Any crossplay plans coming with the new servers changes?

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While we don't have any news to share about cross-play or cross-save functionality at this time, we want to acknowledge that we do see this request often. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the reasons why you would like to see this functionality in ESO. What pain points are you running into that this would help solve? The feedback here is helpful for us to share with the team.

Appreciate the acknowledgement. One of the biggest pain points is just be married to a given platform. I'd like to switch devices and have my progress be accessible between them. Cross-save would help with that a lot. Crossplay would obviously be nice to play with some other friends who are on a different platform than I am.

dk_dunkirk

I would love cross play between console and PC. I have significant accounts on both. I much prefer sitting in a recliner and using a controller. Most of the time, when discussing cross play between PC and console, the issue is controls. But ESO was designed to be played with a controller, and the way the combat works in this game, I don't perceive any particular advantage of using a keyboard and mouse over a controller, in either PVE or PVP.

Besides the issue of tying Bethesda, Steam, Xbox, and Sony databases together, and as other people have already pointed out, I think the main problem is that the economies are so different. PC prices are 5-10x higher than console. I mean, on PS, I bought 5 pieces of Deadly Strike gear (according to the new meta) for 8K gold, total, and half of that was the chest. On PC, I can't find a single piece in any vendor for less than 80K. On console, it's a fundamentally different world where the earnings I can make selling gear from normal dungeon runs actually means something in the economy. On PC, Crown sales are RAMPANT, because everything is so unaffordable.

In the end, it's because of mods. Mods make it stupidly easy to farm resources and chests, and do writs across a half dozen accounts with 10 toons each. It just explodes the money in the system, which is the fundamental cause of inflation. So it seems to me that the answer lies in allowing mods on consoles. I mean, Bethesda eventually did it for Skyrim and Fallout 4. If this were to happen, it'll blow up the console economy, but then maybe the players could play together.

The only thing I really, REALLY miss on console is a minimap. It just needs to be built into the base game. But I digress.

Tyrant_Tim

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While we don't have any news to share about cross-play or cross-save functionality at this time, we want to acknowledge that we do see this request often. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the reasons why you would like to see this functionality in ESO. What pain points are you running into that this would help solve? The feedback here is helpful for us to share with the team.

Cross-play/save would be an incredible change to ESO, helping to elevate it to modern gaming standards.

Having been around when One Tamriel launched, and seeing the influx of players, I’ve personally seen the positive impact a change like this would have. Not unlike vanilla, we’re beginning to see empty chapter zones. One example being Western Skyrim or The Reach, Harrowstorms are a group activity and there’s no one doing them any more.

If Add-Ons are giving an advantage to PC players that use them, they are an advantage over PC players that don’t, this would be no different with other platforms. People actively choose which platform they play; like which add-ons they install. Also, if the idea of add-on advantage is intimidating to console, my platform, add-ons that tutorialize content in real time can be disabled.

In general cross-play would be more benefit than harm, as we’ve seen with countless other games, because a united community is much stronger than one divided into 6 separate servers.

Tandor

Let's be honest, when people ask for cross-play or cross-save they invariably mean that they are console players who want to play on PC servers but who don't want to start over with a new account. Even those who want to play with friends are doing so from a position of playing on console while their friends are on PC.

How often do you see a PC player asking to be able to cross-play/cross-save on console? Personally, while I'm happy to be corrected, I don't recall a single one.

As for the problems if console players were able to play on PC, it wouldn't just be about add-ons, although that would certainly be a major issue (that wouldn't be resolved by incorporating popular add-ons into the base game unless each and every one was optional, to do otherwise would risk driving away those existing players who wouldn't want such functions as many are considered hand-holding, cheating, or impactful on performance), it would also be directly about performance which is bad enough on PC for some already - especially given that the worst performance since launch has consistently been in Cyrodiil, the very part of the game that some of those calling for cross-play/cross-save are citing as the part of the game they want to participate in on PC.

Some zones on PC servers are already over-populated especially during events, and adding to the PC server populations while leaving the console servers under-populated would be damaging to all populations. Remember that for every PC dungeon queue that would be shortened there would be a corresponding console dungeon queue that would be lengthened. Not all console players would want to play on PC servers and they would be left high and dry.

