Studio Director’s Letter: 2025 & Beyond

AzuraFan

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

It has some info in the first section on overland which might please all.

If it turns out that a more difficult overland just means random world events, like incursions or some big baddie that will need 20 players to take down, okay. But I don't see hoards of players in the Deadlands taking down the wandering bosses. Or doing some of the more difficult static incursions we have now (unless there's an event). But if that's what it means, I'd be happy with that. Just wondering if that's what people want when they say "more difficult overland".

SilverBride

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful...

And a powerful character should be able to easily take down overland mobs.

Also, the player progresses through the game, the enemies don't. So how would overland enemies become more powerful?

sarahthes

Tandor wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

I one shot everything I come across in overland.

Good for you. Most players can't.

Most players can't hit their spammable while wearing items in all slots? Because that's all I'm doing. I'm not in some super meta big DPS setup. The mythic I use overland is ring of the wild hunt. The 2 sets I'm using require a group, synergies, and time to do damage. One whip (or 1s of prag if I'm on my arcanist) one shots every trash mob in overland. Even when I'm in training gear.

Necrotech_Master

SilverBride wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful...

And a powerful character should be able to easily take down overland mobs.

Also, the player progresses through the game, the enemies don't. So why should the enemies become more powerful, too?

the problem is we are inherently powerful in here, we need no gear, and minimal skills to kill the already weak overland mobs

so we gear up and the entire overland basically becomes irrelevant

if the enemies dont get more powerful, then thats why people complain the final chapter boss fights are basically snooze fests

the newer chapter final bosses have been a little more challenging than in the past, but you still only have to do a small amount of dmg and then you trigger some mechanic that instantly kills them, so theres no real reason to go full parse on anything except make it take less time to get to the health trigger

the vaermina final boss was the only one even remotely challenging that you actually needed to heal some if you were on a low dmg character

if you take say a current dungeon, theres 0 difference between wayrest 1 on normal and vet except the enemies have more health and deal more dmg, but otherwise the entire dungeon is the same

you would progress from wayrest 1 normal to wayrest 1 vet, but at this point even wayrest 1 vet is considered "mind numbingly easy" for some people, especially those who build meta builds or for more difficult content like vet trials

another example is the infinite archive, health and dmg scales up on enemies but mechanics are virtually unchanged between say arc 1 and arc 10 (the only thing that does change is tho'at up till arc 4)

i think for at least content like dungeons some people need a more granular difficulty, wayrest 1 normal = arc 1 in archive, wayrest 1 on vet is probably only like between arc 3 or 4 in difficulty, some people probably need that like arc 8 dungeon difficulty for it to feel like a challenge

but the biggest problem with that kind of difficulty is just increasing health and dmg on enemies, eventually just turns enemies into "bullet sponges" that take longer to die and are more deadly when they hit you but are otherwise uninteresting mechanically

OtarTheMad

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote:- "So we got most of Hammerfell, most of Black Marsh, one more Cyrodiil area, a good amount of Skyrim, one more Elsweyr, a couple Morrowind, maybe an Orc/Breton, some islands like Solstheim, Roscrea, and about 5 more I don’t know the name of. We also got other planes of existence like Soul Cairn, other Daedric Prince Realms of Oblivion. Plus we have the Sea Elves home and also Sloads. There is even some I am missing so, we’ve taken up a good portion of the map in 10 years but we got a lot more."

I suspect such major expansions was even in their play book. I also suspect their plan was only ever to be Tamriel. I don't even know if the system could even handle anything more than Tamriel. After all it is over ten years old. As of now they could stretch what is left on the map for another ten years at least.

Well, with systems they’d have to dump old consoles, that’s what is holding them back currently according to even them.

As for only being in Tamriel, the only things off limits to my knowledge are:

What happened to the Dwemer
An Aetherius Zone (quests going to it seem fine)
Going to Akavir
Most likely also Atmora is a no go

But most else is wide open, could be wrong but that’s what I remember from past interviews devs have done

Soarora

Sakiri wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

Lugaldu wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

heaven13 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why anyone would want trash mobs in overland to be more difficult. How is it rewarding to spend 2 minutes on one wolf when you are trying to reach your quest objective, or harvest some mats for crafting? And the story bosses have already gotten so difficult starting with High Isle that many players can no longer defeat them and complete the story.

What baffles me the most is that difficult overland almost killed this game. No one was doing the veteran zones or Craglorn. But a handful of players, most of which haven't even played in years, said they'd come back if overland was made more difficult again. Even though many of us that have been actively playing and subscribed asked to please leave it as it is. But for some reason they are going back to what didn't work before.

The one thing I will say is, there's been a lot of power creep since Craglorn was released. They could increase the difficulty of overland without impacting players ability to clear the content.

