Official Feedback Thread For High Isle Preview Event

PurpleScroll

I'm looking forward to knowing more about Ember and having her on my travels every day, but the card game just seemed overly complicated. I just could not get my head around it when it was explained on the stream.

colossalvoids

vsrs_au wrote: »

Did I mishear Matt Firor at the start of the video ? Did he actually say they've been working on ESO for 14 years ? I even turned on the subtitles to make sure. I thought it was 8 years old ?

I believe Dev team originally started at the end of Oblivion's development cycle so it was awhile.

Tra_Lalan

Pros:
I really liked the way the twitch drops were designed (15min for crate and the pet + 45 min for second crate, that was counting from the beggining, with the stream taking like 1,5h) this assured that every player that tuned in could recieve their rewards (I remember when the new way of getting drops started we had some problems with fitting the campaing to the stream time, so I think ZOS learned their leson here).

Showing up the information about the stream in game (like they use to inform about servers getting tuned off) was a cool thing.

Also the studio with the screens in the background showing some themed graphic looked very profesional.

I think the new zone will be nice to explore, and can't wait for the Khajit companion.

Cons:
I did get the feeling that the stream was designed more to new players/casual players, I wish they mentioned some stuff that is going with update 34 for all players (was hoping to see the quick slot changes). Also show some sets and the new trial.
Maybe they just plan to give us those details in next streams.

Synaptic

The stream was really boring and it actually felt like it was pre-recorded.

I also liked how every few minutes whatever was being discussed was interrupted by what felt like "comercial breaks" where you reminded everyone watching that the store exists and stuff in on sale.

You roll out a fully fleshed out card game that has rewards and a ranking system meanwhile nothing has been done about the actual PvP (not to mention BG's or Duels still don't have a ranking system) in this game in years, just empty promises.

The card game looks boring and needlessly convoluted, it's also pretty clear it caters to casuals more than anything. Why even bother spending time to collect and put together a superior deck if it's just going to be shuffled in with the opponent's deck ?
But hey, we'll probably be getting card backs and other Tales of Tribute related cosmetics on the store when this rolls out so that's great.

At this point it's pretty clear you're flat out ignoring any concerns raised by the PvP community in this game.

robwolf666

Would have preferred seeing more about the entirety of High Isle, 90% of it was about a card game I, personally, have zero interest in. That said, it's nice to something different from all the darkness of recent expansions. But, it's impossible to give an accurate opinion until I've actually played it. Oh, and what's wrong with a simple card game that can be over quickly instead of something so complicated?

FeedbackOnly

DarcyMardin wrote: »

ESO art director “Please don’t send me somewhere dark again. I want somewhere that’s pretty.”

I SO relate to that! And it does look as if we’re getting somewhere beautiful, so I’m happy about that. I also like the Bretons, so that’s cool. And the new companions sound good — supposedly they’ve listened to our comments about the first two and made some changes, so I look forward to that.

But I agree with many of the comments here about a lack of enthusiasm about the card game. This was not alleviated by watching the show. The game looks complicated and I didn’t find the gameplay they showed us particularly illuminating. Maybe the citizens of Tamriel have leisure time to spend on strategy games, but ESO itself is my game, and it gives me plenty to do already. I’d rather have a new class or a maybe a new skill line than a card game.

I became a fan of him! I was like yeah and more yes.

kind_hero

robwolf666 wrote: »

Would have preferred seeing more about the entirety of High Isle, 90% of it was about a card game I, personally, have zero interest in. That said, it's nice to something different from all the darkness of recent expansions. But, it's impossible to give an accurate opinion until I've actually played it. Oh, and what's wrong with a simple card game that can be over quickly instead of something so complicated?

Same here.

Gwent was enjoyable in the Witcher 3 especially because a game was over pretty quickly, so if you wanted to do that, it did not take long to learn it and win a couple of matches (I remember a quest where Geralt could save one man's life by winning at Gwent with some thugs). But this Tributes game looks too complicated for a minigame in a MMO. I don't understand why I would log in to spend 45 minutes in a card game, when I could do this without entering ESO and using a separate client.