Allowing console players to play on PC would also alienate all those players who for ever and a day since launch have been asking to be able to transfer server between regions within the same platform, and who have constantly been told that it cannot happen. The NA and EU players even have to play a reduced time on the PTS because it isn't possible to run both databases together.

If @ZOS_Kevin 's intervention here was genuinely out of interest to see what player concerns and ambitions are in this respect, may I suggest that the best way forward would be to run a launcher-based survey on all platforms? My hunch is that the number of respondents wanting cross-play/cross-save would be very substantially less than the number opposing it. There might be a greater measure of support for cross-play/cross-save/transfer between the consoles, but how would the platform providers respond to that? I guess there's no harm in finding out!

blktauna

Bokila wrote: »

Name duplications can be easly fixed by adding a platform icon next to the name and being able to select platform for some interactions like selecting it before sending a mail to someone.

You know it isn't that easy. I would love to see the schema they have for this game. I reckon my eyes would cross.

Tyrant_Tim

blktauna wrote: »

Bokila wrote: »

Name duplications can be easly fixed by adding a platform icon next to the name and being able to select platform for some interactions like selecting it before sending a mail to someone.

You know it isn't that easy. I would love to see the schema they have for this game. I reckon my eyes would cross.

On the contrary, look at Overwatch. On launch, players used their gamertags, then eventually Cross-Play came out for it and all console players were forced to create Blizzard IDs, it would be as easy as having a new, first come, first serve, cross-play Zenimax ID that we all use to identify instead of our current account names.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a very minute problem. There are several games, like Overwatch, Fortnite, Warframe or even Black Desert Online, another MMO, that pushed through cross-play after release, successfully, that can be used as guidelines for a smooth release.

RicAlmighty

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

it would be as easy as having a new, first come, first serve, cross-play Zenimax ID that we all use to identify instead of our current account names.

[snip] Moreover, how do you think the concept of "you will possibly lose the username you've had for years" sit with the player community? This is far from easy, and in all likelihood never happen anyway, so discussion of the implementation details is moot.

[edited for baiting]

Tyrant_Tim

Conceptually easy, yes. @RicAlmighty, never once have I claimed to be a developer, do you? How do you suppose Warframe, a game with insane amounts of individual player data and a much smaller studio, pulled it off?

Show off your developer insight.

RicAlmighty

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Conceptually easy, yes.

Code isn't written "conceptually". I can create a "concept" for a flying automobile, that doesn't make it simple to build one.

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

How do you suppose Warframe, a game with insane amounts of individual player data and a much smaller studio, pulled it off?

Digital Extremes always required an account in a single system for Warframe, so there was no need to merge anything on their end. I played Warframe for 7 years on both PS and PC. Cross play for them was more about the networking considerations than the data concerns. They already had all of the users account data in a single unified system. Moreover, I think it speaks volumes that it took DE that long to implement cross-play for Warframe. Clearly, if it were "easy" they would have had it completed much sooner, yes?

Zenimax chose to not go that route for simplicity sake. By choosing to keep the platforms separate, they were able to leverage the user management inherent in the Sony and Microsoft ecosystems, and later Steam. You could "link" your console/Steam (and now Epic) accounts to a Zenimax account *if you had one*, but you didn't have to have one to play (consoles post One Tamriel). That was their decision, good or bad, that's not what the discussion is. The discussion is whether it is "easy" to merge the player data from these disparate systems together 9 years after the fact. The answer to that is .. no. No, it is not easy. Which is in all likelihood why it has not been done, nor is on the radar to be done. And that's not even bringing up the networking concerns, which they would also have to resolve before cross-play could become a reality. That may even be more challenging for Zenimax to conquer with their current "MegaServer" based infrastructure.

No one is claiming that it cannot be done, but it is in no way "easy" and to frame it that way just shows a lack of understanding of the complexities involved.

Tyrant_Tim

Also, when One Tamriel was announced, there were countless players claiming that the sky was falling, that guild trading would never be the same, resource gathering would become more competitive than esports, there would be widespread trolling and all sorts of things were going to be irreparably damaged.