Power creep hasn't affected players new to ESO. Or casual players that have no interest in end game. Or players that have physical limitations. These are the players whose game revolves around overland and if that is taken from them what is left? And there are way more of these than end game players.

Besides the fact that not every single content in the game is going to appeal to all play styles. Players should participate in the parts that meet their desires and not take away the parts that don't from those that rely on it.

There are definitely ways to accomplish both without leaning too far to one side or the other. Whether that's how this directive will be accomplished remains to be seen.

A player can be both an endgame content player that ALSO enjoys questing so let's not use the narrative that each player can only fit in a single box. I certainly don't want a single overland wolf to be a bullet sponge. But I would like to quest where I actually have to engage in the content instead of just lighting attack or tossing down a couple AOEs. The newer content that is "invulnerability phases with trash mobs" <> engaging mechanics for story/quest content.

I one shot everything I come across in overland. That's not a skill thing, I run around in zen alkosh most of the time so it's not proc sets either. A quest boss is dead before I complete half a rotation. That's not skill either. That's just overland being laughable.

Also macabre vintage is available to everyone who either has gold road or has gold. It trivializes overland content.

This isn't directed at you, but reactions like this show that some players don't realize that there are also many ESO players who play the game to relax and who just don't want to spend two minutes fighting a wolf because they can't kill everything with one shot. These are perhaps people who already have enough stress in real life and are just looking for peace in the game - yes, maybe just running around picking flowers - and don't care about any sets, builds, etc. Especially if you have to search the Internet first to optimally equip and build your character. Maybe it's a generational thing, I don't know, but I'd like to keep the option of just running around comfortably and only being challenged in fights when I feel like it and then specifically going to the corresponding areas.

I was running around last night in white training heavy armor, don't think I had a mundus, oakensoul, DSA 2h (golded), attributes and CP in correctly, barely any passives (just race and 2h passives), and I still was killing overland enemies very quickly. The only ones that put up a fight were bigger enemies and even then it wasn't very interesting.

I don't think it should just be a difficulty toggle unless there's increased rewards for toggling it on (ex. higher gold drops, mat drops, etc). Maybe zones that are set up more difficult. Someone around here suggested treating zones like base game dungeons and having a 2nd version that takes place in a later time, I think that could be an option.

NO.

NO REWARDS FOR TURNING IT ON.

Your reward is the challenge you want. Leave the rest of them alone.

WoW does this with it's precious war mode(pvp mode) and all I hear is incessant whinging from people that feel obligated to turn it on for the extra incentives, which don't really pan out because of all the dying and camping done by people to them.

If you can't do it without some sort of incentive, then maybe it doesn't need to be done.

I'm not someone who's been pushing for harder overland, just sharing some perspective on how I've found overland too easy at times as a casual and still wreck things using terrible builds, and what would have to be done for me personally to bother using it. I don't think having enemies drop 10 gold instead of 3 and having quests with bribes take 2000 instead of 69 gold or something is a big deal lol. The only thing I actually really care about is the future of dungeons, but I like contributing to discussions.

Servadei

merevie wrote: »

I'm sorry WHAT?!!

You are deleting our builds and group dynamics rather than fixing performance at server end?

Spend. Money. On servers.

Deleting our builds is nothing new. It's literally the ESO combat balance philosophy. It's also a major reason some endgamers just gave up and left. People got tired of all their grinding for gear and progress deleted every patch.

Hrolthar

Can't they just say "moonlighting '?

old_scopie1945

AzuraFan wrote: »

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

It has some info in the first section on overland which might please all.

If it turns out that a more difficult overland just means random world events, like incursions or some big baddie that will need 20 players to take down, okay. But I don't see hoards of players in the Deadlands taking down the wandering bosses. Or doing some of the more difficult static incursions we have now (unless there's an event). But if that's what it means, I'd be happy with that. Just wondering if that's what people want when they say "more difficult overland".

I suspect we both are quite sure what they want. LOL

disky

AzuraFan wrote: »

disky wrote: »

I don't care about rewards, I just want to actually have a satisfying game to play, but there's no reason it couldn't affect rewards. If you enable the mode the rewards could come with it. It seems trivial to implement alongside the rest of the code and make no mistake, ZOS knows that most people think like you. I don't think they'd do something like this without also incentivizing it in some way, either directly or laterally.

Why would they need to incentivize it? Apparently there are hoards of players begging for a more challenging overland so they can enjoy the game again. They've posted that overland will be wonderful again if it's more difficult. If ZOS would only do that, they'd return to the game (if they've left), or they'd spend more time in overland. So why is an incentive required? If these people are now saying they should get rewards for turning on a hard mode, then they don't really want challenge. They just want more rewards. If they really want challenge, they'll do the content without expecting anything extra.

