Studio Director’s Letter: 2025 & Beyond

Syldras

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

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.

To me, the announcement of changes, without specific details about how the changes will look like, first of all means that things will change, but I can't say whether I'll like or dislike them. A change can mean great improvement - but can also be a risk to mess things up. If we look at "improving combat fx" - if the fights feel more "realistic", that would be awesome - but if everything will just be a huge chaos of flashy effects obscuring the whole screen, then... not so much. Same for improved graphics for old zones: Does it mean better textures, more assets, more realism (awesome) or everything becoming brighter and flashier (not awesome from my point of view)? Will "increased overland difficulty" mean that bosses won't be dead after a few seconds, so these fights will feel more meaningful (absolute appreciated) or would it mean I have to fight with a wolf for 5 minutes over every log of wood (that would not feel meaningful, but only like a hassle)? Without more info, we don't know, and I don't want to judge yet, neither negatively nor positively. I'm just waiting for more details.

colossalvoids

Syldras wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

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.

To me, the announcement of changes, without specific details about how the changes will look like, first of all means that things will change, but I can't say whether I'll like or dislike them. A change can mean great improvement - but can also be a risk to mess things up. If we look at "improving combat fx" - if the fights feel more "realistic", that would be awesome - but if everything will just be a huge chaos of flashy effects obscuring the whole screen, then... not so much. Same for improved graphics for old zones: Does it mean better textures, more assets, more realism (awesome) or everything becoming brighter and flashier (not awesome from my point of view)? Will "increased overland difficulty" mean that bosses won't be dead after a few seconds, so these fights will feel more meaningful (absolute appreciated) or would it mean I have to fight with a wolf for 5 minutes over every log of wood (that would not feel meaningful, but only like a hassle)? Without more info, we don't know, and I don't want to judge yet, neither negatively nor positively. I'm just waiting for more details.

I guess all of us are pretty puzzled on that front right now no matter positive or negative about the letter. Experience tells to expect the worse but on a paper it sounds amazing, as it goes through my personal lense of wants and needs in this title.

Ingenon

Shaie wrote: »

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?

Thanks for posting this!

I have played Fallout 76 earlier this year, although the game is currently not installed on my PS5, And Fallout 76 was the first game that came to my mind when I saw the words "Introducing Seasons" in the Studio Director's Letter. Which did not make me happy because Fallout 76 is not my favorite game. I found it very grindy to get started as a new player. And I found overland harder for a new player versus playing Fallout 4 on normal.

Anyway, you described Fallout 76 accurately in my opinion. And I am concerned because the Studio Director's Letter makes me feel like ESO is transitioning to a smaller developer team (like the team size that Microsoft has working on Fallout 76), and so they are using Fallout 76 as a guide to what they will do in the coming years. Sigh.

DaveMoeDee

Shaie wrote: »

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.

Does Fallout 76 require spending to access new content added during a season? I don't care about cosmetics. I just want to understand how we will get access to the "bite-sized" quests added throughout the year. I don't need a task treadmill to make my account pretty.

huskandhunger

It sounds like a general maintenance letter ✉️

Ingenon

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Does Fallout 76 require spending to access new content added during a season? I don't care about cosmetics. I just want to understand how we will get access to the "bite-sized" quests added throughout the year. I don't need a task treadmill to make my account pretty.

No, at least not in my Fallout 76 experience. If you don't have the Fallout 76 equivalent of ESO+ (Fallout 1st), you cannot earn all of the Seasons rewards but you can earn some of the rewards. And you can participate in the Seasons "raid" if you are not a Fallout 1st subscriber.

SilverBride

I read over the letter but it's too vague for me to have any idea of what it may be like. I am not excited by anything I read and l think more information needs to be given sooner rather than later. Waiting 4 months is just going to cause more speculation and worry.

Ingenon

SilverBride wrote: »

I read over the letter but it's too vague for me to have any idea of what it may be like. I am not excited by anything I read and l think more information needs to be given sooner rather than later. Waiting 4 months is just going to cause more speculation and worry.