To me all the time spent for developing and testing this card game is a waste of resources. I am sorry to say this, because I can see the quality of work put into this game, like the artwork, but this isn't what ESO needed at this time. Really. When I heard about people playing in the studio and making tournaments, I thought, sure, more long breaks and attention focused to something else rather than things critical to the game. All this effort would have been much better spent on refreshing the "vanilla" zones and textures, at least some cities, or adding some game+ overland/delve/public dungeon difficulty. I don't think the card game is bad, please note this, just in terms of priorities, the game had other needs this year, and the community is more interested in other issues than the card game. It has never been a top request, like fixpvp, the necromancer class, spears or spellcrafting!

SammyKhajit

Reposting from another thread and hope to get some clarification from ZOS - must we play the card game to make progress in some of the quests?




Okay, so this one was reading the card game details from https://eso-hub.com/en/guides/tales-of-tribute-guide

The game makes more sense now, but still sounds stressful. What if you are terrible at the game and lose all your cards?

Also, this line is a bit worrying

“Players can also make progress on quests when playing against NPCs.”

Does that mean some quests require compulsory card playing to complete the quest?? This one hopes he is wrong

HeavyESO

My issue with antiquities, companions and now a card game is that they're great ancillary features, but not enough on their own to convince someone to buy a chapter. If there was something brand new and exciting, and then a card game secondary to it, it would be great.

I mean look at FF14 Endwalker and compare that to High Isle -

Endwalker:
2 new classes
1 new race
Level cap increase
Multiple huge zones, including 2 large cities
New dungeons
A new raid + new raid difficulty
A small-scale PvP mode
A story worth playing (no offence ZOS)
New gear
Great QoL
More

High Isle:
A card game
Breton lore/culture
A new zone
New gear/mythics
A story (probably not worth playing - again, no offence)
A raid
QoL changes

The difference is night and day. If I could only buy one, I know which I'd choose first. It doesn't help ZOS try do 4 updates a year instead of making 1 worthwhile large update a year, and then rebalances/raid tiers/smaller content throughout.

Aardappelboom

I'm excited, I rewatched the card game and I really love what you guys created.

The idea of building your deck, every time you play the card game is a clever approach and I'm very excited about the depth of the card game. I get Gwent feelings from it and that was exactly what I was looking for.

So @ZOS_Kevin kudos to the devs, I know not everyone is excited but I am and I'm sure a lot of other casual players are.

High Isle looks good, and I'm excited about the factions but I was really hoping for a hint of "choose your own alliance" but that quickly got crushed when they said the ascending order was "evil". The entire chapter begs for player choice, I'll have to play to experience it but I'm pretty sure it's going to be linear again.

NGL though, I love PVP and it's been ignored entirely, again. I'm fine with it being on the backburner, but at least say something, ignoring it in every stream is dissapointing, there's no mention of any new events or rewards (as promised in the january update). Honestly, after years of silence and no updates there are a lot of quick wins for you guys here, you should really start taking them during these streams. Even a quick update on the rewrite would've been welcome.

Also was hoping to hear something about xbox xcloud support, since it's been pulled a few months back.

alberichtano

Ariont wrote: »

While I enjoyed watching the stream, I was really disappointed when I went to collect my crate and torchbug. So poor planning strikes again in that the purple torchbug has been a reward sometime in the previous years stream. if you already have it in your collection from then you get NOTHING for the reward this time. Even worse I got an email today saying that I had collected my pet. I got NOTHING but disappointment. I don't know how hard it would have been to offer one with a different color so that people could at least have a collection of different ones collected over various streams of this sort.

Hey, hey, don't fret, you got two crates full of garbage too!

(To be fair I did get ten gems out of selling everything I got...)

alberichtano

Demo_22 wrote: »

Brave brave zos team. To release a card game as your main feature in this date and age. Ballzy move.

How so? I am not inte card games, so I am nor sure what you are alluding to.

alberichtano

PurpleScroll wrote: »

I'm looking forward to knowing more about Ember and having her on my travels every day, but the card game just seemed overly complicated. I just could not get my head around it when it was explained on the stream.