Having said that, yeah, it's an MMO, so they'll incentivize it because they have to keep those little hamster wheels spinning, but it just exposes the hypocrisy of *some* poster asking for this. As another poster said, few of these players try to solo dragons. Few are soloing lava vents, mirror incursions, and other more difficult overland content. I run dungeons a lot now and whenever there's a player just running through the mobs, I always wonder why when it's actually faster to take the mobs down than to run through them (and often we have to eventually take them down anyway). But most players loathe combat. They actively avoid combat in delves, public dungeons, dungeons, and overland, but I'm supposed to believe that if the mobs are made more difficult, they'll be happy to spend hours in combat in Grahtwood? Uh-huh.

I'm hoping it'll just be a revamp to the storyline bosses and delve bosses, because I agree that they can be anti-climactic (though not for new players). However, given ZOS's tendency to use a sledgehammer (I'm looking at you, AwA), I'm not sure how this will work out. Unfortunately if they get it wrong, they'll lose a lot of people. So hopefully they'll give it a lot of thought. A lot.

The argument has been made that the increase in time spent should render a reward which is equivalent to the time spent on a lower difficulty, meaning that if you were to spend the same amount of time doing that task on a lower difficulty you would have received more rewards. That makes sense to me. I don't feel like I need it personally, but it is logical.

disky

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful, at least in my opinion, not making yourself weaker

Then a difficulty increase of any kind will not be something you will want to interact with. Understandable, it's not going to be for everyone no matter how it's implemented. Continue enjoying the game as you always have.

This is not interesting or fun progression as I see it. I never want to feel like I'm godlike, I want to feel like I have a wider breadth of tools at my disposal to overcome a challenge. This is exactly why difficulty should be optional, people just have different ideas of what is fun and we can still all play together if it's handled properly.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

scaled up enemies is the ideal challenge because you can actually build for it

You can 100% still fully interact with the build system with a player-level difficulty setting. That's what makes it great, there is no need to hobble yourself by not wearing your best gear and using the full library of abilities at your disposal. There is functionally no difference in your perception of challenge versus a global change, and no disadvantage other than what you perceive other players to be doing, and I don't see why that should make a difference if all you really want is a challenge.

AzuraFan

disky wrote: »

The argument has been made that the increase in time spent should render a reward which is equivalent to the time spent on a lower difficulty, meaning that if you were to spend the same amount of time doing that task on a lower difficulty you would have received more rewards. That makes sense to me. I don't feel like I need it personally, but it is logical.

If you're saying that at the higher difficulty it would take longer to kill something, and at the normal difficulty it would take less time, that's not true. It could take a level 4 player a long time to kill a normal enemy, and a CP2000+ player a short time to kill the same vet enemy. So that would mean the level 4 player should get better rewards. But maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying.

In any event, I think you missed the point of my post, but that's okay. We both know ZOS will incentivize a more difficult overland. Hopefully that will mean the more difficult overland, however it will look, will be optional, which would be good news.

Sakiri

AzuraFan wrote: »

disky wrote: »

The argument has been made that the increase in time spent should render a reward which is equivalent to the time spent on a lower difficulty, meaning that if you were to spend the same amount of time doing that task on a lower difficulty you would have received more rewards. That makes sense to me. I don't feel like I need it personally, but it is logical.

If you're saying that at the higher difficulty it would take longer to kill something, and at the normal difficulty it would take less time, that's not true. It could take a level 4 player a long time to kill a normal enemy, and a CP2000+ player a short time to kill the same vet enemy. So that would mean the level 4 player should get better rewards. But maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying.

In any event, I think you missed the point of my post, but that's okay. We both know ZOS will incentivize a more difficult overland. Hopefully that will mean the more difficult overland, however it will look, will be optional, which would be good news.

I don't want any incentive. The cosmetics people seem to advocate for on reddit are most sought after by the folks that would have issues with it. Chest/sack/node sniping will go rampant.

It's unnecessary to make someone that kicked molags in the backside take two minutes to clear a trash mob.

Delves for example, we're always meant for 1-2 players. Making those too difficult defeats this purpose.

Yall really overestimate the skill level of the average player. I can take my ha oakensorc into a get dungeon and do over 50% of the groups damage. Nothing wrong with it, but a LOT of players are just not good or optimal.

Now I can go for increasing difficulty on bannered stuff, but I can't get behind overland trash getting buffed.

disky

AzuraFan wrote: »

If you're saying that at the higher difficulty it would take longer to kill something, and at the normal difficulty it would take less time, that's not true. It could take a level 4 player a long time to kill a normal enemy, and a CP2000+ player a short time to kill the same vet enemy. So that would mean the level 4 player should get better rewards. But maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying.

I know it's a little confusing. I'm just saying that a player will acquire more rewards in less time on a lower difficulty, and so it makes sense that they would receive a greater degree of reward on a higher difficulty to compensate for the extra time it takes to acquire rewards in general.

