A Base-Game Overhaul?

NolansGoons

It goes without saying that ESO's base game content pales in comparison to its DLC content. Whether it's the visuals of the zones and collectables, or how those collectables are earned, ESO's base game has been left to flounder while it piles on more and more new content to just cover it up instead of elevating it, even just a little, to make it as worth playing as that new content.

From a visual standpoint even the earliest DLC zones look almost a generation ahead of their base counterparts. While ESO's landscapes can always look pretty even on low graphics settings, its old cities on the other hand are sinking in dated and not very future-proofed design. The popular cities, notably the alliance capitals all have such broad and open layouts, a philosophy stemming from the game being an MMO, thus they wanted the most populated cities to have a large layout to accommodate for the amount of players that'll be there. However as the game's grown, that design philosophy hasn't aged well, and all of these large open cities like Mournhold and Elden Root look barren and hollow, while the philosophy of newer DLC cities have realized how players move and behave, and have much more practical, visually pleasing, realistic layouts. (i.e. Leyawiin, Gonfalon Bay, Fargrave, ect.)

The rewards you get from completing content across DLC zones has (after a while of figuring it out... looking at you Gold Coast and Hew's Bane motifs...) settled into a consistent and comprehendible framework within the dailies, world events, achievements, and questing rewards, all while the base game content's rewards are stuck in the mud of either being nonexistent, inconsistent with how other rewards are distributed, or just not up to par with what new content has to offer. (quests just giving you named leveled gear that's not even part of a set, a whole polymorph from a random quest in Shadowfen...)

Slightly walking back into graphical discussion, and maybe one beyond the scope of a discussion of a base game overhaul, but one of ESO's weak points is its player model. I've never really had a problem with it, and always thought people gave the game's models too much grief in the earlier days, but recently when making some new characters and playing through some old zones, some things really started to itch me. It can likely be attributed to the model's low poly-count, in combination with how limited the sliders are, that it seems no matter how you make your character some things are always constant. Females will always have noodle-y arms and cinched waists, males will always have triangular or rectangular torsos and flat... posterior dimensions... Perhaps most damning is how limited the facial sliders are. It feels like the only slider that really changes anything is the overall-shape triangle-slider at the very top, after that everything else just changes the face by a matter of millimeters. Taking all that into account, it feels like this produces the symptom of so many player characters and NPCs having very same-y appearances outside of outfits or sparkly cosmetics. Indeed it feels like ZOS intended to paint over their shoddy work on the body models by just making more and more detailed motifs and costumes to accompany their new content, but that in-turn created another disparity... Old cosmetics look terrible now in comparison.
Probably the most controversial notion I have to propose is that the base-game motifs, from the 10 racial styles all the way to Daedric, Dwemer, and Akaviri, also need to be touched up. Now, I know the Ancient/Ancestral motif variations exist to solve this issue, however they're a bandage solution. They're just higher quality reimaginations of the old motifs, but the old motifs still exist... and they're a little rough. I don't think they need to be updated to the level of detail of their newer counterparts, but they just need a bit of a boost in their texture resolution and polycounts because as it stands, the base game motifs are basically impossible to use alongside anything except themselves without the outfit becoming as ugly as an Ogrim.

A hypothetical base-game overhaul update like this would also be a golden opportunity to possibly introduce some of the more important systems added in the chapters into the base-game. (assuming a given chapter hasn't already been made free to all players by the time an update like this comes around...) There could be Antiquarian enclaves added to the (newly remodeled) alliance capitals, and there's already jewelry crafting stations at most crafting hubs, so jewelry crafting could be made base-game as well. Of course, this notion of giving away once-payed content for free seems repellant to the Zenimax we know, so let's put this in the "optional" column.

Without elegance or grace, I'll segue to the short and simple point that such a base-game update could also introduce some of the overland improvements/difficulty we've been asking for, and have seen some of in the newest content, into the original game for players new and old to appreciate.

I would've ended this with a mention on how a base-game overhaul update could also introduce changes to questline progression and putting in some safety nets to keep players from sequence-breaking themselves on accident, but I remembered I wrote a whole other essay on that in my past post about the "New Player Experience" and to do so now would be redundant and... exhausting.

TaSheen

As long as they don't touch my characters' looks, and don't go overboard with the animations either.... I've already quit two games in the past when they messed with the character models and none of my characters were "themselves" any more.