As a hungarian I find her name extremely ironic. Ember means human in hungarian.

This is nothing new though - in Skyrim (mild spoiler alert) the first Companion you work with is Farkas. Farkas means wolf in hungarian. Guess my total lack of surprise when he turns big and hairy!

Cheyenne

Honestly, the only draw for me right now is the area looks beautiful. I'm glad to see it's not the dark, fiery, ugly zones that we've been seeing lately. I'm also happy to learn more about the Bretons and to hear the storyline will be different than the last few with more focus on people/internal conflict.

However, I still haven't bought High Isle because I don't think the above is worth the current price.

The card game is not enough to draw me in. It's not my type of thing and the preview confirmed that, plus it's too time consuming for the amount of time I have to play.

The new companions aren't enough to buy it either. I wanted to love the companions and at first I did, but the grind to level them while just naturally playing the game (both their levels and their rapport) is just way too much. It's not fun. I ended up abandoning the original companions before they were leveled because I just didn't want to deal with it anymore coupled with the fact that after the honeymoon period was over (new and shiny), they became irritating with their likes and dislikes and comments. I prefer to play with my quiet bear who levels with me and doesn't get upset when I do something it doesn't like.

In the end, it looks like I would enjoy the questing/atmosphere of the High Isles, but I don't consider a new questing area to be worth the full price of the expansion because I probably won't take advantage of the other parts of it.

Hymzir

mmh... Okay. So here's my feedback. Sorry, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Use less superlatives - less hyping how AMAZING you think your game is. 99% of the people who watch this thing already play the game, so we already know what it is. We just groan when we hear the same dried up and shrivelled market spiel we've been hearing for years now. Just get on with it, and actually tell us about the new expansion. We do not need the "OUR GAME IS JUST SOOOOOO AMAZING!!!!" nonsense at the beginning.

As for the presentation itself, please stop doing the "the audience is a fly on the wall listening to a discussion taking place between the devs" type thing. It's cringy as hell. It's not a real discussion. It doesn't sound like a believable conversation taking place between people who worked on the damn thing. It just comes across so fake that it hurts.

I really hate this fad in marketing - the ones Bethesda makes for Starfield are already painfully dumb to watch, but this one was even worse. And so much time was wasted on pointless fake chatter, instead of actually going over the specifics of the next chapter's offerings. You know, the actual things we want to hear about.

So to re-cap: Just tell us about the expansion - don't waste time on silly lines about "Let's do something pretty again."

Okay,what else... Ah, the druids....

When you mentioned that "You can't really have the Bretons without the Druids." I kinda thought that yes, yes you can. We've been having them for years now without the Druids.

I mean sure, Druids are part of TES, kinda... They're basically a throw-a-way line within the Arena Breton race description. Daggerfall had few generic druid mobs I think, and in Oblivion there was that one item called Cowl of the Druid. And that's pretty much it.

Besides, the Wyrds already kinda do that whole druid thing anyway. And do it in a way that feels much more organic to Tamriel, and not just something copy pasted from our own real world history and transplanted in to the TES universe.

So I laughed a bit, when you started talking about druids being this super duper hyper important aspect of Breton culture. I'm fine with Druids becoming a thing, but the way you presented it as a fact of a matter, and as something that has always been front and center in Breton lore, was kinda silly.

Honestly, at this point I just started using you-tubes skip forward 5 secs function vigorously, just to get through the presentation. The "discussion" was so forced and artificial, and didn't cover anything of actual interest, that I lost interest. Instead of that vacuous prattle, you could've gone over the map a bit, or showed us what the new mythics are, or talked about new furnishings and houses. I got the gist of the zones look and feel through the visuals, and it looks fine. Nothing mind blowing, but decent enough. So I just skipped 'till we got to the part where you talked about the storyline.

Speaking of which...

- sigh -

I started paying more attention when you started talking about the storyline, since you had previously mentioned that the focus would be on politics, and not yet another world ending calamity of stupendous proportions. But when you lead to that part by saying that politics always have multiple sides, but then go to state that there is clearly a badguy faction and a goodguy faction, all my frustrations returned. It's not really politics if you can differentiate the sides into goodguys and badguys! And it really doesn't help that the baddies are, once again, a shadowy secret cult of assassins, lead by a mysterious hooded figure dressed up in gear that screams "I AM SUPER EVIL VILLAIN AND A DASTARDLY A-HOLE! FEAR ME!!!"