Players were very vocal about how bad of an idea it was to mix factions.

Fast forward to 2023, One Tamriel is now widely viewed as hands down the greatest patch to ever roll out to ESO.

What we as a community need, is another One Tamriel update, or better yet… “One Network.”

@ZOS_Kevin, I challenge you, or any of your team to power on an Xbox and get on the EU server, then head over to Necrom on any Saturday during prime-time for the UK, then to do the same with NA and central time. It will be an eye opening experience.

tomofhyrule

I feel like this is another one of those topics that comes up over and over enough that I just need to repost exactly what I said the last time this came up.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I think there's still a lot they'd need to iron out before they even think about this.

They've said over and over (and over and over and over...) again that ESO, unlike many other MMOs, was designed with a megaserver architecture. That means that everyone on the same megaserver can play together, but that also means that you can't cross megaservers.

We get people asking every other week for account transfers (which they've also said is not possible in the current structure). And that would just be to pull one account (and its associated references) out of one place and somehow hook it into another.

The only, only, time we've seen server transfers are when copying to a blank database. They did that for consoles before the console databases were spun up, and then they do it twice an update on PTS. It's not a case of "hey, you can get your NA and EU characters on PTS at the same time!"

In order for them to even start thinking about crossplay, they'd need to first make account transfers 1) possible and 2) seamless and without bugs. Then they might be able to look at crossplay between NA and EU on the same system. Then maybe they could pull Xbox and PC together, considering Sony'll have their own legalese there (and we all know how well Sony plays with others).

Note that all of that needs to be perfect first before they even consider going forward. If any one step creates a bug that deletes a character or their inventory (or someone's whole account that they spent loads of Crowns on...), well, I don't think that would go well for the affected party. As it is now... ZOS added an expansion to the game that ended up introducing a quest that breaks the ability for players to do any story quests (which is a large portion of the content), and now the latest update left that bug in, but also accidentally deleted the voice lines as well. And we're not scheduled to have another fix for an entire month, so that means that most questing is either figuratively or literally broken for a large percentage of the players (and Elder Scrolls fans are not generally the kinds to think "meh, I don't care about the lore and questing experience).

I do admire the number of people who are here who seem to know exactly how the ESO server systems work and explain to us how easy it would be to set it up. Might I suggest that you use that knowledge for good, and join ESO's team to get these gamebreaking bugs fixed first, and then you can directly work on merging the servers yourselves since y'all evidently know how to change the foundational code of the game without introducing any bugs at all.

I know I'd be perfectly open to crossplay if my game could work again and I still got to keep my screenshot addons. But forgive me if I doubt any merge would go as smoothly and seamlessly as you suggest.

TLDR: Sure. Go for it. IF AND ONLY IF you can do so seamlessly, without introducing bugs, and without forcing players to have to end up losing character names for themselves and others.

Tyrant_Tim

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I feel like this is another one of those topics that comes up over and over enough that I just need to repost exactly what I said the last time this came up.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I think there's still a lot they'd need to iron out before they even think about this.

They've said over and over (and over and over and over...) again that ESO, unlike many other MMOs, was designed with a megaserver architecture. That means that everyone on the same megaserver can play together, but that also means that you can't cross megaservers.

We get people asking every other week for account transfers (which they've also said is not possible in the current structure). And that would just be to pull one account (and its associated references) out of one place and somehow hook it into another.

The only, only, time we've seen server transfers are when copying to a blank database. They did that for consoles before the console databases were spun up, and then they do it twice an update on PTS. It's not a case of "hey, you can get your NA and EU characters on PTS at the same time!"

In order for them to even start thinking about crossplay, they'd need to first make account transfers 1) possible and 2) seamless and without bugs. Then they might be able to look at crossplay between NA and EU on the same system. Then maybe they could pull Xbox and PC together, considering Sony'll have their own legalese there (and we all know how well Sony plays with others).