Seraphayel

Sorry, this is simply not worth the time and effort. I think we should keep the base game zones in fond memory and just accept that they’re outdated and old. No one in their right minds would start reworking the base game, it‘s simply not worth it. ESO is so focused on making money, money, money, they would never waste their manpower on this. Never. They most likely could produce several Chapters for a way bigger financial outcome in the same time.

valenwood_vegan

Seraphayel wrote: »

Sorry, this is simply not worth the time and effort. I think we should keep the base game zones in fond memory and just accept that they’re outdated and old. No one in their right minds would start reworking the base game, it‘s simply not worth it. ESO is so focused on making money, money, money, they would never waste their manpower on this. Never. They most likely could produce several Chapters for a way bigger financial outcome in the same time.

I mean maybe it could happen (though still not very likely imo) if the game had a huge development team and budget like when it was new... but yeah as things stand, I don't think it would even be possible (and if possible, would have to come at the expense of any new content for a long time - not worth it imo).

SeaGtGruff

I think they've said in the past that they want to focus on filling out the map before going back to redo old zones.

ArchangelIsraphel

TaSheen wrote: »

As long as they don't touch my characters' looks, and don't go overboard with the animations either.... I've already quit two games in the past when they messed with the character models and none of my characters were "themselves" any more.

This, this right here.

I really enjoy the character models the way they are. Every time a game I've played in the past has updated it's character models, they've done a terrible job of retaining the original feel of the characters, and they ended up with an art style that homogenized the appearances of the characters even further.

I like ESO's characters the way they are. I find them charming. It was one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place.

TaSheen

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

As long as they don't touch my characters' looks, and don't go overboard with the animations either.... I've already quit two games in the past when they messed with the character models and none of my characters were "themselves" any more.

This, this right here.

I really enjoy the character models the way they are. Every time a game I've played in the past has updated it's character models, they've done a terrible job of retaining the original feel of the characters, and they ended up with an art style that homogenized the appearances of the characters even further.

I like ESO's characters the way they are. I find them charming. It was one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place.

Exactly....

katanagirl1

There might be an argument for this if they still had players start in the original faction areas, but they don’t.

Many new players probably never reach the base game capital cities anymore.

EDIT: typos

Nerouyn

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

I like ESO's characters the way they are. I find them charming. It was one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place.

I'm always impressed by awesome all of my characters looks, which isn't just my good taste. The tools are great and and so is all of the clothing.

Not all of that clothing is to my particular tastes but I couldn't name many games in the same league when it comes to fantasy fashion.

i11ionward

Just recently the Infinite Archive was added to the base game, so it's hard to say that the developers are ignoring the base game.
It might be worth adding more valuable loot to the base location treasure chests so that the treasure maps are finally worth something.

barney2525

wow.

Just goes to show. People will find Something to complain about.

I think the characters look good... would be nice if the female Altmer could actually smile though.

Recently started playing a bit on FFXIV. IMHO ESO character creation far exceeds that one. their pallettes are almost colorless, lots of browns of various hues but very little distinctiveness.

I_killed_Vivec

It is always strange to see how other people experience the same game.

I see places like Mournhold teeming with people, I go there all the time for the guild traders, undaunted, and master writs. Even my "home base", Davon's Watch is busy.

Places like Leyawiin, Gonfalon Bay, Fargrave? After completing the DLC I only go there when there's a DLC event on.

So I see absolutely no reason to divert resources from new content to "jazzing up" old content.

Smoky

I love the old stuff as it gives diversity to the game, I quite like the old sprawling cities for a mooch around when I just feel like wandering round. I feel like it shows the evolution of the game that you can see where it started and how it has changed over time in the DLC zones. Plus like others have said, there are areas I would like them to concentrate on before doing anything with old zones.

Sakiri

Fun fact.

WoW used to have such wonderful race and sex specific animations. Some overlap, but males and females did the same ability differently, such as the little flip done by undead females on one of the rogue abilities.

Then they went and updated the character models and animations.

Now everyone casts the abilities the same, the only differences are in auto attack animations....My draenei females all looked like bugs with the weird eyes because they didn't glow anymore at first. They had to take a number of patches to fix them, and they *mostly* looked okay, but they weren't the same.

If they were to do that here, they'd best give everyone appearance change tokens for each character we have, at the very least, and prepare for an exodus because a LOT of people are attached to how their characters look.

As for the zones, I think the textures could use updating, but the models are mostly fine.

Sakiri

Nerouyn wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

I like ESO's characters the way they are. I find them charming. It was one of the things that drew me to the game in the first place.

I'm always impressed by awesome all of my characters looks, which isn't just my good taste. The tools are great and and so is all of the clothing.