Wow... Subtle politics there indeed.

As for the companions... Eh, whatever. Not using the one's in the game already anyway, so whatever. But why are both of them female? What about equal representation and what not?

And then there is the card game....

I really have only one thing to say on that - TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND EFFORT!

Maybe someone will like it, but as far as I'm concerned, you could'e just set all the money spent on developing that in a big pile and had yourself a nice little bonfire. End results would've been pretty much the same.

The whole spiel about it being a game that's been played for hundreds of years in Tamriel, that it's like backgammon, was so cringe that I had to stop the video right there and then, and go do something else for a while, before I could continue.

There is noway to sugar-coat it. It is dumb. It sounds dumb. And the more you think about it, the dumber it sounds. The whole idea, that this is the game that people in Tamriel play when they go spend time in taverns, is dumb. It's like trying to shoe horn an elephant into a golf-cart. It's an ill fit. A CCG in Tamriel makes no sense, and there's is no lore behind it. It has never been a thing, and it will never be a thing either. There is nothing you can do to make it feel like it was an actual part of everyday Tamrielic life. It will always come across as a real life modern day CCG thing.

I don't mean to sound mean here or anything, but it just doesn't fit the world. You could've just as well introduced a full blown golf game into ESO, and said it's a traditional Breton pastime with centuries of history behind it. It would still come across as a forced addition to the world.

Just having it as a separate entity, with no real connections to the world and lore, would've been better. That way those who dislike it could just ignore it whole cloth.

I mean, that's just the way it feels to me. This is the honest feedback: It feels utterly forced and dumb. It is clear that it is a CCG created solely for the purpose of having a CCG in ESO. That's it.

And I, and fair number of other people, do not want it.

Yeah. That's all I have to say on that. Well, that and the fact that it looks boring as hell, and way too complicated to be a "tavern mini-game." And the boring presentation didn't help things eitehr, so I started skipping again when the presetnation kept on droning on about the mechanics.

And then the presentation ended with another "Buy this thing now!" bit. To which I said: "No, I wont."

Yeah... I'll wait 'till it's on sale, or becomes part of the base game, assuming I have time and energy to play through it's quest line in the future. Too many other game competing for my play hours as is, and this thing did not impress me in anyway as something I must absolutely play through, and do so now.

It looks okay though. As far as expansions go. The new zone looks decent, and I have no real reason to think that the writing is any worse than the previous offerings, so it kinda looks to me like those old gold box AD&D games of yore. Nothing exciting or spectacular, but decent enough for a play-through, if you can pick it up cheap and have the time available. The presentation just didn't paint a very interesting or exciting picture of it, and based by the poll status, I'm not the only one who felt that way..

code65536

There was an Elder Scrolls card game. Legends. It flopped.

So why was so much of the stream devoted to the card game feature that, frankly, appeals only to a small subset of players?

xgoku1

I think the first half of the event with the 3 ZOS employees talking was nice, generally it's just Gina and Jessica all the way through. If anything, I want more of that because it is more interesting to hear the people who actually made the content talk about. Next time, get more devs talking in a similar fireside chat style, less speaking to the camera like they have a gun trained on them.

Taylor's girlboss vibe was great. Although Rich totally evaded that question "WHY cards?".

The second half was pretty bad in that it was trying to explain how a card game works using words. Really, the only way is to actually try it out on PTS or the tutorial when the game goes live. At one point Rob made a mistake during his turn, adding to the general confusion. It should've been a concise pre-recorded segment.

Even established card games like Gwent, if you tried to explain it to a random person with essentially a Powerpoint presentation, you'd come off as a loony. Whatever, you tried.

Overall, I'd review the event as "I'm glad I watched the VOD and not lost my beauty sleep over this"

Tornaad

colossalvoids wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

Did I mishear Matt Firor at the start of the video ? Did he actually say they've been working on ESO for 14 years ? I even turned on the subtitles to make sure. I thought it was 8 years old ?

