Official Discussion Thread for "ESO – The Year Ahead"

James-Wayne

Cinbri wrote: »

"PTS in early February" -Nice. But when will we hear more determinated date?
Say "on ESO Live", Say "on ESO Live" please

If Thieves Guild is Feb for PTS they have a month of testing and then launch in March as that's the end of the 1st quarter of the year... simples.

Shader_Shibes

sebban wrote: »

Very underwhelming. Hardly anything new, mostly just a re-write of old information.

This 10000000%.

Preyfar

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

LearnThis wrote: »

I know I read about the character customization but I did not see the word "race" in there. Was there a reason that was not spoken of or at least mentioned?

Race changes are part of the current character re-customization design.

Ahh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Have this cookie.

Woodoochill

LearnThis wrote: »

Could someone please direct me to an article or explain the whole idea of spellcrafting and how it would look in this game?

QuakeCon from 2014

Sweetpea704

The thing that I am wondering is how the scaling thing is going to work? What I have noticed in Orsinium is that although you may have your stats scaled, you may not have the morphs and skills you need to be survivable. (This seems to be more of an issue for certain builds.) I was trying to tank a Vet level dungeon, as a level 38 DK, and the guy was mad at me because I kept dying. Now, as a level 49 tank, I realize that I didn't have the morphs, passives, and higher level skills that I needed to do enough DPS, return mana, and mitigate damage to keep up with them, even though I had the stats scaled. I'm not sure how you can fix that problem. Also, the one thing I don't like about Orsinium is that you only get the ore for your crafting level. I like to get to the next area and collect ore, so that I can save up for my new set of armor before I need it. Also, I craft a lot of armor for my kids, who are not my level. I just farm the zone for what I need. If all I can get is the highest level ore, I can't help them.

Lest you think I just can't tank, later that day, my son and my brother 3 teamed two normal dungeons at level and had no problems. The Vet levels have, and should have, content that assume you have the passives and higher level morphs and skills.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Y'know, ZOS has been so quiet about what's coming after Thieves Guild/Dark Brotherhood, and given the hints they dropped at the end of the Orsinium quest...I wonder if the reason we aren't hearing more about Q3/Q4 plans is because that would spoil the plot for TG/DB?

Dominoid

LearnThis wrote: »

Could someone please direct me to an article or explain the whole idea of spellcrafting and how it would look in this game?

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2xpn39/data_mining_spellcrafting_what_is_it_and_what_are/

Dominoid

Caroloces wrote: »

What about Horse Racing!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2x4ouf/data_mining_mount_racing_and_the_black_horse/

Enodoc

Divinius wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

ArvenAldmeri wrote: »

What will happen with those attribute points we got for veteran ranks?

You will now earn the extra attribute/skill points while leveling up from 1-50. Here's a quick chart to help explain it better

Level - Bonus Attribute/Skill Points
5 - 1
10 - 2
15 - 1
20 - 2
25 - 1
30 - 2
35 - 1
40 - 2
45 - 1
50 - 3
Total 16

Note: This is different than what I posted in November last year. We've been iterating on the design for a bit now and this is a much more straightforward approach.

OK, either Rich is doing his math wrong, or I am.

Since VR1 is the same as Level 50, there's only 15 extra skill points that you get from VR2 to VR16, right? So shouldn't we only get 2 additional points at level 50, and not 3 additional?

I'm thinking this is because Level 50 technically doesn't give you any points right now, and the point you get then comes from "VR1". So it's 3 on top of 0, rather than 2 on top of 1.

Darkeus

no char recustomization and no spell crafting! i bet no new skills and weapon combos... conclusion dissappoionted! max lvl dissappointed.

Glory

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I read the Year Ahead a few times, and was hoping someone would add an addendum for a few things:

• Looking at PvP, all we have to look forward to for an entire year is reducing latency/lag and the cancellation of the Justice system?
• There is no talk of balancing. Is @Wrobel posting his own Year Ahead? Many people I know of consider balancing to be a top priority.