Not all of that clothing is to my particular tastes but I couldn't name many games in the same league when it comes to fantasy fashion.

FFXIV has the best fashion I've seen to date, but the game is soooooo full of... hormone fuelled people....

Danikat

If they ever change character models I hope they give everyone enough free appearence change tokens to edit every character on their account. Even if they keep all the current options available (which I doubt they would, considering they've previously done "updates" like removing the blind eye from under an eye patch) it's a good chance that changing how character models look would mess them up for a lot of people. It's not guarenteed it would be possible to fix them with an appearence change token but at least it might help with some.

This recently happened with Pokemon Go, they introduced "improved" more detailed character models and the respond from most players was "what did you do to them?!" Of course their customisation options were (and are) much more limited that ESO, but that just means there was less to mess up.

FabresFour

katanagirl1 wrote: »

There might be an argument for this if they still had players start in the original faction areas, but they don’t.

Many new players probably never reach the base game capital cities anymore.

EDIT: typos

sorry but this is wrong. During this year's update, Scions of Ithelia, Zenimax chose to redirect new accounts to ESO's original base-game-islands. In fact, characters created in the tutorial don't even have the Wayshrine of the first city released (as was the custom for new characters before)

"Tutorial Updates
We’ve updated the post-quest tutorial portal room so new accounts will be initially limited to the portals to Stros M'Kai, Bleakrock Isle, and Khenarthi's Roost, depending on their alliance. Upon using any of the aforementioned portals, you will gain the ability to use portals to any additional zones available to your account as well as the ability to skip the tutorial on subsequent characters."

FabresFour

Now as for the base game, well I agree they could make changes. I don't think the characters need rework. Currently, ESO has well-defined characters in a semi-realistic cartoon style, this means that, as the game progresses, it will take longer to become dated: its semi-realistic cartoon characters will guarantee this. (they could just update the enemies armor from the base game - and no, I'm not talking about the texture of the old armor, but, for example, the Red Rook bandits start using the Red Rook armor that players can acquire with PVP, instead of use completely generic Breton/orc clothes. Furthermore, ZOS could take advantage of the gigantic collection they have of costumes, outfits and the like to give a general update to the game's most unique enemies. They are extremely generic, unfortunately).

However, I have a SERIOUS problem with the maps in the base game. For example:

Windhelm and Riften. Why on earth do these two cities, which are completely different in lore and culture, have exactly the same architecture? Or the repetition of Breton assets on ALL Breton maps?!?!

From my perspective, limiting just a few assets to an entire race, ignoring their cultural differences, was extremely harmful to the original game and one of the main reasons for its failure during the launch time.

One of the most interesting things in Skyrim, for example, is the cultural difference between each of the cities and the way they see the world differently. Riften is chaotic and cramped, Windhelm is hard and cold.

And then, when we look at these two cities that are almost opposite... Why are they extremely similar?

Honestly: keep the rest of the maps the way they are: they're OK.

But, the big cities: Windhelm, Riften deserve a rework, as do Daggerfall and Wayrest which, honestly, look like the SAME city! (Shornhelm just doesn't fit into this because it's a city with dead trees and colors, but the structures are the same)

Especially if we use the DLC's as a point of reference, which shows that people do have different cultures depending on the city and location.

I don't think all the maps need to be redone, just the main cities from the original game. And I'm not talking about texture, but about modeling, to make these places better represent what they should be.

I mean, Windhelm is one of the oldest cities in the history of Tamriel, the stone structures that we see in Skyrim's Windhelm are undoubtedly older than the ESO period. Honestly, I'm not even Stormcloak and I was offended when I saw Zenimax's interpretation of Windhelm, I really think it deserves more care and attention.

h9dlb

Game needs importing to Unreal Engine 5 and add Dragon's Dogma style sliders.

It looks old and tired which is unsurprising for a game that's over 10 years old

Hasenpfote

If they would rework Deshaan for example, they would have to change the mayority of Quests too and at this point, you could just create a new zone with new quests.

NoTimeToWait

NolansGoons wrote: »

It goes without saying that ESO's base game content pales in comparison to its DLC content. Whether it's the visuals of the zones and collectables, or how those collectables are earned, ESO's base game has been left to flounder while it piles on more and more new content to just cover it up instead of elevating it, even just a little, to make it as worth playing as that new content.