I believe Dev team originally started at the end of Oblivion's development cycle so it was awhile.

If you look at things like how the lock picking works you can see inspirations drawn from Oblivion, which leaves me to wonder, what inspirations will Elder Scrolls 6 draw from ESO.

ZOS_Kevin

Sylvermynx wrote: »

[@ZOS_Kevin, could you check to see if there's some way to set up a toggle for the huge bank of stickied threads - it would be a nice QOL touch if once one has read those stickied threads that are of interest to one, one could toggle the area closed and have more normal threads displayed.]

@Sylvermynx We don't think the feature mentioned is possible at the moment, but we hear you on the sticky threads. We are working on managing those to limit the amount. (We even cleared a bunch from the general category before the Preview stream.)

We're keeping this in mind going forward and trying to keep it a bit cleaner.

Tornaad

My thoughts on the High Isle preview event.
First, I have been sucked into the world of the Elder Scrolls for about 20 years now. For about 10 of those years, literally the only games I ever played were Elder Scrolls games and with that in mind, I am just assuming that with High Isle I am going to love it.

As the two different preview events came out, I was underwhelmed and left wondering. I think that if I were to try to put words to what has left me wondering then I would say this. You have done a terrible job at putting a hook out for a great book. I think the prolog quest left me more excited than either of the preview events.

I understand why I had that feeling. You have a story focused Chapter you are releasing and if you give the wrong details then you are going to spoil the story for your customers, but you still have to create a preview event to invite people into the game. Which begs the question, how do you turn the equivalent of what you would find on the back of a book into something that you can turn into any length of a presentation? I'm really not sure.

For the card game, that portion of the presentation felt like it was thrown together at the last minute by two people who had limited exposure to the game. There was enough there to help me to realize that there is potential to the game, but based solely on the presentation, if I were a new player, and had no exposure to the world of Nirn, I would likely just walk away and find a different game.

Given my long history with Elder Scrolls games, I suspect I will enjoy the card game, but based solely on the presentation, it was a hot mess of confusion that left me with more questions than it did answers.

As I think back on both of the presentations this year, it feels like there is something that you are trying to dance around leaving me underwhelmed.

In closing, despite the impression I was left with from the presentations, I have already preordered the High Isle chapter the first day it became available, because I love my Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online is one of my Elder Scrolls games.

ZOS_Kevin

TheCommentator wrote: »

Currently no mention of a new trial which is a bit of a shame. But maybe we will see this on the PTS?

Hey there, @TheCommentator. If you're looking for some content around the trail, one of our stream team members went into some detail in their latest video. You can check out @Nefas video on all things High Isle here.

kojou

The Story and zone:

Everything sounds really good. I am mostly excited about this.

The Companions:

I like that there will be some new personalities, so that is good, but I was hoping for more to be done with them in terms of features and gear.

The gear for them is extremely boring, and once I got the pieces I was looking for I never touched their gear again. There isn't much to do with them besides making them into a tank, healer, or damage dealer "pet" character. Also, making them carry their own gear would be an awesome QOL feature, or maybe have a companion "sticker book" so once you collect something you can use it without having it consume an inventory slot?

Card Game:

I will play the card game once or twice to see if it is fun, but they generally aren't my thing, so I will be more interested in the rest of the content. I would rather they spent time on other things, but hopefully it will be purely optional and you won't put BiS gear behind it, so I don't *have* to play it if I don't want to.

The_Lex

Hymzir wrote: »

mmh... Okay. So here's my feedback. Sorry, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Use less superlatives - less hyping how AMAZING you think your game is. 99% of the people who watch this thing already play the game, so we already know what it is. We just groan when we hear the same dried up and shrivelled market spiel we've been hearing for years now. Just get on with it, and actually tell us about the new expansion. We do not need the "OUR GAME IS JUST SOOOOOO AMAZING!!!!" nonsense at the beginning.

As for the presentation itself, please stop doing the "the audience is a fly on the wall listening to a discussion taking place between the devs" type thing. It's cringy as hell. It's not a real discussion. It doesn't sound like a believable conversation taking place between people who worked on the damn thing. It just comes across so fake that it hurts.