I don't need complete answers, I'm just hoping that this list is just to show what DLC's you have coming up. I would be very sad to hear that this next year is going to be a few PvE DLC quest zones and bringing things like scrolling text (something we had in beta) to consoles.

Chesimac

•As I am a regular PvP player (Azura's Star, NA),

char name? Ill show you what azuras like.. @ZOS_MattFiror
ALSO PVP ARENAS PLSSSSSSSSS

Chesimac

Darkeus wrote: »

no char recustomization and no spell crafting! i bet no new skills and weapon combos... conclusion dissappoionted! max lvl dissappointed.

they need to fix actual game issues before they add things

Enodoc

For those of you angling after PvP information, here's all the stuff coming to Cyrodiil, most of it slated to come alongside Thieves Guild:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Since most of this information is scattered about the forums here's a nice condensed "short answer" list:

• Reintroducing forward camps with smaller radius', restrictive respawning within radius only and global cooldown.
• Refactoring Siege damage (again)
• Removing alliance campaign restrictions on your account
• Allowing you to unassign yourself with cooldowns
• Redo'ing the guards at the Scroll gates and putting them on the ground
• More things to spend your AP on and updating current sets to higher levels

Most, if not all, of these changes should be in the next major update (barring issues with testing).

We are also staying vigilant about improving performance in Cyrodiil. There were a few ability changes made earlier this week and we're watching the performance after those changes, but we're still digging into getting the performance better.

And here's some general stuff on PvP after that:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have discussed adding capturable objectives in the Towns of Cyrodiil, additional "flags" like the Elder Scrolls and newer siege weapons. These still need to be fully approved by not just designers as you see posting here, but also by our programmers and producers, scoped accordingly, and added to the schedule for development.

Cyrodiil is designed to be a massive war zone where battles rage on many fronts, and that vision still stands today just as it did when it was initially created. Whether you're in a non-Veteran Campaign, an Imperial City gated Campaign or vanilla Campaigns, we want Cyrodiil to be a fun and engaging experience for all players, and of course running smoothly. We know it's been bumpy, but we are working on it gang.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Everything from here is still valid:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2438329/#Comment_2438329

Looking beyond that, we want to get the Towns into play and give them some more meaning to the war and not just a quest hub (although the dailies will still be there). One of the topics regarding town capture is adding more respawn points via those towns... Also in discussion are AP gains in groups and the behavior it encourages/discourages as well as the rate of AP gains as a whole.

While we'd love to get banners on keeps for guilds that own them, that's still on the back burner. The rate which keeps flip is also pretty fast and we're looking at changing that. We also see requests to spend AP at keeps to make them go through the upgrades, however that's an entire redesign of the system which would take a long time to get in, so we're looking into other methods of keep upgrades within the current system for both Keeps and the Resources.

Performance is still the priority of the programmer group looking into Cyrodiil at this time, but we are getting updates that we can for the next patch.

Benegon

This is amazing. My first MMO was Lord of the Rings Online. The disappointing thing about it is the devs don't give a darn what the players think. Here however, the feedback we give actually seems to acknowledged and used. I can't wait for this coming year! Everything seems so awesome including player housing! I wish spellcrafting would make it in though Maybe next year.

Glory

Enodoc wrote: »

For those of you angling after PvP information, here's all the stuff coming to Cyrodiil, most of it slated to come alongside Thieves Guild:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Since most of this information is scattered about the forums here's a nice condensed "short answer" list:

• Reintroducing forward camps with smaller radius', restrictive respawning within radius only and global cooldown.
• Refactoring Siege damage (again)
• Removing alliance campaign restrictions on your account
• Allowing you to unassign yourself with cooldowns
• Redo'ing the guards at the Scroll gates and putting them on the ground
• More things to spend your AP on and updating current sets to higher levels

Most, if not all, of these changes should be in the next major update (barring issues with testing).

We are also staying vigilant about improving performance in Cyrodiil. There were a few ability changes made earlier this week and we're watching the performance after those changes, but we're still digging into getting the performance better.