Note that all of that needs to be perfect first before they even consider going forward. If any one step creates a bug that deletes a character or their inventory (or someone's whole account that they spent loads of Crowns on...), well, I don't think that would go well for the affected party. As it is now... ZOS added an expansion to the game that ended up introducing a quest that breaks the ability for players to do any story quests (which is a large portion of the content), and now the latest update left that bug in, but also accidentally deleted the voice lines as well. And we're not scheduled to have another fix for an entire month, so that means that most questing is either figuratively or literally broken for a large percentage of the players (and Elder Scrolls fans are not generally the kinds to think "meh, I don't care about the lore and questing experience).

I do admire the number of people who are here who seem to know exactly how the ESO server systems work and explain to us how easy it would be to set it up. Might I suggest that you use that knowledge for good, and join ESO's team to get these gamebreaking bugs fixed first, and then you can directly work on merging the servers yourselves since y'all evidently know how to change the foundational code of the game without introducing any bugs at all.

I know I'd be perfectly open to crossplay if my game could work again and I still got to keep my screenshot addons. But forgive me if I doubt any merge would go as smoothly and seamlessly as you suggest.

TLDR: Sure. Go for it. IF AND ONLY IF you can do so seamlessly, without introducing bugs, and without forcing players to have to end up losing character names for themselves and others.

Well said, and I agree. There would be a lot that would need to go into making something like this possible, and whether ZOS would deem it profitable enough to venture that path is unlikely, although I strongly believe that games not having cross-play, is one of the biggest turn-offs for new players.

ESO is the only live service game I would touch with a 10 foot pole that doesn’t have that feature, and that’s only because I was invested before Cross-Play became a standard in gaming.

TaSheen

@tomofhyrule - thanks! I was just looking for your post, and had to answer the phone for emergency from sister in law (seriously, if husband had died, do his brother and sister think I WOULD NOT HAVE NOTIFED THE FAMILY???? - yeah, *sigh* crisis for today.... obviously a NON crisis /grumble)

So glad you had it available and reposted it!

zaria

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

Conceptually easy, yes. @RicAlmighty, never once have I claimed to be a developer, do you? How do you suppose Warframe, a game with insane amounts of individual player data and a much smaller studio, pulled it off?

Show off your developer insight.

Its an idiotic huge difference between how an lobby and instance game work and an MMO.
ESO is especially hard because of megaserver system. Compared to WOW who has hundreds of servers
Now WOW has an sort of crossplay as dungeon finder is cross server but this can be an issue if you find some friends beating an dungeon and they are on another server.

Tyrant_Tim

@zaria


I made it a point to reference BDO in my original reply, because it would be the easiest example for ESO to replicate. Black Desert implemented megaservers before cross-platform between Xbox and PlayStation.

“How did Black Desert pull off cross-play post-launch?”

…is a question I would be asking if I were a Zenimax employee tasked with bringing Cross-Play to ESO.

flubber77

Bokila wrote: »

tohopka_eso wrote: »

Don't forget the add-ons with PC as well.

Personally, add-ons don't bother me. I see why it would be a problem for some people but just being able to have eso on the go on a steam deck as an xbox player would outmatch any "disadvantage" brought by the add-ons.
I also think that it would be amazing for casuals because generally they don't care about add-ons.

You are not talking about cross play here. Cross play is so you can play with ps friends on your xbox or even with pc friends not to change unit to play on.

Sarannah

Personally I wouldn't mind crossplay, but crossplay would mean add-ons would have to go and bots would have to be seriously kept in check(consoles are infested with them, based on the recent videos posted)! This to create a more fair gaming environment for everyone.

Naming/duplicate names should also be figured out beforehand.

So I am not against crossplay, but it would mean some serious changes will need to be made first.

PS: Add-ons should be gone either way, with or without crossplay.

joergino

If addons go, you might as well shut down PC completely. Without addons this game is an absolute nightmare to play.

Braffin

joergino wrote: »

If addons go, you might as well shut down PC completely. Without addons this game is an absolute nightmare to play.

Yeah, most players I know would simply quit after such a dealbreaking change.

Won't happen tho, as zos supported addons even before release and keeps doing so.

Overamera

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While we don't have any news to share about cross-play or cross-save functionality at this time, we want to acknowledge that we do see this request often. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the reasons why you would like to see this functionality in ESO. What pain points are you running into that this would help solve? The feedback here is helpful for us to share with the team.