I really hate this fad in marketing - the ones Bethesda makes for Starfield are already painfully dumb to watch, but this one was even worse. And so much time was wasted on pointless fake chatter, instead of actually going over the specifics of the next chapter's offerings. You know, the actual things we want to hear about.

So to re-cap: Just tell us about the expansion - don't waste time on silly lines about "Let's do something pretty again."

Okay,what else... Ah, the druids....

When you mentioned that "You can't really have the Bretons without the Druids." I kinda thought that yes, yes you can. We've been having them for years now without the Druids.

I mean sure, Druids are part of TES, kinda... They're basically a throw-a-way line within the Arena Breton race description. Daggerfall had few generic druid mobs I think, and in Oblivion there was that one item called Cowl of the Druid. And that's pretty much it.

Besides, the Wyrds already kinda do that whole druid thing anyway. And do it in a way that feels much more organic to Tamriel, and not just something copy pasted from our own real world history and transplanted in to the TES universe.

So I laughed a bit, when you started talking about druids being this super duper hyper important aspect of Breton culture. I'm fine with Druids becoming a thing, but the way you presented it as a fact of a matter, and as something that has always been front and center in Breton lore, was kinda silly.

Honestly, at this point I just started using you-tubes skip forward 5 secs function vigorously, just to get through the presentation. The "discussion" was so forced and artificial, and didn't cover anything of actual interest, that I lost interest. Instead of that vacuous prattle, you could've gone over the map a bit, or showed us what the new mythics are, or talked about new furnishings and houses. I got the gist of the zones look and feel through the visuals, and it looks fine. Nothing mind blowing, but decent enough. So I just skipped 'till we got to the part where you talked about the storyline.

Speaking of which...

- sigh -

I started paying more attention when you started talking about the storyline, since you had previously mentioned that the focus would be on politics, and not yet another world ending calamity of stupendous proportions. But when you lead to that part by saying that politics always have multiple sides, but then go to state that there is clearly a badguy faction and a goodguy faction, all my frustrations returned. It's not really politics if you can differentiate the sides into goodguys and badguys! And it really doesn't help that the baddies are, once again, a shadowy secret cult of assassins, lead by a mysterious hooded figure dressed up in gear that screams "I AM SUPER EVIL VILLAIN AND A DASTARDLY A-HOLE! FEAR ME!!!"

Wow... Subtle politics there indeed.

As for the companions... Eh, whatever. Not using the one's in the game already anyway, so whatever. But why are both of them female? What about equal representation and what not?

And then there is the card game....

I really have only one thing to say on that - TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND EFFORT!

Maybe someone will like it, but as far as I'm concerned, you could'e just set all the money spent on developing that in a big pile and had yourself a nice little bonfire. End results would've been pretty much the same.

The whole spiel about it being a game that's been played for hundreds of years in Tamriel, that it's like backgammon, was so cringe that I had to stop the video right there and then, and go do something else for a while, before I could continue.

There is noway to sugar-coat it. It is dumb. It sounds dumb. And the more you think about it, the dumber it sounds. The whole idea, that this is the game that people in Tamriel play when they go spend time in taverns, is dumb. It's like trying to shoe horn an elephant into a golf-cart. It's an ill fit. A CCG in Tamriel makes no sense, and there's is no lore behind it. It has never been a thing, and it will never be a thing either. There is nothing you can do to make it feel like it was an actual part of everyday Tamrielic life. It will always come across as a real life modern day CCG thing.

I don't mean to sound mean here or anything, but it just doesn't fit the world. You could've just as well introduced a full blown golf game into ESO, and said it's a traditional Breton pastime with centuries of history behind it. It would still come across as a forced addition to the world.

Just having it as a separate entity, with no real connections to the world and lore, would've been better. That way those who dislike it could just ignore it whole cloth.

I mean, that's just the way it feels to me. This is the honest feedback: It feels utterly forced and dumb. It is clear that it is a CCG created solely for the purpose of having a CCG in ESO. That's it.

