Datamined Imperial City details conspicuous by their absence

Enodoc

This is a cross-reference list of What We Thought We Knew by @Dominoid and the Imperial City Basics guide. The aim here is to point out things which were datamined which are not mentioned in the Basics, despite them being basic to the gameplay of Imperial City.

Capturing Districts for Your Alliance
The districts that supposedly could be captured are the Market District (now the Memorial District), the Noble District and the Arboretum District. They could be caputured by your alliances, or by the forces of Coldharbour. Reclaiming them from the daedra was to involve venturing into small Coldharbour areas. Control of a district was to provide three benefits:

• The ability to respawn in that location
• Special access to an armory within those districts each with a new crafted set
• A “defender” buff that increases XP for monster and player kills in all of Cyrodiil and the Imperial City

Considering this seems to be a basic part of the PvP gameplay of the Imperial City, it is odd that it is not mentioned in the Basics Guide. Has this part of IC been removed? If so, why might that be? To me, it seems a perfectly innocent aspect of PvP, and its removal just serves to degrade the PvP aspect of the DLC. Without alliance control determining access to the Armory, will players be able to be ganked while they are crafting? The "Defender" buff would probably need to be altered so that it was only active in Imperial City, to avoid giving an unfair advantage over players in Cyrodiil who do not have the DLC, but removing the entire system just because of that seems a bit harsh.

Divine AoE Buffs
Announced at the Guild Summit last year, the AoE buffs were to be on an eight hour real-time timer, and appeared to revolve around the Divines. Based on the fact that there are six of them, Dominoid surmised that there would most likely be one in each of the six Districts. A shrine devoted to one of the divines would bestow an AoE buff to benefit you and your group upon activation, and each buff was based on one of the weapon skill lines.

This, again, would seem to be a basic part of the new gameplay, and yet was not mentioned in the Basics Guide. With the changes to Home Campaign bonuses no longer working outside of Cyrodiil, it would be reasonable to assume that these buffs would also have to be altered in some way, and for the same reason as "Defender" above, would probably only be active inside Imperial City. Again though, removing the entire system seems a bit unnecessary.

Thoughts?

Dominoid

I don't think they are done revealing yet. They haven't even mentioned the Arena but it's in every video of the IC they make.

MissBizz

One thing is they mentioned new crafting sets would be in safe zones. Maybe they decided they wanted the crafting tables to be more accessible?

Enodoc

Dominoid wrote: »

I don't think they are done revealing yet. They haven't even mentioned the Arena but it's in every video of the IC they make.

I would agree with that, I just thought that the capturing of districts (specifically) was quite a major thing to not mention at all.

MissBizz wrote: »

One thing is they mentioned new crafting sets would be in safe zones. Maybe they decided they wanted the crafting tables to be more accessible?

By "safe zones" I assumed they meant "zones that are safe because your alliance controls them". If they're just PvP-less crafting rooms, would there be one instance for each alliance?

Sausage

Dominoid wrote: »

I don't think they are done revealing yet. They haven't even mentioned the Arena but it's in every video of the IC they make.

Someone said already theres non-instanced PVE and PVP arena, its not exactly what people are looking for, but at least its better than nothing.

Enodoc

During the Twitch show last night, I got confirmation that capturing districts is no longer happening:
"ZOS_Kai_Schober: @Enodoc you can no longer capture districts"

A shame I think, as that means that Imperial City will have no directed PvP content at all, and I think ESO is already lacking in "PvP with Objectives". Maybe that's something they will reconsider in the future; if not District control, then some other directed PvP objectives in IC.

Audigy

District control is a bit tricky I think.

If one faction is extremely good (crowded), they will just lock specific districts forever - seen it at WOW for many years. If that district then has something of value, then people will miss out on content they paid for.

However,

they could add specific community events at IC, events that would have pve and pvp aspects. For instance, factions would be asked to collect something to build up their defenses. Once done so, the enemy factions would be able to lead an attack by also doing quests and the outcome of those quests, defines how much NPC´s will fight along with them. Smaller factions will get a bonus for their work.

Let such a battle happen twice a month and let it last for 5 days, so that everyone will have a chance to be a part of it.

The rewards could be titles, vanity pets & costumes. In general, we miss events at Tamriel and I don't mean such weird stuff like Halloween, Christmas ... No, meaningful events that are lore specific and change the way how we play the game.

CaptainObvious

Heh, the quest givers give direction in regular Cyrodiil. The problem is... you are looking for competent tactical direction. Following their direction is the reason why the alliance war is takes so long historically.