I don't personally care if the loot is improved at all, but the argument does hold water.

VoxAdActa

New and returning player experience

Here's a thing that I just ran into: Make skill-line leveling faster. Much faster.

I just got my new alt to level 50, and none of my class lines are maxed, even though I handicapped myself throughout the leveling process by keeping the latest skill from all three class lines + my backbar weapon on my front bar the whole time. I haven't even gotten to the point where I can morph the last skills in those lines. They're still at rank III. My backbar weapon isn't at 50 either, in spite of wasting my #5 slot for 50 levels.

A new player shouldn't have to be well into champion points before they get to play with their whole skill bar. By 50, they should be able to have all the skills they want to actually play with arranged the way they want to play with them. (Edit: I guess maybe excluding alliance/guild skills).

AzuraFan

disky wrote: »

I know it's a little confusing. I'm just saying that a player will acquire more rewards in less time on a lower difficulty, and so it makes sense that they would receive a greater degree of reward on a higher difficulty to compensate for the extra time it takes to acquire rewards in general.

I don't personally care if the loot is improved at all, but the argument does hold water.

But why should anyone be compensated for something they're asking for? Plus, quantity doesn't mean quality. If you're only getting the usual trash awards on normal, so what if you can get them faster?

I don't care if a more difficult overland has greater rewards. Like I said, I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy. I'm not naive enough to think that the typical MMO player will do anything unless they get a reward (myself included at times). There WILL be rewards, otherwise that content will quickly become a wasteland, just like dragons, harrowstorms, wandering bosses in the Deadlands, etc. are wastelands unless there's an event, despite them offering the challenge so many players say they want. (yes, I know some players can solo these, but they're not the typical ESO player)

Anyway, since we don't know what this more difficult overland will look like, we don't even know if having a different tier of rewards will make sense. I guess we'll see...

JonnytheKing

React wrote: »

Are these "pvp specific" skills going to be animation changes only? Are there plans to change the functionality of cross healing/shielding?

Changing animations won't affect sever performance, so I’m guessing they’re focusing on adjusting the math behind the skills instead.

JonnytheKing

VixxVexx wrote: »

Anyone else getting maintenance mode vibes from reading this? I read this as restructuring/downsizing.

pretty much

disky

AzuraFan wrote: »

disky wrote: »

I know it's a little confusing. I'm just saying that a player will acquire more rewards in less time on a lower difficulty, and so it makes sense that they would receive a greater degree of reward on a higher difficulty to compensate for the extra time it takes to acquire rewards in general.

I don't personally care if the loot is improved at all, but the argument does hold water.

But why should anyone be compensated for something they're asking for? Plus, quantity doesn't mean quality. If you're only getting the usual trash awards on normal, so what if you can get them faster?

I don't care if a more difficult overland has greater rewards. Like I said, I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy. I'm not naive enough to think that the typical MMO player will do anything unless they get a reward (myself included at times). There WILL be rewards, otherwise that content will quickly become a wasteland, just like dragons, harrowstorms, wandering bosses in the Deadlands, etc. are wastelands unless there's an event, despite them offering the challenge so many players say they want. (yes, I know some players can solo these, but they're not the typical ESO player)

Anyway, since we don't know what this more difficult overland will look like, we don't even know if having a different tier of rewards will make sense. I guess we'll see...

I don't think it's hypocrisy, it's just about how a reward-driven player values their time. That player may honestly believe that overland is too easy and so they want the option to enable a challenge mode, but if they're reward-driven and they find that the rewards don't make sense for the time spent then they won't use the feature, that's that. So the developer provides a reward commensurate with the increased time spent to acquire rewards. I wish it didn't work this way but that's just how some people are.

Elvenheart

BasP wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

Danel_Vadan wrote: »

[Snip]

Funny how we all perceive it so differently, like some claiming maintenance mode begins and different subset of people saying it's an exit from the maintenance mode it was in for the last few years. Time will tell ultimately.

It’s “maintenance mode”.

They are going from big impressive chapter expansions (remember when they sold collector box sets?) to “bit sized content” (their words).

It’s “maintenance mode”.

Doesn't maintenance mode mean that a game no longer receives any meaningful new content? It's a bit early to draw that conclusion, I think.

Besides, I believe that some of the latest "bite sized content" we got - Zerith-Var's questline for example - was received pretty well. I believe some even called that ESO's best story in years (which I can't remember reading about any of the main quests in recent Chapters). Hence, I'd personally be fine with regular bite sized content and more smaller quest lines instead of one large Chapter a year - as long as the quality is good, of course.

And if the boss fights in those quests will (optionally) be a lot more difficult and engaging, that will be icing on the cake for me.