And I, and fair number of other people, do not want it.

Yeah. That's all I have to say on that. Well, that and the fact that it looks boring as hell, and way too complicated to be a "tavern mini-game." And the boring presentation didn't help things eitehr, so I started skipping again when the presetnation kept on droning on about the mechanics.

And then the presentation ended with another "Buy this thing now!" bit. To which I said: "No, I wont."

Yeah... I'll wait 'till it's on sale, or becomes part of the base game, assuming I have time and energy to play through it's quest line in the future. Too many other game competing for my play hours as is, and this thing did not impress me in anyway as something I must absolutely play through, and do so now.

It looks okay though. As far as expansions go. The new zone looks decent, and I have no real reason to think that the writing is any worse than the previous offerings, so it kinda looks to me like those old gold box AD&D games of yore. Nothing exciting or spectacular, but decent enough for a play-through, if you can pick it up cheap and have the time available. The presentation just didn't paint a very interesting or exciting picture of it, and based by the poll status, I'm not the only one who felt that way..

Very well said. I agree with everything you wrote.

Destai

The energy level was too low, I didn't get a sense of genuine excitement from many. Personally, too much focus was on the card game and not on the rest of the expansion. Most people get excited about the zones, the stories, and the sets. A little bit of theorycrafting would've been nice to see. Again, it feels like there's a disconnect between what ZOS thinks the community's excited about and what we actually are looking for.

The zone itself looks beautiful and there's potential for some really good stories. I'm looking forward to taking my Breton druid through it.

Destai

baratron wrote: »

The stream was rather disappointing, to be honest. I've played about 10 hours of the early access preview, and I know that High Isle is flipping amazing. It's absolutely beautiful, the storylines are great - I probably spent about 2 hours just wandering round the island filling in the map.

The pre-recorded part of the stream, with CJ, Rich, and Taylor, was fine - just (as ever) too fast to take in properly. But I feel that focusing solely on Tales of Tribute for the live part of the stream was a mistake. Usually in these things, you do the fast pre-recorded presentation followed by Jess, Gina, and guests from the studio going through everything more slowly in detail.

If I was in charge of the programme, I'd have gone through the exciting features of the new zone. There are Noble Houses! There are Druids! There are two rival Noble Houses and three groups of Druids! Here's Gonfalon Bay, look how well-designed it is for players to live in! Here's a castle! There are three different orders of Knights! Here's a Druid circle! Here's a Druid village! Look at these cliffs, look at this grassland, look at these beaches. Aren't they gorgeous? Here's a Volcanic Vent, look at these enemies that you have to fight!

But instead of hyping up the new Chapter, they just showed Tales of Tribute in the dreariest manner possible. I don't quite know how they managed to do that. Maybe that should have been pre-recorded and edited as well. The game itself is kinda fun to play, even against the NPC opponents - and will likely be super fun against actual humans on voice chat.

I'm looking forward to an ESO Live stream with Loremaster Leamon Tuttle. I hope they manage to get him to discuss the Lore of High Isle before the game is released, because it's fascinating.

I just hope we get to join up with some of these different factions and have branching stories. I miss choices!

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

TheCommentator wrote: »

Currently no mention of a new trial which is a bit of a shame. But maybe we will see this on the PTS?

Hey there, @TheCommentator. If you're looking for some content around the trail, one of our stream team members went into some detail in their latest video. You can check out @Nefas video on all things High Isle here.

I feel like that information should be coming from ZOS first. Nefas is a great content creator, but it'd be energizing to hear ZOS do deep dives on the core gameplay loops that are expanded each release. That's what people play the most. Right now, it just feels like, "oh, yeah, we have a trial."

Elsonso

Hrm.

As this is the same studio that brought us Greymoor and Blackwood, I am pretty cautious about the High Isle location, environment, and story. The stories seem to be getting into a rut. The zone and environment always seems to be missing stuff. Shortcuts and stuff left on the cutting room floor tend to be obvious.

Companions 2.0... I have a Companion 1.0, and what I heard is that Companions 2.0 are better, but they did not go back and update Companions 1.0. They learned a lot of things from Companions 1.0, but apparently not enough to actually update Companions 1.0. Dead and outdated content is becoming a problem with this game, and this is how that happens.

