater is a whole new 3D space' was said....really? Then your 3D world designer is complicated. Underwater space is a cave. That's it...a cave. You have that developed, how you move in caves, how borders work in caves, how transitions of ascending and descending works

We don't need a massive investment to get some underwater support. And to the OP point, Underwater anything is not on the top of the list.

Go play WoW...see how basic underwater movement and oxygen management is. No one cares how basic it is, it's all slowed down and most players understand it's slow...so they get out of water and regain their normal gameplay.

Gidorick

I agree with you @uberkull.

yes, it would be work and effort would have to be put into getting it done but that's their job... to put the effort into making new content.

I literally face palmed when they mentioned the underwater mounts. A seahorse? Really?

Uberkull

Gidorick wrote: »

I literally face palmed when they mentioned the underwater mounts. A seahorse? Really?

OMG...exactly! I continued to listen and they went into mounts. So they said 'seahorse' and I was like 'yea, they have had that water mount in WoW since Burning Crusade(xpac 2)'. You know how many people cared? none, a month after release...it was like 'cool! a seahorse' then a month later...'wtf am I using this for now?' and the seahorse disappeared from the carebus other than when you had to get to a underwater dungeon. Once there...it was a cave with land.

Listen, I get it's extra effort, but if it's this complicated to introduce a swimming pool in ESO, forget about ever flying.

And just remember, if you poll ex-wow players on what they want the most, I would wager that 90% of them would say 'Vanilla servers'. Meaning, dedicated original release servers, with the original content and the lvl 60 cap. People liked what they had to start, they liked the simple life. So just be careful what you wish for...it can make the game into something you might not like 5 years down the road.

PS - I was a WoW player from release, Nov - 2004 until 2012.

Mashille

I'm confused about your logic?

'The game is not selling sell on consoles' ... It's not out yet for consoles.

'Didn't sell well for PC' It actually held up fairly well, even though it wasn't stupidly insulted by everyone who couldn't be bothered to pay a sub and had over 700,000 subscribers in November I think. Compared to games such as EvE online, which only fairly recently got over 1,000,000 subscribers I think it's doing pretty damn well for itself. Also when it comes out on consoles, the money will flood ZOS' office's and drown everyone with the big dollar. Because now it's B2P all people who played Skyrim, etc will throw there money at the game. This with the fact that 86% of ALL Skyrim sales were on console compared to a mere 14% on PC ZOS will have plenty of resources.

In addition, what do you have against underwater stuff. Personally I think it would be F****** amazing with cool exploration and things like that.

gard

Those bubbles were caused by air trapped in my shorts when I got in the water. Honest to God.

nastuug

Acrolas wrote: »

We all know work is hard. That's why it's called work. I don't need a perspective piece on work.

Just do the work and do it well. That's what makes people happy and wanting more. When a product works for them instead of having to work for the product and make excuses for its shortcomings.


When you start going on about how hard this is or that is and going through the steps on how it could happen, maybe, one day, that just tells me you're more interested in ideas than results. Talking is easy. You can talk indefinitely while getting absolutely nothing done.

The people interested in results are too busy making things happen. They don't talk about Phase 3 until Phase 1 is earned through sweat, sleepless nights, and a little luck. Because there won't be a Phase 3 if you don't work your butt off on the product right in front of you.

There's still a lot of work to be done on Phase 1 of TESO. Yes it takes time. Yes it takes effort. Developers aren't exactly masters of public speaking so why not let them just do their job instead of the "Well, um, you know..." verbal pause game for two hours. Give me a two-paragraph memo on the dev blog that you accomplished something major today and then let's get back to our busy lives.

Very well said.

firstdecan

CP5 wrote: »

firstdecan wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

I don't understand why some people don't understand the entire point of the discussion.

Just to make it absolutely clear, for those of you who don't do subtle and need to have it spelled out slowly:

The discussion was not saying "this is what we are doing to add underwater stuff to ESO". The point of the discussion was to address people who clamour for things like underwater stuff, and point out the massive sort of effort it would take to put it in the game.

I fear for the world if people do not understand this sort of discussion.

But they basically spelled it out right there. In 30 minutes of off the cuff discussion, they effectively devised a strategy for implementing this feature in the game. This would indicate that it's not as hard as they're making it out to be, that they understand what needs to be done to implement it, and are just unwilling to do so. That's fine, it's their design decision, it's just that the ease by which something like that can be outlined undermines their claim regarding what a "monumental" effort it is.

So, doubling the number of animations at least, heavily altering the entire combat system far beyond what has already been implemented, manipulating the users client with a massive amount of audio and visual changes, and altering key parts of the game like looting and movement is "not as hard as they're making it out to be"?

And all of this over a network, with all these extra bits of information being sent couldn't possibly cause more lag. Sorry if I sound rude in saying this but this comment goes to the people who think this is easy, and that ZOS can just "copy past elder scrolls under water systems/animations," that no, it is not that easy at all. The point of this segment was to have devs discuss ideas and this idea had a lot to work with.

We don't know what they will discuss next time but its likely their followup segments won't be all over sized projects and maybe they will discuss something that they may end up implementing someday. But they chose under water content to discuss and its clear that the community needs this segment in eso live more than most else.

There's a lot of levels of effort between 'copy pasta' and 'mission impossible.' Quite honestly, your post does not support your argument. I never said it was easy, but they've outlined what needs to be done. It may be tedious, but once outlined it's not difficult. There will be extra animations, but not double. There's no need to change the combat system. Updating the client should be a commodity operation for them by now. There's no need to change looting and the changes to movement would be minimal. The only thing that would make it hard is the need to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

Again, I don't care if they implement something like this or not. But to say the feature is too hard to implement isn't an argument that can be reasonably supported.

Bouvin

doggie wrote: »

Was I the only one who found that discussion disturbing? They were talking like they had unlimited resources, and 200 developers to put on this. Just seems pointless, we all know the facts, the game is not selling well on consoles, and didn't sell that well on PC either. They'll never have the resources to change the game so much.

There are huge issues in the game, like boring crafting, very small player economy, lack of dungeon loot, buggy dungeon finder, and a ton of other things. I would rather like to hear a discussion about something realistic, like how to improve blacksmithing for example, that would be intresting unlike what was going on ESO Live.

I've played mmorpgs for 15 years, and I'm just so tired of devs making content for their CV instead of nailing the problems in the game, "fixed dungeon finder, added to crafting" dosen't sound so good on linkedin as "developed breakthrough underwater combat for eso".

Could we have more realistic discussions?

Maybe this is why they can't fix Cyrodil lag or release any content for 9+ months.

Too focused on underwater stuff...

Well played ZoS, well played.