I am one of those that think Zerith-Var’s story was the best quest I’ve done in a very long time. It felt very epic.

AzuraFan

disky wrote: »

I wish it didn't work this way but that's just how some people are.

We can agree on that. Though I think the majority of MMO players are rewards-oriented to some degree. Most of us wouldn't keep playing the same game for months/years if there weren't shinies to chase, whether it be in the form of loot, sets, leads, achievements, furnishing recipes, whatever.

I'm not sure that "more difficult overland" = "more time spent" though. We'll have to see how it's actually implemented.

Rkindaleft

TaintedKurse wrote: »

While I think the current model has gone very stale. I worry this may be too far of step away from what people are used to. Our usual player boom is whenever a new chapter gets dropped people come back to check it out. Without the hype or excitement of what is to come. I worry we won’t be able to interest players enough to check it out. ESO is in a state where player count is pretty low. Most of the talk amongst my groups is that of dissatisfaction and "why are we here" attitudes.

My theory is that it's an attempt to drive engagement and more frequent log-ins. ESO has a lot of cyclical players that only log in to do the content in new updates. Releasing some new quest or whatever every month will give them a reason to log in sometimes other then when the new expansion or dungeons come out.

I don't think it's going to work the way they want it to. Making less overall content is never a good idea for keeping players.

tomofhyrule

I think one of my biggest issues with ESO's scheme is that, for all the big idea of "story being the heart of Elder Scrolls" and all that, replayability in ESO is pretty... low.

I mean, yeah we can do dungeons/trials/etc. on repeat and there are loads of dailies in the DLC zones, but as for the "main zone quests," those are all once-per-character. Sure, we can then go replay that zone quest on an alt... but is it really that different? Are there any earth-shaking decisions that we want to see play out differently? Or is it just "here, random adventurer, go fetch me this thing again and then let me explain everything to you like you're five." And yes, many of the Companion lines have been incredible, which is why I assume everyone wants to have a "skip Companion quest" button to get them on alts...

Consider Baldur's Gate 3 - still an overarching main quest, but so replayable since you want to play different classes and different origins and make different choices. Contrast ESO, where even the S-tier Orsinium story most people have only played (like really played, not just spamming 'E' through dialogue) on two or three alts at best. Do we really think that many people finished High Isle and said "omg I need to play that again, but on my [insert alt] here to see how the story changes!"

This was always one of the things that got me about making the story bosses more intense. Sure, that makes the "harder story pls" crowd happier since the boss doesn't fall over when you look at them and then people can flex on the players who can no longer play the stories, but... then what? Maybe that boss and it's fun mechanics ends up in the Archive in some fashion? Otherwise, we have the Encounters team designing these mechanically-interesting fights that 99% of players will see once ever. Sure, the Ithelia fight was actually really fun and I enjoyed it... and now it's over, so I'll only see it again if I decide to do the whole Necrom AND Gold Road AND Epilogue questline on an alt. Honestly, I'd much rather have boring story bosses and interesting repeatable dungeon/trial bosses over interesting story bosses and no new dungeons and trials.

Also the idea of the new/improved Tutorial we just got, or the 'improved graphics/etc.' forthcoming in the basegame zones - sounds good, but... that doesn't really do much for existing players unless we want to just go back and say "ooh, it's pretty!"? We don't really have much of a reason to go back there, unless we want to redo the (extremely linear) quests on alts. Which could be fun... assuming we had empty character slots. But as the recent Golden Pursuits has shown, many vets have a full cadre of Lv 50 alts. If we're not going to delete the Lv 50 alt to get a free mount, will we really be inspired to delete them just so we can see the new HD textures through a new player's eyes?
Now, if they give us a reason to go back into new player mode (aka a new Class that we all have to learn and level from scratch), that could make that a reasonable thing. But just going back to say "I can scoop all these resources from under noobs' noses while they're struggling to fight wolves but in HD now!" is not gonna cut it.

It's also the uncertainty. We know we're still getting a Q1 release (so standalone dungeons?), and then there'll be a zone coming eventually, and... more? Again, eventually. And it may or may not be something that a bunch of players can interact with. Maybe a trial, maybe a Skill Line, maybe a Tales of Tribute deck! Who knows? But it's hard to hyped about something that we know absolutely nothing about. Especially since all of the players have such different ideas about what they want to see.

I will say that I'm not opposed to more self-contained stories (Orsinium is still the absolute best story in this game, hands down). But as TES6 looms ever on the horizon, I know that that's where I'll go if I want decent stories and replayable stuff. ESO offers things that TES6 won't be able to in group content (dungeons and trials), zones all over the world, PvP (which isn't for me, but is for others)... so if they're going to sacrifice things like Game Systems (Classes, skill lines, etc) or zones to make one-and-done quests, that's concerning.