Card game. I still maintain that the name needed more work. If the game was spread across the world like they claim, it would be referred to by a single word. I am wondering whether the writers thought of that, or if everyone in the whole world is going to insist on using the whole name.

I also think that this game is very complicated, with lots of little details. Based on watching them play on the stream, I expect that the depth of strategy does not match the complexity of the game.

Presentation. I still do not know who was sitting between Rich and CJ. Need more names during streams. No one did a sound check on the mic Jess was using. The pre-recorded part was light on details, but it was marketing material and for the meat of the update, we usually have to go elsewhere. This time, the elsewhere is apparently content creators? The live show spent time on the card game, which was definitely needed, but after the game, they should have recapped all of the things in the material that came out before the presentation.

I don't plan to head off to content creators to get second hand information. I don't plan to install PTS. I bought this when it was announced, but probably would not have based on what I saw today. I would probably have made a decision of Pre-Order vs Fall Fire Sale about PTS Week 3. That is when it becomes clear what ZOS isn't going to fix or change before launch.

Of course... That is, if I was buying what ZOS was selling, which I am most decidedly not.

ArchMikem

After having a day to digest it, and to come down from the pretty new land to explore high, I'm agreeing more and more with the detractors. Mainly I agree with what the main reaction Rich said the team kept getting about the Card Game. "Why?" I mean hey, on paper it sounds pretty cool! A new activity you can do in all the Inns every town has. But when it's the only thing to come for the whole year? When in comparison we've had entire Classes, Skill Trees etc?

I fully understand people want more of those, because they give a meaningful addition to every day gameplay. For Summerset, the Psijic Order was a HIT with players, and even years later skills like Undo, Imbue Weapon, Accelerate, and Meditate are still staples of people's builds. There are still Wardens running around, there are still Necromancers (especially those). Compared to those additions, I have a feeling participation in Tribute is going to be negligible, and it's going to forever carry the stained reputation as the thing that kept High Isle from being great.

Why not make Druid it's own Class? Why not make the Steadfast a Guild Skill Tree? You even mentioned heavily Bretons are an innately Magical people. Magic is on the stage this year. Why not finally introduce the Unarmed Magicka Weapon Tree so many people have been asking for?

I still purchased High Isle. I was going to regardless, because my main interest is new lands to explore and stories to interact with, even though lately the storytelling is becoming a little predictable and the writing quite upsetting with how it demeans my intelligence.

Just. Please. Next year? Can we get a Class or Skill Line? Please?

Sylvermynx

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

[@ZOS_Kevin, could you check to see if there's some way to set up a toggle for the huge bank of stickied threads - it would be a nice QOL touch if once one has read those stickied threads that are of interest to one, one could toggle the area closed and have more normal threads displayed.]

@Sylvermynx We don't think the feature mentioned is possible at the moment, but we hear you on the sticky threads. We are working on managing those to limit the amount. (We even cleared a bunch from the general category before the Preview stream.)

We're keeping this in mind going forward and trying to keep it a bit cleaner.

Thanks. That should be helpful going forward then!

ZOS_Kevin

Totally get your point, @Destai. We have noted that general feedback already internally, as that is something that several players have mentioned. Providing the video was just to help share information in the immediate. But totally get that feedback that others want to hear that information from us (ZOS) rather than from another source.

Just wanted to acknowledge that feedback has been noted.

blktauna

alberichtano wrote: »

Ariont wrote: »

While I enjoyed watching the stream, I was really disappointed when I went to collect my crate and torchbug. So poor planning strikes again in that the purple torchbug has been a reward sometime in the previous years stream. if you already have it in your collection from then you get NOTHING for the reward this time. Even worse I got an email today saying that I had collected my pet. I got NOTHING but disappointment. I don't know how hard it would have been to offer one with a different color so that people could at least have a collection of different ones collected over various streams of this sort.

Hey, hey, don't fret, you got two crates full of garbage too!

(To be fair I did get ten gems out of selling everything I got...)

the gems add up friend. and they're free. ;-D