CaptainObvious

I suspect with the change to the alliance war buffs that the whole buffs thing may be being reconsidered.

Enodoc

CaptainObvious wrote: »

I suspect with the change to the alliance war buffs that the whole buffs thing may be being reconsidered.

Yeah I agree that's likely what happened to the buffs. And since buffs were one of the main things that district control gave, that may be one of the main reasons why they took that out (in addition to the locked-down access to the crafting sites that Audigy alluded to).

Specifically, it seems that:

• The ability to respawn in that location is now possible anyway (each district apparently has a safe spawn point)
• Special access to an armory was decided against, since it could be locked down, meaning people would not be able to get what they paid for
• A “defender” buff that increases XP went away with the changes to buffs

Enodoc

~30 Daily Quests
Datamining suggested that there would be 3 or 4 daily quests available in the Districts and 6 or so more in the Sewers. This was based on achievements that were present in the datamined info, rewarding completion of each set of quests. However, these achievements are not present in-game, which leads me to believe that the majority of these daily quests were scrapped. The patch notes say that dailies are available in a district once the story there is complete, but I am concerned that it won't be the 30-odd quests we were hoping for. With hardly any PvE daily quests, the repeatable, objective-based PvE content that IC was looking to be so good for no longer seems to be there.

Combining that with lack of district control in PvP, this means that Imperial City will have hardly any repeatable, objective-based content at all, and I think that is a great shame.

Enodoc

Well, here's conformation of the reduced number of quests, from today's Creating ESO article:
During our internal employee playtests, however, we found that our early iterations featured too many quests. It was to the point where it was fairly difficult to know what was going on with the overall story—and we're the ones who developed the content! We ended up reducing the number of quests to seven [...]

In my view, you can never have too many quests. If there's an issue over the story becoming confusing, it would be possible to address that by applying a set order to the quests, rather than removing them completely. I hope we may see some of the 20-odd lost stories for Imperial City turn up there in the future.

Teiji

Maybe the quests will only have mentions in the form of non-lore book books. They are fun to read, I like those.

Or perhaps we will see at least some of these quests when they add Tel Var Stone weapons to the Tel Var Stone merchants, as currently we can obtain no Tel Var Stone weapons.

This could make for a good future update to Imperial City; more quests as well as Tel Var Stone weapons which have been shown in many screenshots already, yet not obtainable with Imperial City.

Tel Var Stone weapons which are not obtainable being the following;



Perhaps they have big plans for a future Imperial City update, maybe we will learn more about this on next ESO live with an expected date on when they will add weapons?

Acrolas

They should have done it as Rumors of the Imperial City, with pieces of the story being spread over the three alliances.

That would give each alliance its own take on the situation, but you'd know more if you went through all three quest lines. And that story would still be based on the perspective of each alliance, so it wouldn't have to be entirely correct.

Then have the seven better core quests inside the City that support or call into question the different alliance positions.

yodased

@Sausage awh man you ruined it

RazzPitazz

The arena is in. It is open so you walk in, kill waves of mobs and basically own the arena for a brief period (as in the mobs don't spawn). The hitch is anyone can walk in at any time it seems.

starkerealm

Teiji wrote: »

Perhaps they have big plans for a future Imperial City update, maybe we will learn more about this on next ESO live with an expected date on when they will add weapons?

Way back before Unlimited, they talked about all of the major releases coming in two waves. The initial release, and then a follow up a couple weeks later. It's possible this is still going to be the case with the DLC. You get the initial content when the DLC launches, and additional things will be added a month or six weeks later as a bonus.

Teiji

starkerealm wrote: »

Teiji wrote: »

Perhaps they have big plans for a future Imperial City update, maybe we will learn more about this on next ESO live with an expected date on when they will add weapons?

Way back before Unlimited, they talked about all of the major releases coming in two waves. The initial release, and then a follow up a couple weeks later. It's possible this is still going to be the case with the DLC. You get the initial content when the DLC launches, and additional things will be added a month or six weeks later as a bonus.

@starkerealm thank you very much for this!

I now remember how Craglorn was released in two phases, even though the entire zone is 'Craglorn'.

This appears to be the same now, understandably with your post; it now makes sense why it's not received an official response due to possibly upsetting people with "Well I paid for the DLC, I want all of the DLC, not half now, half later."

Fortunately, unlike Craglorn - it's not half a zone, it's just really cool weapons which will probably be part of terrible sets; unless they are similar to Master's Weapons which would be really well received, possibly.

Maybe the reason why weapons are not included with Imperial City initial release, is because they will be in similar strength and enchantment to Master's Weapons. I hope so.