I'm at the wait-and-see phase, like I tend to be for each release. But this is the first year that I'm going into the year more disappointed than hyped, coming from the strugglebus worth of a year we had and then the cancellation of the event that I (and others) were looking forward to for a year now... and it seems the forums were getting close when the speculation centered around the cancellation being due to budget/a possible change in direction that could turn people off.

READLER

I just remind you that 2019 in ESO was called "Season of the Dragon" And therefore literally the first thing I thought after reading Matt's letter was that we would just receive the same scheme with a thematic update, but smaller in scale and more diverse in content content. In addition, the changes to the old zones announced in the letter, the complexity of the battles, and visual effects require a lot of resources, so it's hard to call this a maintenance mode.

actor90

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

•  Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat

This part concerns me. Maybe some more difficulty with quest bosses would be fine, but if this makes traveling around the base game a hard and time-consuming slog, I would be totally opposed to that. I like exploring and farming for resources, and I don't want to become a huge hassle.

Shaie

First, my impressions on the letter.

Lots of self-congratulating (hope no one hurt their arm!), lots of "buzz words", lots of wax. It read like a whole bunch of "tell them what they want to hear (read) and placate them". I was not excited, but actually rather concerned because being patted on the head & told someone is listening to you isn't the proper response to an audience that's experienced the large number of "oopsies" that we did this year.

As far as "increasing the difficulty of overland mobs", I'm in the "I don't actually want that, I want to get from point A (usually a wayshrine) to point B (quest objective, treasure, survey or just a node I saw) QUICKLY" camp. If you must, make it a toggle. Personal opinion is NO REWARD for increased difficulty, the challenge IS/SHOULD BE the reward. Someone above compared it to WoW"s Warmode, but it does not compare (except for offering increased XP gains) because Warmode is what the optional PvP tag turned into. WoW does not have dedicated PvP servers anymore, except for the "Classic" modes. A better comparison would be WoW's "Hardcore" mode, where the reward (aside from the usual currency/items) is the fact that you did not die during your journey from 1-Max level (and if you do, you lose everything & start over from scratch), but I'm not sure ESO could survive that. I don't think it is surviving with a PvP mode all that well (and really, who played the original TES games & thought to themselves, "The ONLY thing that would make this game better is if it had PvP!!!!" [No one did.]) either but I think having a separate set of PvP skills that can only be used in Cyrodiil/IC (Or even a dedicated PvP server where those interested in such could copy their characters over) will probably help with the lag issues. I don't PvP but I've seen all the complaints.

Now, for the Seasons model. I think they're going for what they did with Fallout 76, as I feel that they have perhaps "perfected" the system they are going to use. In 76, we get ~4 Seasons per year, each with its own "Scoreboard". Originally the Scoreboards were a set, linear progression so we all were REQUIRED to take things we might not have wanted or didn't really care about so that we could get to the things we did want. Earlier this year, they changed the system. Rather than a linear progression, we have pages of items that we can "buy" with the Seasonal currency (which does not change from Season to Season, only resets to 0 at the start of the new Season). I think we even have more options of items to purchase & nearly every page offers 200 Atoms (76's version of Crowns); as I am Fallout 1st I cannot say that these are offered to non-sub players, but honestly I believe they are. There ARE however, items that are NOT available to non-sub members, although again as a 1st member, I don't know what they are. Over the past year, 76 got an entire new area of the map (the first one since launch in 2018) with a new questline & sides, another whole set of quests ending with new vendors & items and 2 weeks ago, the first raid. 76 has events nearly every week, along with special "Holiday" events as well as daily & weekly quests. The main differences between those & Endeavors are, you must do 5/6, 7/8, 8/9, 9/10 for the dailies to get a special bonus each day (3 days of which count for a special weekly bonus) and ALL of the weeklies every week for maximum Seasons points. Oh, and you can "reroll" them - you get 2 free Rerolls per day, can get more from the daily login as well as the Scoreboard, so if there's a daily/weekly (for me it's Ops, I hate them) you don't like or don't want to do, you can reroll for a chance at something you'd prefer to do. As with Endeavors, there is no requirement to participate and if you're patient & don't mind paying cash for some of the stuff, you can skip the entire thing & just buy the pack from the Atom shop a year or so down the road. You don't get the neat house item though, which is a panoramic wall item showing the Seasons background. Seasons rewards are house items (which in 76 are learned, so all your characters can craft them - I'm not sure how that would work for ESO, maybe under U > House Items?), armor skins, Power armor skins, player icons, photo frames and food/buff items. Since ESO doesn't have Photomode or player icons, they'd have to substitute other things, not sure what those would be though. Maybe crafting mats?