In the Studio Director's Letter it says
"Speaking of, to give everyone a heads up, our next big announcement event will be in April 2025 as we introduce our first Season. There will be much more in the April announcement, but for that, you will have to wait. We will still have a content update in March 2025 (on PTS as normal in January), and we will give you more information about that sometime early in the new year."

I plan to learn more in January from PC PTS players posting on the forum about their impressions of the content update which will be on PTS. And then I plan to learn more in the April big announcement event.

If more information is given sooner, I will be pleasantly surprised.

disky

Wiseau wrote: »

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.

I think that the term "season" is loaded and may be misrepresenting their intentions. I don't think it's going to be a season pass per se. But you're right, if that's what it ends up being, it's a big mistake.

Necrotech_Master

disky wrote: »

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.

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

disky

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

Necrotech_Master

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

old_scopie1945

SilverBride wrote: »

I read over the letter but it's too vague for me to have any idea of what it may be like. I am not excited by anything I read and l think more information needs to be given sooner rather than later. Waiting 4 months is just going to cause more speculation and worry.

ZOS's announcements seem to have a habit of being cack-handed.

heaven13

Destai wrote: »

For story content, you guys really should leverage the Stories menu a lot more. Right now, it feels l'm reading a book with other books falling into it. We need to get to a point where I pick the books off the shelf. Having prologues solely available in the Stories menu like DLCs and Dungeon stories will cut down on a lot of noise. I think the same should go for guild questlines.

Overall, I really like and agree with your feedback. Except this one point. I don't enjoy having to go "outside" the game to get stories. I don't like doing it with chapters, I don't want to do it with other quests. How do you keep it from becoming a tickbox of tasks instead of immersive story-telling? I do agree that the quest givers should NOT follow you around and appear around every corner, but I want to discover and interact with them organically, in places that make sense for them to be there.

Tandor

VoxAdActa wrote: »

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).

I disagree. Champion Points are an integral part of the levelling process, and shouldn't come after you have maxed all your skill lines. One of the commonest complaints about LoTRO is that you run out of skills to develop long before you've got anywhere near the maximum level. When that happens, all the players are left with is the question "What's the point in continuing? What does levelling some more actually give me?"

disky

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

TheImperfect

I know a lot of people have asked questions on here, me included. I'm guessing at some point these will be answered so I'm going to add another one that just occurred to me here.

I wonder how furnishings are going to be handled now as previously we got a quantity of new furniture at the beginning of the year and a quantity of furniture towards the end of the year. Will this stay the same and if it's going to ok but if it's going to be more throughout the year will we still get roughly the same amount of furnishings? Will it stay as sets like previously - like in the Gold Road chapter we got a set of Colovian furniture and Dawnwood and later some Ayleid etc? Will it be more individual furniture related to the content that's being released at the time?

Sakiri

Just to the guy that said it's not like war mode..... The incentive was added to encourage participation because no one wanted to.

That's why these people want rewards. They're afraid no one else will partake. That's why it needs to be inventivized. So you feel obligated to do it.

Overamera

Instead of only focusing on being able to inrease the cap of Cyrodiil population, It would be nice with new content of PvP. Cyrodiil has been out for so many years and even if the cap was increased and performance was better, many players are bored of it. I would personally like a new PvP zone like Imperial City or a complete change to it's map. Perhaps a new campaign with a different map to Cyrodiil. A new PvP zone would bring alot of old players back and would be a good selling point.

Something I've wished ZOS would do for their advertising/streams/trailers is to show how off highly skilled gameplay and what is possible to achive when you reach endgame. But that has never really been the case. For example the lastest PvP stream for Battlegrounds. As a player who plays both endgame for PvE and PvP and has learned light, bash, animation canceling and all these things, watching these streams and trailers the gameplay seems very slow and clunky. This gameplay for me is not very atttractive to watch. Specially nowdays with games being so fast paced. What got me into ESO was seeing gameplay of good players like SypherPK back in the days on Youtube, not the trailers which always showcased a slow and clunky playstyle without light attack weaving etc. It would be nice if ZOS could somehow showcase this more, specially for PvP.