And here's some general stuff on PvP after that:

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

We have discussed adding capturable objectives in the Towns of Cyrodiil, additional "flags" like the Elder Scrolls and newer siege weapons. These still need to be fully approved by not just designers as you see posting here, but also by our programmers and producers, scoped accordingly, and added to the schedule for development.

Cyrodiil is designed to be a massive war zone where battles rage on many fronts, and that vision still stands today just as it did when it was initially created. Whether you're in a non-Veteran Campaign, an Imperial City gated Campaign or vanilla Campaigns, we want Cyrodiil to be a fun and engaging experience for all players, and of course running smoothly. We know it's been bumpy, but we are working on it gang.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Everything from here is still valid:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2438329/#Comment_2438329

Looking beyond that, we want to get the Towns into play and give them some more meaning to the war and not just a quest hub (although the dailies will still be there). One of the topics regarding town capture is adding more respawn points via those towns... Also in discussion are AP gains in groups and the behavior it encourages/discourages as well as the rate of AP gains as a whole.

While we'd love to get banners on keeps for guilds that own them, that's still on the back burner. The rate which keeps flip is also pretty fast and we're looking at changing that. We also see requests to spend AP at keeps to make them go through the upgrades, however that's an entire redesign of the system which would take a long time to get in, so we're looking into other methods of keep upgrades within the current system for both Keeps and the Resources.

Performance is still the priority of the programmer group looking into Cyrodiil at this time, but we are getting updates that we can for the next patch.

Many of us avidly follow what ZOS says regarding PvP content. Thank you for posting this for those who don't.

That being said, I for one just feel that the fact that there were only 2 things mentioned in a Year's Ahead post (and they were both not that great: fixing lag and killing a PvP system) regarding PvP is a bad sign.

petraeus1

ThatNeonZebraAgain wrote: »

Divinius wrote: »

We will not be adding in the previously discussed PvP component of the Justice System. We caveated this many times - as I said at the ESO QuakeCon presentation in 2014, it was always going to be very difficult making it fun, but not exploitable. When introducing new systems to the game, our number one goal is to make sure that we don't introduce new problems. Having players enforce justice on the criminal activity of other players has the potential to introduce imbalances and other issues that greatly outweigh any potential gameplay benefits. The game's central concept of "PvP in PvP areas and be safe in safe areas" needs to stay the way it is.

Thank you, thank you, for finally officially killing that horrible idea. I love you.

In terms of the overall design direction of the game, it's very sad that they are canning the PvP part of the Justice System. All of the low hanging fruit complaints about the system that everyone gets so scared about (e.g. camping lowbies when they loot desks) are easily avoidable with smart design. Think about what such a system would represent: a constantly evolving and actually meaningful player experience, where your actions in the world matter. Making player actions matter in the shared space of an MMO world is an area where the game genre needs to innovate. With this system, as well as Spellcrafting and Housing, among others, ESO had a chance to start straddling the line between theme park and sandbox in a unique way, and also get an edge over upcoming MMOs that are building more sandboxy worlds and bringing the challenge back to MMO gaming.

To me, it seems like spellcrafting and PvP justice system are the remnants of pre-B2P design direction that prioritized player-driven, dynamic (as opposed to grindy, easily parsable, and monetized) gameplay. As such, it sounds like finishing them would be more work than they would stand to generate in revenue because, in the game's current economic model, 'short-term' transactions are valued more than 'long-term' subscriptions. On one hand, if they implemented these two big, combat-focused systems into the base game it would not generate any significant new revenue like DLCs do. On the other hand, if they somehow monetized them, it would likely condemn the game to pay-to-win status. Seems like a lose-lose for ZOS with either direction, though at least that would mean they still seem to be still avoiding the P2W abyss.

This is quite the pessimistic view of why it was scrapped, but it might not be entirely untrue. I believe sandboxy, unique features such as the Justice System and Spellcrafting add a lot of replayability, which equals player retention and with that generates income. They would also be selling points the marketing team could use to make ESO stand out from the crowd of themepark MMOs.