From a visual standpoint even the earliest DLC zones look almost a generation ahead of their base counterparts. While ESO's landscapes can always look pretty even on low graphics settings, its old cities on the other hand are sinking in dated and not very future-proofed design. The popular cities, notably the alliance capitals all have such broad and open layouts, a philosophy stemming from the game being an MMO, thus they wanted the most populated cities to have a large layout to accommodate for the amount of players that'll be there. However as the game's grown, that design philosophy hasn't aged well, and all of these large open cities like Mournhold and Elden Root look barren and hollow, while the philosophy of newer DLC cities have realized how players move and behave, and have much more practical, visually pleasing, realistic layouts. (i.e. Leyawiin, Gonfalon Bay, Fargrave, ect.)

The rewards you get from completing content across DLC zones has (after a while of figuring it out... looking at you Gold Coast and Hew's Bane motifs...) settled into a consistent and comprehendible framework within the dailies, world events, achievements, and questing rewards, all while the base game content's rewards are stuck in the mud of either being nonexistent, inconsistent with how other rewards are distributed, or just not up to par with what new content has to offer. (quests just giving you named leveled gear that's not even part of a set, a whole polymorph from a random quest in Shadowfen...)

Slightly walking back into graphical discussion, and maybe one beyond the scope of a discussion of a base game overhaul, but one of ESO's weak points is its player model. I've never really had a problem with it, and always thought people gave the game's models too much grief in the earlier days, but recently when making some new characters and playing through some old zones, some things really started to itch me. It can likely be attributed to the model's low poly-count, in combination with how limited the sliders are, that it seems no matter how you make your character some things are always constant. Females will always have noodle-y arms and cinched waists, males will always have triangular or rectangular torsos and flat... posterior dimensions... Perhaps most damning is how limited the facial sliders are. It feels like the only slider that really changes anything is the overall-shape triangle-slider at the very top, after that everything else just changes the face by a matter of millimeters. Taking all that into account, it feels like this produces the symptom of so many player characters and NPCs having very same-y appearances outside of outfits or sparkly cosmetics. Indeed it feels like ZOS intended to paint over their shoddy work on the body models by just making more and more detailed motifs and costumes to accompany their new content, but that in-turn created another disparity... Old cosmetics look terrible now in comparison.
Probably the most controversial notion I have to propose is that the base-game motifs, from the 10 racial styles all the way to Daedric, Dwemer, and Akaviri, also need to be touched up. Now, I know the Ancient/Ancestral motif variations exist to solve this issue, however they're a bandage solution. They're just higher quality reimaginations of the old motifs, but the old motifs still exist... and they're a little rough. I don't think they need to be updated to the level of detail of their newer counterparts, but they just need a bit of a boost in their texture resolution and polycounts because as it stands, the base game motifs are basically impossible to use alongside anything except themselves without the outfit becoming as ugly as an Ogrim.

A hypothetical base-game overhaul update like this would also be a golden opportunity to possibly introduce some of the more important systems added in the chapters into the base-game. (assuming a given chapter hasn't already been made free to all players by the time an update like this comes around...) There could be Antiquarian enclaves added to the (newly remodeled) alliance capitals, and there's already jewelry crafting stations at most crafting hubs, so jewelry crafting could be made base-game as well. Of course, this notion of giving away once-payed content for free seems repellant to the Zenimax we know, so let's put this in the "optional" column.

Without elegance or grace, I'll segue to the short and simple point that such a base-game update could also introduce some of the overland improvements/difficulty we've been asking for, and have seen some of in the newest content, into the original game for players new and old to appreciate.

I would've ended this with a mention on how a base-game overhaul update could also introduce changes to questline progression and putting in some safety nets to keep players from sequence-breaking themselves on accident, but I remembered I wrote a whole other essay on that in my past post about the "New Player Experience" and to do so now would be redundant and... exhausting.

wow, that's a long post. Now, I am going through all the base content and having a blast at it. While I do agree that DLC content has better presentation...

Have you been to Stonefalls? That area is awesome. I FORGOT how AWESOME it was.

Moving through Grahtwood... When did you see a FOREST like that in a game the last time (there are some, not many though)? Huge trunks and canopies obscuring the sky, centuries old trees. That's the forest I like.

So while I agree with you, I would say it's not entirely true.

ArchangelIsraphel

h9dlb wrote: »

Game needs importing to Unreal Engine 5 and add Dragon's Dogma style sliders.

It looks old and tired which is unsurprising for a game that's over 10 years old

The character creator in dragons dogma has nothing unique about it. It's the generic, hyper-realism typical of most "modern" games, with nothing that sticks out as particularly revolutionary in terms of style.