As for the performance, the only thing that seemed to fix it for awhile was the hardware update which eventually was deteriorating after each patch. But performace is still much better than it was before it, perhaps beacuse of the lower population cap.

ThelerisTelvanni

I am rather split on these changes.
On one side I love the idea of new quests for the guilds and other story lines in old zones. I love that the team wants to give old zones the needed visual update!

On the other this yeas was kind of content dry and I just canceled my ESO+ this month because of it. I love it when I get a new zone to explore! I love content I can do on my own. And without new zones to explore, the old ones barely offer a lot where stuff can be added. It might be small stuff like adding a dungeon or delve or other interior behind a previous locked door. Or reuse old locations.
But I do not think we will see the cool exploration content I want.

We'll see what the future brings and if the team surprises me this time around I might re-sub. The last few years were always kind of so close to something I wanted, but kind of always missed the mark in different ways.

In 2024 the new Aylied assets kind of missed the mark and did not feel like an on point and good addition. The iconography was on point but the shapes often felt kind of wrong. Also the new Aylied lore additions were not to my liking. And Ithelia felt like she needed another round at the concept table for both her lore and visual design. And both deadric shrines in the zone did not feature a deadric quest line. Meridia and her connection to the Aylied was a given for me to receive one!

We also did not get a cool new Aylied home or stile pages for a complete set of gear.

Also the skillcrafting aka scribing kind of missed the point for me both from the stroy point but also from the grind to use it ponit.

In 2023 I loved the Idea revisiting Morrowind! Yet I was hoping for better Telvanni mushroom towers that I did not get. The Telvanni peninsular felt far to small and I just wanted more Morrowind and what I got was Apocrypha. Yet the Telvanni quest I got were awesome!

In 2022 I did not understand why the team choose to make a card game of all things you can add to the game... Total waste of resources in my opinion. And I was kind of disappointed that we did not get any Aylied ruins on the isle, despite them being so close to Summerset! I expected at least one.

Well those were my 2 cents to the new changes. let's hope for the best.

Necrotech_Master

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for someone, i mean if you can do 100k dps on a trial dummy, and then you apply the "self nerf 'challenge' mode" which reduces your dmg and healing by 90%, your now on a fully geared up 100k dps setup, doing 10k dps with a full rotation, thats just going to feel bad because people dont like seeing smaller numbers, and its going to take 10x longer to kill something without changing anything else about the encounter including rewards

i have no idea what the devs have in mind to try to make overland more "engaging" for the folks who want more of a challenge, but i dont think the idea of a self nerf is the answer, i see that as something very few people would actually use, especially if it provided no additional incentive

it might also have to be something that only works in overland too, how would you feel getting into a dungeon with a bunch of people who are running -90% self nerfs and doing 30k combined dps because thats how your adding "challenge"?

tsaescishoeshiner

Wiseau wrote: »

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.

Just to be clear, they said "Instead of Chapters, we're introducing Seasons", making it sound more like "Year of the Dragon" except that it might not be a whole year. So Season of the Dragon for some dungeons and a dragon-themed zone instead of a whole year of dragon-themed content.

The word "Season" came up regarding new zones and themes for new content, not a subscription or reward model. There's nothing that even implies "season pass" or "battle pass" except for people's imaginations.

We won't know until we hear more. But I think that's the less likely outcome with less evidence for it.

shadyjane62

When I am no longer "stuck in combat" I'm sure I will have a better opinion.

disky

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for someone, i mean if you can do 100k dps on a trial dummy, and then you apply the "self nerf 'challenge' mode" which reduces your dmg and healing by 90%, your now on a fully geared up 100k dps setup, doing 10k dps with a full rotation, thats just going to feel bad because people dont like seeing smaller numbers, and its going to take 10x longer to kill something without changing anything else about the encounter including rewards

i have no idea what the devs have in mind to try to make overland more "engaging" for the folks who want more of a challenge, but i dont think the idea of a self nerf is the answer, i see that as something very few people would actually use, especially if it provided no additional incentive

it might also have to be something that only works in overland too, how would you feel getting into a dungeon with a bunch of people who are running -90% self nerfs and doing 30k combined dps because thats how your adding "challenge"?