For all the worries I've seen on Justice PvP, am I the only one who never expected a global implementation? I figured it was going to be something like IC, a specific PvE/PvP zone in which PvP was tied to crime, battle-leveling, separate from the normal leveling zones.

Oh well. I sincerely hope the work some of the devs put into this can somehow be salvaged, it would be a real shame to see it all go down the drain, especially considering how long they must have been working on this. Cheers Matt and everyone else at ZOS for giving the roadmap, hope to see more!

Darkonflare15

ebethke_ESO wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
I read the Year Ahead a few times, and was hoping someone would add an addendum for a few things:

• Looking at PvP, all we have to look forward to for an entire year is reducing latency/lag and the cancellation of the Justice system?
• There is no talk of balancing. Is @Wrobel posting his own Year Ahead? Many people I know of consider balancing to be a top priority.

I don't need complete answers, I'm just hoping that this list is just to show what DLC's you have coming up. I would be very sad to hear that this next year is going to be a few PvE DLC quest zones and bringing things like scrolling text (something we had in beta) to consoles.

They had already stated that they are working on dueling, battlegrounds and that they are trying to fix pvp though incremental fixes. They explain what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. This was explain in the article. The lead himself explained what they working on for pvp back on the last ESO live. He even stated some fixes that was coming in the next update. The year ahead is just a guide they clearly stated what to look for and what not to look for and that is it. They have already stated that they we try to get Eric Wrobel on the next ESO live which is this Friday. There is no point in given new information when they have other outlets to give more detail information. Like ESO live and any special for the dlc.

Valen_Byte

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

This is the official discussion thread for the blog article ESO – The Year Ahead. Read this special message by ESO Game Director Matt Firor to learn what is in store for ESO in 2016!

Should change the name of the thread to...Official Discussion Thread for "ESO – The 6 months Ahead"

There was literally nothing about the second half of the years content....lol

Bloodfang

Valen_Byte wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

This is the official discussion thread for the blog article ESO – The Year Ahead. Read this special message by ESO Game Director Matt Firor to learn what is in store for ESO in 2016!

Should change the name of the thread to...Official Discussion Thread for "ESO – The 6 months Ahead"

There was literally nothing about the second half of the years content....lol

There was nothing new regarding the TG and DB DLC either. I'll take this as a good sign. They seem to be keeping off info until the last moment, probably expecting to blow us off with great DLCs.

eagles9595b16_ESO

I was hoping to read something about the CRAFT BAG, I think I've read that they were thinking about adding such things for
ESO plus member but I'm not sure.

Vrienda

All good stuff except for spellcrafting being delayed, but that's a minor thing for me so huzzah! And thanks for not adding PvP to the justice system, I was worried the PvE areas wouldn't be safe anymore if I wanted to use the justice system.

Daraugh

eagles9595b16_ESO wrote: »

I was hoping to read something about the CRAFT BAG, I think I've read that they were thinking about adding such things for
ESO plus member but I'm not sure.

If there was a craft mats bag, especially if it was per character, I'd resub in a second.

Dominoid

Daraugh wrote: »

eagles9595b16_ESO wrote: »

I was hoping to read something about the CRAFT BAG, I think I've read that they were thinking about adding such things for
ESO plus member but I'm not sure.

If there was a craft mats bag, especially if it was per character, I'd resub in a second.

It's coming exclusively for ESO Plus members. What form it takes, we don't know yet.

Ishammael

The thieves guild patch notes better be good.

Adding a new PvE zone every quarter is not gonna cut it.

Crown

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_JessicaFolsom et all,

Regarding the statement that "it is impossible to simulate live conditions on our test servers. As we obviously cannot risk introducing new problems and side-effect issues on the live servers, we need to do these changes incrementally", we the PvP players have a few questions / comments:

1. In the past there have been "PvP with the devs" activities where enough of us got on the PTS at one time to crash the server, lag everything to heck, and make the game completely unplayable. What makes you think that we wouldn't all be happy to come and try to do so again? I can speak on behalf of at least three major AD guilds who would be happy to come, and I'm sure that there are equivalent DC and EP players who would do so as well. Rather than assume that we will not do so, why not ask us? We all want this to be a great game, we all want PvP to be better, and I'm sure we'd all devote an hour or two to helping you test things. Make it a weekly event on Thursday evenings so that we can all schedule it.