Anyway, this is the direction I see ESO going in, at least until TES VI launches. Is it maintenance mode? Not in the traditional sense, but I feel that it IS a maintenance mode of sorts. What they are doing is easy (easier than massive-annual-releases anyway) & can be done with a smaller team. We know, or should know, that Bethesda is owned by Microsoft (as are several other game companies) AND that Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees across their games division nearly a year ago. This means ALL of them are operating with smaller teams. We also know, from their own mouths, that Bethesda builds one game at a time (this is why we got teased TES VI around 5 years ago but heard nothing else until this year about it - they were devoting little if any time to it until Starfield released) so little if any resources were being put toward TES VI until after Starfield was released & off the ground (pun unintended but not really avoidable). Just like we know that there will not be a Fallout 5 until TES VI is released & off the ground, because the team is working on TES VI right now. It feels to me as if they are pulling/have pulled a good many team members from ESO to work on TES VI so they can get it released as soon as possible and ride the current wave resurgence of Single-Player RPG's (and I don't blame them for that, look how many still play Skyrim AND what a wild ride BG3 has had/is still having). It is much more difficult to put out massive content releases with a small team, especially if it's nigh-impossible to make changes once that content hits the PTS. Smaller releases, more often, alongside QoL & graphical updates seem like something much more "doable" by a smaller team, at least to me. And it's as good a time as any to do it, better I think than trying to do a massive rework all at once ala WoW's "Cataclysm" expansion.

Just my 2 gold's worth.

Attorneyatlawl

GatheredMyst wrote: »

This is some of the best news that I've seen from the game since I started playing it back at launch.

Why?

I have super fond memories of the time before the "Chapter Model" was introduced, and ZOS was throwing things at the wall to see what stuck. Those were the days that brought us the small but really well done Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storylines. Those were the days that introduced the dye system that we have now. Those were the days that they did Player Housing. Heck, those were the days that they did Tamriel Unlimited (Which had its own issues, but I won't get into that here)

Cutting them loose from the yearly release schedule means that you can hopefully get your team back to doing stuff like this again, because... take it from a Final Fantasy XIV player...

**A Set Schedule is Not Always a Benefit**

Final Fantasy XIV is nothing if not consistent. We know exactly what we're getting every year and every patch cycle, because they've been following the same cadence that they have every year since Heavensward.

What's the problem with this? That schedule is so carved in stone that the dev team cannot pivot once issues arise.

XIV releases a new relic quest and people don't like how it's implemented? Sorry, but that's the way it's going to be for the foreseeable future up to the next expansion. Want to offer feedback on the current state of class design? Please wait until the next expansion to see how that comes to fruition, because the dev team isn't going to upset the applecart before then. Doing so would "throw off the entire design of their current patch cycle".

Sometimes these cycles are long, too. Final Fantasy players wanting to see some of their feedback being put in place are going to have to wait until *2027*. Hell, the feedback from the the latest expansion's story couldn't even be considered for their most recently released patch coming out months after Dawntrail's launch. Why? It was basically already done.

ZOS, to my understanding, works on a two year cycle. That means that *if* they get an idea they want to implement, the schedule is probably already set for *two whole years*. That's a *lot* of time that they can't spend pivoting to player feedback, and when the list of things they want to do gets long, that means they're staring at years of time before they can address certain pain points or design flaws of the game.

The best that a rigid content schedule does provide is an expected content release schedule for players, but even then, that's not a benefit anymore. Every expansion is being met with more and more of a shrug by the community and MMO Press. Heck, this year, Gold Road came out at the exact same time as three expansions from its major competitors. The result? It got buried underneath everyone else because of how "formulaic the release schedule has become", something that they really seem to want to address.

I also really don't get people who are saying the game is going into Maintenance Mode. It's like they didn't read the letter. We were just promised:

~A much requested change to overland content difficulty.
~A redesign of the game's UI
~An updated patcher
~Expansions to key functionality
~New art across the oldest content in the game.
~New combat feel/animation/effects/audio work?

All of that is a *ton of work*, and we're still getting new zones, new stories, and new quests? I think what people who are screaming about this are *meaning* to say is that "I don't know when i'm going to get new content that *matters to me*, so the game must be dying."

TLDR:

* Overland Content Difficulty Adjustments have been on my wishlist since Tamriel Unlimited.
* Decoupling PVP and PVE abilities not only allows for better balance in PVP and PVE, but an ability for them to experiment with their class/ability design without having to worry about how it might impact one game mode or the other.
* Having some open-world content that is structured around groups brings the social element back again without shoving us all into dungeons/trials. So long as there is solo content to support it, this is nothing short of a plus.

I'm very excited for what the future of the game might look like. Sure, ZOS still has to deliver on everything they're planning, but with how stale the current content release schedule has become, this feels like just the shot in the arm that the game needed.

If I could offer some feedback, though: Don't call it seasons :P Clearly it has a negative connotation. Think of something else. Maybe you can even keep the "Chapter" monicker, and call each little release in that "Chapter" a "Page".