It would be an overland system so it would only affect overland. Dungeons would remain unchanged as they have their own difficulty system. I fully expect that there would be rewards for enabling this kind of system otherwise reward-focused players won't use it and ZOS understands that.

Regarding more engaging overland content, my hope is that they're taking the time they're regaining from not building a new chapter in order to work on things like dynamic and repeatable content which occurs within the zones we already have. There's really so much that could be done.

Lumsdenml

Back in the old days before one tamriel, when you did cadwells Silver and gold you were put into a different instance for only your alliance. I'd love to see them do something else like that when adding new stories to old content. Like a new story questline for the theives guild where once you finish the original story, you are moved into a new istance for the new storyline, allowing them to make physical changes to the zone that make sense for the new storyline, but that would seem out of place in the old storyline.

Lumsdenml

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for someone, i mean if you can do 100k dps on a trial dummy, and then you apply the "self nerf 'challenge' mode" which reduces your dmg and healing by 90%, your now on a fully geared up 100k dps setup, doing 10k dps with a full rotation, thats just going to feel bad because people dont like seeing smaller numbers, and its going to take 10x longer to kill something without changing anything else about the encounter including rewards

i have no idea what the devs have in mind to try to make overland more "engaging" for the folks who want more of a challenge, but i dont think the idea of a self nerf is the answer, i see that as something very few people would actually use, especially if it provided no additional incentive

it might also have to be something that only works in overland too, how would you feel getting into a dungeon with a bunch of people who are running -90% self nerfs and doing 30k combined dps because thats how your adding "challenge"?

It would be an overland system so it would only affect overland. Dungeons would remain unchanged as they have their own difficulty system. I fully expect that there would be rewards for enabling this kind of system otherwise reward-focused players won't use it and ZOS understands that.

Regarding more engaging overland content, my hope is that they're taking the time they're regaining from not building a new chapter in order to work on things like dynamic and repeatable content which occurs within the zones we already have. There's really so much that could be done.

Vet overland with perfected overland sets

Sakiri

Lumsdenml wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for someone, i mean if you can do 100k dps on a trial dummy, and then you apply the "self nerf 'challenge' mode" which reduces your dmg and healing by 90%, your now on a fully geared up 100k dps setup, doing 10k dps with a full rotation, thats just going to feel bad because people dont like seeing smaller numbers, and its going to take 10x longer to kill something without changing anything else about the encounter including rewards

i have no idea what the devs have in mind to try to make overland more "engaging" for the folks who want more of a challenge, but i dont think the idea of a self nerf is the answer, i see that as something very few people would actually use, especially if it provided no additional incentive

it might also have to be something that only works in overland too, how would you feel getting into a dungeon with a bunch of people who are running -90% self nerfs and doing 30k combined dps because thats how your adding "challenge"?

It would be an overland system so it would only affect overland. Dungeons would remain unchanged as they have their own difficulty system. I fully expect that there would be rewards for enabling this kind of system otherwise reward-focused players won't use it and ZOS understands that.

Regarding more engaging overland content, my hope is that they're taking the time they're regaining from not building a new chapter in order to work on things like dynamic and repeatable content which occurs within the zones we already have. There's really so much that could be done.

Vet overland with perfected overland sets

No.

blktauna

XSTRONG wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Why is PC's UI fixing being prioritized over console?

Rather telling, isn't it? Remember what they said about being unable to increase the housing item limits due to the restrictions of first gen console performance?

Interesting, indeed!

PC changes can be iterated instantly. Console changes need to co through a lengthy vetting process especially with Sony. We on PC get to be the guinea pigs while console reaps the benefits of all our testing.

Releasing content on both PC and Console at the same time in other games work very well and should be okay in a game thats made 2 billion dollars.

Speaking as someone who had to deploy to consoles and pcs, Consoles have a huge process and review period to go through while PC can be hotfixed on the fly. If "other games' do it concurrently, they are holding PC updates back to match.

Ilbirs

The proposals seem good, the main thing is that it is not financially difficult for us.

silky_soft

Over 300 posts since last staff interaction.