Evolving ESO Part 5: The World

Mashille · August 2015

Welcome, this is part of a series I am creating to try to help to improve Elder Scrolls Online and make it more complete and polished. This Will Involve a variety of topics covering different areas in Elder Scrolls Online to overall attempt to give ideas to make ESO a better game overall. I hope you enjoy.

Please don't mind any spelling mistakes I do not have an autocorrect or spell checker on my web brower.

The Series So Far:
Part 1: Extra Activities: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/172838/evolving-eso-part-1-extra-activities-poll#latest
Part 2: Player Housing / Guild Halls http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/post/editdiscussion/172984
Part 3: Skill Lines And Overhauls: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/173730/evolving-eso-part-3-skill-lines-and-overhauls
Part 4: PvP Enhancement: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/186852/evolving-eso-part-4-enhancing-pvp
Part 5: The World: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/209377/evolving-eso-part-5-the-world

Some Music While you Read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-HyYklN55U

Ok, so here I am gonna mention and come up with a whole bunch of stuff that people may like or dislike. This is my personal opinion on what would be cool additions to the game regarding ESO's world.

- Open World: Ok so this is a bit of a big one but what I'm putting across here isn;t as huge or complex as you might at first think. At the moment despite what all the trailers and the name of the game (Elder Scrolls) tell you, ESO is completely linear and not really open world at all. Yes you can go to other zones in your alliance via teleporting to a friend at a higher level wayshrine but I think there could be some simple but cool things to give a better illusion of an 'Open World'.

My main suggestions for this are to do with invisible barriers and loading screens. And the primary factor of giving a better illusion of ESO being open world is things like being able to cross form area to area without having to take to 1 or 2 roads in each zone. If you do not understand what I mean I will explain further, this type of thing would be something like being able to swim around the cost of a Zone and get to the coast of another zone. So you feel like you can actually explore or get around how you want.

A prime example of this kind of thing is the Rift and Eastmarch. They have a row of mountains seperating them and can only be passed between via a single road. If you climb to the top of the Mountains in the Rift you hit an invisible wall despite being able to see the land of Eastmarch below. All my addition would do is add some Zone border and loading screen locations across the world. So if you climb to the top of the mountains in the rift you would get a loading screen and arrive at the top of the mountains in Eastmarch. As you can see this would give a much better illusion or free travel adn open world.

Something else that could be shown as an example is Swimming. For instance swimming North of Khenarthi's Roost. If you added a Zone border and removed Some (Not All) of the Slaughterfish locations you could make players able to swim directly to Grahtwood and this would give a major impression of an open world. The same could be done for many more locations around the world. Like Swimming from Stormhaven to the Alik'r Desert or Auridon to Greenshade.
And before you say things like 'This wouldn't do anything adn is a waste of resources' then fine, you may think that but it would also make the game feel a lot more like an open world sandboxy MMO than a fully Linear Themepark.

Another thing that works in pretty much the same way to the previous thing I talked about is going across the world itself. This idea would be most viable if ZOS removed VR's and just made Level 50 the level cap. And that would be to allow 100% open travel across the world from level 10+ (Because it would require walking through Cyrodiil) This would be to add more roads, paths and ways linking ALL of the zones in the world so the Player would be able to walk straight from Grahtwood through Malabal Tor, through Reaper's March, through Cyrodiil and into Stonefalls. This would be dont by adding more paths and ways that link the zones. The reason it would work better when VR's are gone is because that way you would not have to complete Main Story and Cadwel's S and G to see and quest in the otehr zones around the World.

Let me talk about an example. You would add a way to enter your Home Cyrodiil campaign via a cave in Reaper's March and it would come out in a cave exit in the South of Cyrodiil. Then there would be a cave entrance is the North of Cyrodiil that leads to the South of Stonefalls or The Rift. This could be copied for Craglorn also so there is a Cave or path in Craglorn that leads to an Exit in the West of Cyrodiil aswell as being able to enter Craglorn via a gate or path from Bangkagorai. Allowing players to roam freely across the entire World of ESO.

To me personally I think that though it seems insignificant would actually make a Huge difference to the world and making it feel a lot more like an Elder Scrolls game as well, with those long road trips to new places rather than touching a magical stone that teleports you to some place where you then have to finish the Story for that place before being able to move on to other zones.

- Multi Faction PvE Zone: I like the Allinace system, it brings me back to the good old DAOC days and love the 3 Alliance PvP. However I think it would be really cool to be able to also have an area where you can play with others in different Alliances. And for me this perfect Zone/Place would be the Rest Of Cyrodiil. I'm gonna come out on something here, I broke out of the map in Malabal Tor and got to explore the above land of where the rest of Cyrodiil would be. I can see that there is plans for something because there is large writing on the ground mapping out Towns and dungeons and some places that I recognised from Oblivion (Skingrad)

Because the area would be rather Large I think it would be supre awesome to have it be a Multi Alliance zone where they have called some kind of Ceasefire where players can play with each other no matter their allegiance. It would also make sense for the ESO lore for the 3 Alliance zone be also be in another part of Cyrodiil because it is not in a specific Alliances territory.

- Multi Faction PvE Zone With Open PvP: Same as the above but with open PvP with other factiom members outside of Towns and cities.

Thanks for reading if you did

Didn't realise I wrote so much Oops XD

P.S: Please do not let the want of more content ot the Priority of certain things take over your Poll Vote, imagine all content you would get gets done as quickly as usual.

TLDR:

Open World stuff to allow free exploration across the whole world with explanations.

Large zone for people from all factions to go to together and can play together questing in the rest of Cyrodiil with explanations.

Large zone for people from all factions to go to together and can play together questing in the rest of Cyrodiil with explanations but with optional Open World PvP with other faction players when outside towns and cities.

Imagine that the top Poll option is for any of the things and not all of them them.

Psychobunni · August 2015

No, I don't like it

I would have voted "some, but not all" if that were an option....but "Multi Faction PvE Zone With Open PvP" I'll never be interested in.

Mashille · August 2015