One Tamriel - Speculations and Concerns

susmitds

From the latest announcement by Matt Firor we got an insight into the path ESO will be moving in the near future.

We are going to get true cross-alliance PvE finally and all the Cadwell Zones are going to be removed. Also all zones are going to be battle-levelled and all players in it would be force-levelled to a particular level regardless of their original level.
This means your battle-level in zones would be near:

Kenarthi's Roost, Stros M'Kai, Betnikh, Bleakrock Isles, Bal Foyen - Lv 4
Auridon, Glenumbra, Stone Falls - Lv 10
Grahtwood, Stormhaven, Deshaan - Lv 20
Greenshade, Rivenspire, Shadowfen - Lv 27
Malabar Tor, Alik'r Desert, Eastmarch - Lv 36
Reaper's March, Bangkorai, The Rift - Lv 42
Cold Harbor - Lv 50
Craglorn - 120 CP
Cyrodiil - 150 CP
Wrothgar, Hew's Bane, The Gold Coast - 160 CP

THE PROS:

• There would no longer be any artificial divide out of PvP in Cyrodiil in the player base.
• There would be an incentive, however small, to visit the beginning zones.
• This is would be great for trading and RP.
• There would be a lot more freedom for open exploration and the game would become a true sandbox rather than a guided theme park.
• Socialization would become much better.
• This would open many possibilities for future additions.

THE CONCERNS:

• There would no proper XP grind zones after Lv 50 except DLC zones any more. For any player without access to the DLCs getting from 0 to 501CP would become a nightmare.
• The number of instances of every zone would become one from three. This means crowd would increase by at least twice. The cities would become a lot more laggy and the number of disconnects and infinite loading times are set to increase.
• Farming would become a lot harder due to the decrease of the number of instances. In all popular farming zones like Wrothgar, Hew's Bane, Craglorn there would be around three times more farmers. But on the other hand, game wide spawn of all mats would decrease three times due to the decreased number of instances, hence nodes. Plus, farmers would no longer be able to take advantage of almost empty Cadwell Zones while farming.
• The same also applies to thieving. More thieves, more competition, less loot to draw from. Currently the empty Cadwell Zones are very reliable for thieving compared to the main alliance zones. Loss of these empty instances is a HUGE hit to thieving.
  Same is going to be applicable to XP grind spots. The number of grinders in a particular spot would rise steeply. The popular grind spots would be filled at most times.
• The battle scaling would make the zone mobs even easier for new players and old players alike.
• According to Matt, this would create an incentive for grouping. But currently it is very easy to complete world dungeons and all quests solo. In fact, with just dropped gear, you can easily kill mobs five or more levels above you without any CP once you are accustomed to your character. With battle levelled zones it is going to be even easier. So there is hardly any need to group outside of dungeons, guild activities and RP.
• There would be huge inflation in the prices of almost everything in game but earning gold would become much harder. We have already seen a maqssive price surge on gear mats since DB. The changes would push the price further up in a HUGE ratio. This won't be a problem for the old players with millions in their banks. But newer players would be a lot more trouble gearing up their characters with the changes.
• Character progression took a massive hit with VR removal in DB patch. Enforced Battle leveling might nail the coffin of character progression.

Some potential solutions to these issues even before they arise :-

• Increase the refresh rate of nodes by 2.5x and increase their quantities by 50%.
• Increase the refresh rate of containers for stealing from by 3x.
• Increase the respawn rate of safeboxes, chests and thieves' troves by 2.5x and give them a 50% chance to contain an extra item.
• Make all enemies in the second zones of each alliance onwards significantly harder with more health and damage. Give a few enemies in every mob a timed interrupt-able very hard hitting ability like the Iron Orc Rangers in Upper Craglorn. Make NPC healers' healing abilities a lot more powerful. Give the tanky NPCs a lot more armor and HP. Give some instant CC abilities to every damage dealing NPC, like the bloodfiends and Nightblade type NPCs have with their gap closers. This would make the game combat much more interesting. With battle-levelling, the new players would still able to kill enemies quite easily. The increased difficulty would also make them much more used to the tougher stuff later on. It would also give older players some incentive to revisit the zones and do PvE there and also give some incentive to group up in PvE content for the newer players.
  Introduce dynamic respawning to all mobs in the zones in proportion to their rate of death, like it is currently in IC sewers.
  Increase the gold dropped by mobs by 2x.
• Assign particular sets to drop from particular types of enemies. E.g. O.75% chance to Armor of the Construct set pieces from the Dwarven constructs, 0.5% chance to drop Hircine's Veneer set pieces from wood creatures, 0.75% chance to drop Night Mother's Embrace set pieces from Nightblade type enemies etc. Also increase the rewards obtained from World bosses and public dungeons, like Agility/Willpower/Endurance drop chances. And maybe 18% chance to drop Silver Pledge keys, 6% chance to drop Gold Pledge keys from World bosses. Also add some similar drop chances to the "Area of Interest" enemies.
• The basics of what I am saying is to make the general zone combat harder and add potential rewards to it. This kind of risk and reward system would make combat much more interesting for old and new players alike and also give the poor souls oppressed by RNG to have more chances at potential drops.
  Please finish the chat bubbles from their current beta stage.
• MAKE CRAGLORN GREAT AGAIN!!

Well that's my foresight there.

susmitds

@ZOS_MattFiror
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

CasNation

While I think you have some good points, I don't think you fully understand how the ESO system currently work, and how this change would affect them.

Namely, there won't be overpopulation in zones. They all dynamically generate more versions based on predetermined populatuons anyways. The number of shards won't change, we will all just be able to freely intermingle between shards.

nimander99

All of Tamriel will scale and continue scaling to the current CP Cap is how I understand this...

CasNation

Also yeah, there won't be any scaling down, just scaling up to the CP cap.

[Deleted User]

Hello everyone,

Recently there have been a number of threads appearing revolving around the same general topic, One Tamriel, and the changes that are to come. We understand these big changes can bring up a lot of big questions from the community, though we would like to avoid having multiple threads open on the same subject. With this in mind, we're going to go ahead and close this thread, and hope that you can continue discussing this topic on this thread here. With everyone's questions on one thread, we'll have a much easier time to review them all.

Thank you for understanding!