2. Regarding server configurations, is it feasible (and if not then why not) to introduce a new campaign called "Try to break this campaign" on the live servers with different conditions than the normal campaigns? If so then here's your answer that doesn't require everyone to install PTS.

3. Accepting that there will always be trolls and overly vocal <less than polite> people, there are many of us with significant and relevant technical backgrounds that would be happy to give some of our expertise and advise regarding fixing some of the issues that we're seeing in game. We don't know how many people you have working on things, though the common perception is that it's nowhere near enough. It seems as though the ZOS culture is to hide any information that is not absolutely required to be made public. We believe that if you were a bit more open about information and what you're intending that many of us could be of great benefit to you. Would you consider something like a bug tracking system where issues could be made public (other than in threads where some people rant about them), we could submit comments or suggestions, and see where you (the devs) are with respect to correcting them or even planning to correct them?

3a. Even something as simple as the patch notes being available in advance (a la bug tracker) with notes about each issue and intent of when they will be resolved would go a LONG way to making the player base happier.

Solariken

Baconlad wrote: »

Zos...i can not tell you what this means to me and a large portion of player base in sure. Please continue to give us future plans and current projects. Matter of fact I really wish you would keep players informed more over time instead of one massive write-up of plans. There are a few other small things (like templar charge...still) that I hope you are planning and wish you would give insight to. The write up you just posted has cemented my dedication and my wife's for this next year. My only complaint about the champion system is and will remain STOP GEAR GATING US, we are not playing a grind MMO. The small grind that's is needed is the grind to get new and interesting gear sets. I do not like outleveling old content like DSA, trials, craglorn, or the idea of outleveling wrothgar. Gear gating post level fifty through champion points takes away from theorycrafting due to not having as many options available. It also reduces the headache for you to not have to give more powerful gear, but more OPTIONS, that is what theorycrafting is, and that is what this game was about in the first year, when v16 was introduced, our options fell out the window, and forced us to regrind for gear we already grinded for...very off putting for a large majority of players...thank you for this write up and please continue to give us updates for the best mmorpg on the market! Maybe a few buddies will come back who I haven't seen in months!

This!

One of my favorite things about this game was all of the unique gearsets I could put together and all of the fun builds I could try. ZOS really killed that spirit with the DLCs. My first full set of v16 gear took me about 2 months to put together and with a hefty expense of time and gold, and I still don't have a second full set! I agree that it was maybe a little bit too easy at v14 but they went WAY too far to the extreme with the current model. Also, the RNG factor is INSANE. Tone that $h!t down please!

RDMyers65b14_ESO

I think I'm most interested in the 64 bit client. Should help a lot.

Trikki

Nothing for PVP'rs, as usual. Such a shame, the template is there for the greatest PVP game ever. With Crowfall and CU coming and stagnation of ESO, long term I see nothing to keep me here except my guild mates.

Things that might help:

• Turn IC into a "mega-server", remove the link from campaigns so that it becomes alive again. It has no benefit being linked to campaigns as the gates never close in Azura's and BWB (most popular campaigns by a mile).
• Blackwater Blade - remove CP's all together.
• Remove 1-2 shots from the game entirely (test on a 200+ ping and see how that goes).
• Revamp the quest system in Cyrodiil to make it worthwhile
• Encourage more 3 way fights, the map design with IC in the middle pushes the fights a lot more to 1 faction v 1 faction.
• Take Break Free and Dodge roll off the Stamina resource to encourage more balance between builds (Stam vs Mag)
• Make Dolmens worth doing in Cyro
• Make Delves worth doing in Cyro

Orchish

PvP players screwed over yet again.