As most servers feels like they're dying when it comes to playerbase which happens to all games after so many years. Merging for example all the EU servers together and NA together would increase the playerbase by alot. Bigger community, new friends, everything more players would mean to the server.

I would sacrifice name changes hopefully free if it were to merge just to play in a more alive server or even play my my console account on PC if possible. Would sacrifice economy and much more just to play on crossplay/crossave.

I do wonder what this would do to perfomance. Ateast for PvP you could create an extra campaign.

TaSheen

joergino wrote: »

If addons go, you might as well shut down PC completely. Without addons this game is an absolute nightmare to play.

Yup. I'd never touch ESO again.

ZOS_Volpe

Greetings,

We have recently removed some unnecessary back and forth from this thread. This is a reminder to keep the discussion civil and constructive. Please keep our Community Rules in mind moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding.

tohopka_eso

TaSheen wrote: »

joergino wrote: »

If addons go, you might as well shut down PC completely. Without addons this game is an absolute nightmare to play.

Yup. I'd never touch ESO again.

Nah, I only mentioned the add-ons in the beginning because of playing another game that does cross platform playing between PC and console.
I started on PC and moved to Xbox for a couple years then moved back to PC and still do not use any add-ons. I use a controller for playing and keyboard and mouse for UI stuff.

Xandreia_

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

Bokila wrote: »

Name duplications can be easly fixed by adding a platform icon next to the name and being able to select platform for some interactions like selecting it before sending a mail to someone.

You know it isn't that easy. I would love to see the schema they have for this game. I reckon my eyes would cross.

On the contrary, look at Overwatch. On launch, players used their gamertags, then eventually Cross-Play came out for it and all console players were forced to create Blizzard IDs, it would be as easy as having a new, first come, first serve, cross-play Zenimax ID that we all use to identify instead of our current account names.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a very minute problem. There are several games, like Overwatch, Fortnite, Warframe or even Black Desert Online, another MMO, that pushed through cross-play after release, successfully, that can be used as guidelines for a smooth release.

You can not compare bdo to eso, eso is on a fossil of an engine, bdo isn't lol maybe If zos have plans for eso 2 they could make it on a modern day engine that would allow more complex codes/ more features but as it stands, eso's engine was practically made when noah saved a few animals 😂

Surgee

A big YES for crossplay but only if it's crossplay between consoles and kept within its region.
We have the same interface, the same game, the same pricing, the same everything. I see no cons in having console crossplay just benefits.

PC on the other hand is an entirely different beast and should not be mixed with consoles for many reasons including:

- game-changing add-ons advantage
- macros
- big hardware advantage

Having cross-play with PC will just push console players to quit. We've seen many titles where this has happened despite advantage not being as big as in ESO.

Having cross-play between consoles only will definitely bring more console players in, as queues will get shorter and of course the world will feel more lively, especially pvp areas.

Necrotech_Master

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't mind crossplay, but crossplay would mean add-ons would have to go and bots would have to be seriously kept in check(consoles are infested with them, based on the recent videos posted)! This to create a more fair gaming environment for everyone.

Naming/duplicate names should also be figured out beforehand.

So I am not against crossplay, but it would mean some serious changes will need to be made first.

PS: Add-ons should be gone either way, with or without crossplay.

why would addons have to go if they enabled cross play? it wouldnt be any different than those who choose to use addons vs those who do not as it is now

i certainly wouldnt enjoy this game as much without the addons im currently using to help provide additional information

i dont want to have to bank every motif i get to check if my main has learned it yet, i did that for like 4 years before i found an addon to help keep track of that so i can just see if i my main needs to learn it or i can just go straight to selling it

TaSheen

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't mind crossplay, but crossplay would mean add-ons would have to go and bots would have to be seriously kept in check(consoles are infested with them, based on the recent videos posted)! This to create a more fair gaming environment for everyone.

Naming/duplicate names should also be figured out beforehand.

So I am not against crossplay, but it would mean some serious changes will need to be made first.