ESO's character creator has an art style of it's own, unique to this particular game. Dragon's Dogma looks like every other game developed in the last few years.

One of the reasons I was drawn to ESO was because it doesn't bore me with this constant trend of making everything look "real". I enjoy styleization . Which ESO delivers.

Besides, characters are one of the most important aspects of this game. Altering them for established players in a way that takes them so far from looking like the original would be a mistake.

Desiato

When I came back to ESO after a long break, one of the things I really appreciated about it is how silky smooth it is with sustained high framerates in most scenarios.

So I'm actually really glad there hasn't been a graphics overhaul.

I think ESO still looks great and maintains a great balance between fidelity and performance that many newer games lack.

In terms of improving old zones, the argument is it's better to allocate development resources towards creating new content than it is to re-envision old content. Sometimes there's low hanging fruit like improving tree and 2d sprite assets (grass, flowers) though.

katanagirl1

FabresFour wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

There might be an argument for this if they still had players start in the original faction areas, but they don’t.

Many new players probably never reach the base game capital cities anymore.

EDIT: typos

sorry but this is wrong. During this year's update, Scions of Ithelia, Zenimax chose to redirect new accounts to ESO's original base-game-islands. In fact, characters created in the tutorial don't even have the Wayshrine of the first city released (as was the custom for new characters before)

"Tutorial Updates
We’ve updated the post-quest tutorial portal room so new accounts will be initially limited to the portals to Stros M'Kai, Bleakrock Isle, and Khenarthi's Roost, depending on their alliance. Upon using any of the aforementioned portals, you will gain the ability to use portals to any additional zones available to your account as well as the ability to skip the tutorial on subsequent characters."

Good point, but I purposely do the tutorial and choose the proper island for my faction to start.

What happens if you don’t do the tutorial?

TybaltKaine

I feel like this conversation is had once a month around here.

I'll say what I always say. It looks fine. Leave it be.

Dawnblade

TaSheen wrote: »

As long as they don't touch my characters' looks, and don't go overboard with the animations either.... I've already quit two games in the past when they messed with the character models and none of my characters were "themselves" any more.

And I'd be more likely to spend more time and money in this game if the models, animation, and most cosmetic items didn't look like crap.

But I wouldn't want crazy drastic changes where nothing feels like TES (which TBH has always had models and animation that looked like crap but at least feel like a part of the world) or worse, updates that moved the base assets closer to the overly colorful and VFX bloaded style of crown store stuff.

liliub17_ESO

Maybe I'm just a bit odd, but I prefer the base game maps to most of the DLC maps. Or maybe it's the content plus the map I don't care for, dunno.

After the last DLC or so released, the proportions of my characters seemed to change, to homogenize. Now, regardless of origins, they all have the same relatively elongated thinner torso/barely indented waist/flat posterior. While I don't go for extremes, they were all created differently than what they show now.

Nerouyn

barney2525 wrote: »

Just goes to show. People will find Something to complain about.

To be fair, the game is 10 years old and tech advances / ages rapidly.

And right now we're seeing lots of Unreal Engine 5 games hitting the market or approaching, which is a leap up from 4 in eg. character customization.

As I said above I'm perfectly happy with ESO in this department - except perhaps for charging what they do for outfit slots and them being per character rather than account. But that's a different matter.

Sakiri wrote: »

FFXIV has the best fashion I've seen to date, but the game is soooooo full of... hormone fuelled people....

Gotta admit that is one of the few major MMOs I barely played.

I tried the original and didn't love it for the same reasons many others didn't. Which is why it was shut down and reworked.

Couldn't afford / didn't have time for the new one, and even though I think ESO should be classless like the single player games, its cooldown free combat is more to my tastes than anything with CDs.

AzuraFan

I'd much prefer new content to overhauled content.

SilverBride

I like things just as they are.

Stafford197

Sorry but base game zone design is not the issue.
Sure they can do small things - improve certain textures, add some more hills and flowers, etc. But this is no priority.

What SHOULD be updated first and foremost is the new player experience. All of the Cash Shop advertisements, a billion dlcs, golden antiquity texts and quest npcs flashing across your screen that are related to even more dlc… Cash Shop buttons on many different screens throughout the game (character select in multiple spots, outfits, armory, two spots of your Start button screen, etc) which take you to the Cash Shop. The Cash Shop is everywhere, and the story makes no sense at all due to multiple tutorials, no sense of timeline, and no intro to the main storyline. Things are just a complete mess in a ton of ways. My new game experience in 2015 was significantly better than this.