And in the future, if you want to come out swinging with a big change like this, it might be a good idea to at least have some FAQ's answered to head some of the good questions off at the pass. It will save both the team and us a little headache, and make Kevin, Gina, and Jessica's life a lot easier as well.

(Edit to fix a few typos)

I'll have some thoughts of my own I'll write when I've had some sleep, but I agree 100% with this. I'm an old timer coming back now that I read this letter. The changes sound perfect! It seems like everyone is glossing over the great stuff in it because of the naughty word "seasons" being used in an unusual way. I'm about 2/3 of the way through reading this thread from bed.

My conclusion? As a long time but absent player the past several years due to rl, I just bought the gold road collection to fill out my old account, and one for my mother, too!

EDIT: My only concern about the skills thing in Cyrodiil is that I really loved the build customization in eso including the "98% as good as meta ones" used in PvP that you could run and still kick butt with. I hope customizable builds don't go the way I'd the dinosaur if they go through with this. Or is a key selling point of eso pvp.

P.S. Please let us instantly train alt's mounts once we've finished on one character already. It sucks starting at base speed and stamina again.

Attorneyatlawl

SilverBride wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful...

And a powerful character should be able to easily take down overland mobs.

Also, the player progresses through the game, the enemies don't. So how would overland enemies become more powerful?

They used to pre one Tamriel. That was much more fun when it was a challenge. The boring overland changes were one of the reasons I left. Once there was no progression through the game world, it got boring in the overland.

Quests and farming had zero meaning, except for gaining champ ranks every 400k xp, and you didn't need a super high rank to get most of the power.

I was heavily into trials and cyrodiil too, but server performance killed cyro when running in organized groups. I also had health issues which kept me away for awhile, after which I just quit.

The overland was never seriously tough, just enough to see some of the mechanics from mobs and be a bit more challenging in craglorn (upper). You got more reward for clearing some monsters because the animal mobs could drop nirnstones in exchange, as could the normal nodes.

I want an adjustable difficulty overland with reward bumps. More xp in particular. Extra mechanics would make it fun, as well as mobs hitting like trucks and needing to use cc, dodges, interrupts, etc. again like during closed beta.

In a lot of ways I didn't leave the game... The game's design changed and left me.

Sakiri

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful...

And a powerful character should be able to easily take down overland mobs.

Also, the player progresses through the game, the enemies don't. So how would overland enemies become more powerful?

They used to pre one Tamriel. That was much more fun when it was a challenge. The boring overland changes were one of the reasons I left. Once there was no progression through the game world, it got boring in the overland.

Quests and farming had zero meaning, except for gaining champ ranks every 400k xp, and you didn't need a super high rank to get most of the power.

I was heavily into trials and cyrodiil too, but server performance killed cyro when running in organized groups. I also had health issues which kept me away for awhile, after which I just quit.

The overland was never seriously tough, just enough to see some of the mechanics from mobs and be a bit more challenging in craglorn (upper). You got more reward for clearing some monsters because the animal mobs could drop nirnstones in exchange, as could the normal nodes.

I want an adjustable difficulty overland with reward bumps. More xp in particular. Extra mechanics would make it fun, as well as mobs hitting like trucks and needing to use cc, dodges, interrupts, etc. again like during closed beta.

In a lot of ways I didn't leave the game... The game's design changed and left me.

I left before One Tamriel over Craglorn. Group mandatory overland zones did not appeal to me and the VR grind was a slog.

Then OT hit.

I hated the idea. I don't like level scaling. I like being able to go back and get old mats, old stuff, steamroll overleveled content. WoW added some scaling and I protested that too.. I even cited ESO as an example and explained why I hate it.

Making the world more difficult needs to remove that scaling but you kjnow they won't. Linear progression is a thing of the past. I'm all for making quest bosses and bannered mobs more dangerous, but you know they're just going to turn everything into bullet sponges. Think Skyrim Legendary difficulty. For those that don't know, Skyrim's Legendary difficulty is player takes 3x damage and deals a quarter damage. It turns everything into sponges, including skeevers, until you get good enchanted and smithed up OP gear.

If they could make gear matter here, which it currently doesn't for the most part once you hit 160, it'd probably help. At CP 1100 or whatever the heck I'm at, I *should* be able to steamroll overworld. I'm in full gold gear, fully leveled, morphed skills. A trash wolf standing in front of that lore book SHOULD be trivial. I beat the crud out of a daedric prince for crying out loud.

TLDR: Bannered mobs more difficult - good, random trash overland mobs more difficult - get it outta here.

Wiseau

Season pass? Oh... no. No no no no no. Do not dare even think about bringing a battlepass to ESO. Holy cow this is such a bad idea and will be the downfall of ESO.