PS: Add-ons should be gone either way, with or without crossplay.

why would addons have to go if they enabled cross play? it wouldnt be any different than those who choose to use addons vs those who do not as it is now

i certainly wouldnt enjoy this game as much without the addons im currently using to help provide additional information

i dont want to have to bank every motif i get to check if my main has learned it yet, i did that for like 4 years before i found an addon to help keep track of that so i can just see if i my main needs to learn it or i can just go straight to selling it

Well, some people (including the person you're questioning) find addons to be cheating....

Necrotech_Master

TaSheen wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't mind crossplay, but crossplay would mean add-ons would have to go and bots would have to be seriously kept in check(consoles are infested with them, based on the recent videos posted)! This to create a more fair gaming environment for everyone.

Naming/duplicate names should also be figured out beforehand.

So I am not against crossplay, but it would mean some serious changes will need to be made first.

PS: Add-ons should be gone either way, with or without crossplay.

why would addons have to go if they enabled cross play? it wouldnt be any different than those who choose to use addons vs those who do not as it is now

i certainly wouldnt enjoy this game as much without the addons im currently using to help provide additional information

i dont want to have to bank every motif i get to check if my main has learned it yet, i did that for like 4 years before i found an addon to help keep track of that so i can just see if i my main needs to learn it or i can just go straight to selling it

Well, some people (including the person you're questioning) find addons to be cheating....

maybe some of them but, how is it "cheating" to have info added to my motif tooltip to tell me if i need to learn it on my main? it literally affects nobody

there are a lot of the combat related addons i dont use (i learn the cues for mechanics, dont need something telling me when to block or what have you), and i dont use major UI overhaul addons because i find those to be a bit too much

but thats why its nice to have options

nobody is forced to use them, if you dont like them dont use them

TaSheen

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Personally I wouldn't mind crossplay, but crossplay would mean add-ons would have to go and bots would have to be seriously kept in check(consoles are infested with them, based on the recent videos posted)! This to create a more fair gaming environment for everyone.

Naming/duplicate names should also be figured out beforehand.

So I am not against crossplay, but it would mean some serious changes will need to be made first.

PS: Add-ons should be gone either way, with or without crossplay.

why would addons have to go if they enabled cross play? it wouldnt be any different than those who choose to use addons vs those who do not as it is now

i certainly wouldnt enjoy this game as much without the addons im currently using to help provide additional information

i dont want to have to bank every motif i get to check if my main has learned it yet, i did that for like 4 years before i found an addon to help keep track of that so i can just see if i my main needs to learn it or i can just go straight to selling it

Well, some people (including the person you're questioning) find addons to be cheating....

maybe some of them but, how is it "cheating" to have info added to my motif tooltip to tell me if i need to learn it on my main? it literally affects nobody

there are a lot of the combat related addons i dont use (i learn the cues for mechanics, dont need something telling me when to block or what have you), and i dont use major UI overhaul addons because i find those to be a bit too much

but thats why its nice to have options

nobody is forced to use them, if you dont like them dont use them

I love addons. I love that ESO's devs planned for addons to begin with. I have LOTS of them.... nothing combat related, all of them QOL/UI etc.

Others are Ebenezer Scrooge about them.

Overamera

Overamera wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While we don't have any news to share about cross-play or cross-save functionality at this time, we want to acknowledge that we do see this request often. We'd like to hear your thoughts on the reasons why you would like to see this functionality in ESO. What pain points are you running into that this would help solve? The feedback here is helpful for us to share with the team.

As most servers feels like they're dying when it comes to playerbase which happens to all games after so many years. Merging for example all the EU servers together and NA together would increase the playerbase by alot. Bigger community, new friends, everything more players would mean to the server.

I would sacrifice name changes hopefully free if it were to merge just to play in a more alive server or even play my my console account on PC if possible. Would sacrifice economy and much more just to play on crossplay/crossave.

I do wonder what this would do to perfomance. Ateast for PvP you could create an extra campaign.

As a console player I dont mind people using addon on pc because they bought a pc which is far more expensive than console and obviously that will come with benefits.

Another thing could be merging the console servers and also have crossave. For example xbox and ps eu together. But then have those who want to switch over to pc be able to do so. Because I believe if only crossave is implemented the console servers will die out and some are already pretty dead.