Studio Director’s Message Key Points

BlueRaven

A lot of red flags for me in that letter. Basically dropping the only thing that I care about (new zones) while emphasizing things that I don’t.

I pay for eso+ AND get the new chapter every year. And now…? What am I here for exactly?

What am I supposed to do in this game now? Just farm things seasonally? In areas I either cannot nor wish to solo because of difficulty?

Ugh… [insert expletive.]

DenverRalphy

BlueRaven wrote: »

A lot of red flags for me in that letter. Basically dropping the only thing that I care about (new zones) while emphasizing things that I don’t.

[snip]

Where was it mentioned that they're dropping new zones?

OtarTheMad

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

So no more zone expansion to look forward to, no new story, no new world events, no new soundtrack release etc

I am going to wait and see but I will probably lose interest rather quickly. But good they announce this well in advance so that I don’t invest financially in ESO+ or crowns. It will be interesting to see how much the PvP crowd will invest financially, now that they become the priority for a year.

Just to clarify, no one said we are not doing things like this anymore. They just won’t be packaged under a chapter. We still plan on story content, music, world activities, etc. We’ll have more info to share in April.

Thanks for clarifying but honestly I think this is the one time where being more vague and trying to hype up some information in April might be a wrong move. We need more information because this is a huge change. So many questions and 4-5 months to wait for answers?

Just my opinion though.

LadyGP

BlueRaven wrote: »

A lot of red flags for me in that letter. Basically dropping the only thing that I care about (new zones) while emphasizing things that I don’t.

I pay for eso+ AND get the new chapter every year. And now…? What am I here for exactly?

What am I supposed to do in this game now? Just farm things seasonally? In areas I either cannot nor wish to solo because of difficulty?

Ugh… [insert expletive.]

Content is still coming, the game will get more difficult, and new "experimental" things will be added to the game.

Just because they are adding/doing things you don't care for doesn't mean the rest of us don't.

Shoot, look at the PvP community. 6 years with now new Cyro content. A lot of old school pvp'ers are already talking about coming back in some discords I'm in. There is "hope" again.. so to speak for some of us. Yeah, some people have long moved on and won't come back but.. for those of us who are still here... we are stoked.

No change they make will make 100% of people happy. But for as tough on ZoS as I have been the last year or so I'm going to give them credit - this is a nice change and I'm really excited to see what comes of it.

LonePirate

I am intrigued by the Cyrodiil changes. New class specific skills for PVP is a lot of work given there are seven classes. A new class requires 15 base skills, 3 ultimates and 12 passives. I would estimate at least 3 new skills per class. These changes and all of the necessary back-end work with the new campaign/disabling current skills is probably the reason there is no 2025 chapter. Keep in mind they have previously said that chapter work begins up to 2 years before it goes live so they have been working on the new content delivery schedule for at least six months. Or they will be reallocating work on the now cancelled 2025 chapter to other areas.

Having played the game and Craglorn at launch, I am not convinced this tougher content is anything more than a monkey’s paw for players. Regular players largely hated the higher Veteran level zones and Craglorn was certainly not new player friendly. I think increasing the difficulty of end bosses for delves might be good but looking at how infrequently world bosses in the chapter/DLC zones are played now, I am skeptical that wide scale tougher content is a good idea.

I guess we’re not getting Q1 dungeons this year so it will be over a year for new dungeons when the next ones (one?) arrive. The end game player loss will pick up if that remains true. The same goes for a June trial if it is delayed. It sounds like they have plans for new quest content which is good but the health and growth of end game content (both PVE and PVP) will make or break the game from a longevity perspective.

It’s certainly clear to me now why they cancelled the 10 year US meet up.

Personofsecrets

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Not to mention that if they're only announcing details a quarter of the way through 2025 then 2025 is pretty much going to be a write off in terms of new content.

Just following up on this. We have new content coming in 2025. We have our normal Q1 content for 2025 (we’ll touch on that next month), and April will have details for the rest of 2025. So it will not be a write off regarding content.

New Tales of Tribute confirmed. I'm still working in a Dibella patron to share.

BlueRaven

DenverRalphy wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

A lot of red flags for me in that letter. Basically dropping the only thing that I care about (new zones) while emphasizing things that I don’t.

[snip]

Where was it mentioned that they're dropping new zones?

“ 2025 will be a mix of old and new as we move the dev team towards creating smaller bite-sized pieces of content.”

Yeah, great. New “bite sized” zones I suppose.with a smaller bite sized development team, I guess. Terrific. Exactly what I was looking for. /sarcasm

RomanRex

Personofsecrets wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Not to mention that if they're only announcing details a quarter of the way through 2025 then 2025 is pretty much going to be a write off in terms of new content.

Just following up on this. We have new content coming in 2025. We have our normal Q1 content for 2025 (we’ll touch on that next month), and April will have details for the rest of 2025. So it will not be a write off regarding content.

New Tales of Tribute confirmed. I'm still working in a Dibella patron to share.

score!!!

that’ll definitely bring in hoards of new players!

LadyGP

LonePirate wrote: »

I am intrigued by the Cyrodiil changes. New class specific skills for PVP is a lot of work given there are seven classes. A new class requires 15 base skills, 3 ultimates and 12 passives. I would estimate at least 3 new skills per class. These changes and all of the necessary back-end work with the new campaign/disabling current skills is probably the reason there is no 2025 chapter. Keep in mind they have previously said that chapter work begins up to 2 years before it goes live so they have been working on the new content delivery schedule for at least six months. Or they will be reallocating work on the now cancelled 2025 chapter to other areas.

Having played the game and Craglorn at launch, I am not convinced this tougher content is anything more than a monkey’s paw for players. Regular players largely hated the higher Veteran level zones and Craglorn was certainly not new player friendly. I think increasing the difficulty of end bosses for delves might be good but looking at how infrequently world bosses in the chapter/DLC zones are played now, I am skeptical that wide scale tougher content is a good idea.

I guess we’re not getting Q1 dungeons this year so it will be over a year for new dungeons when the next ones (one?) arrive. The end game player loss will pick up if that remains true. The same goes for a June trial if it is delayed. It sounds like they have plans for new quest content which is good but the health and growth of end game content (both PVE and PVP) will make or break the game from a longevity perspective.

It’s certainly clear to me now why they cancelled the 10 year US meet up.

Reading the section in Matt's letter he said "PvP-specific (and more performant) skills". I am not reading this as "new skills" - although they could add a few.

To me this means they know that certain skills are causing the degraded performance. There was a period there where Azureblight bombs would literally cause my machine to bluescreen under specific conditions. Throw in heal stacking and what not.. there are just so many calculations going on at one time.

So take a bunch of skills out of the mix that cause problems, bump up some current skills so they work better in pvp groups, etc. and what not.

No doubt there is going to be a lot of work here. I'd love to see them really utilize battle spirit and add it to sets. This would allow them to balance sets for pvp and pve differently. I'd also like to see them remove like... 50% of the sets no one uses anymore or anything. Free up even more server space/calculations.

Either or.. the fact they moved to seasons and have opened the gates to experiment is awesome. It's going to take time.. things are going to work.. some are going to go very bad.. but they are trying and I appreciate that.

One thing I would ask is when they try new things.. if they decide to take it out... they communicate in depth the reason behind it. What worked about it what didn't etc. Solicit feedback and outside ideas from people who play the game daily.

Expand into the communication.. embrace it and dive deep into it. Some conversations may be hard... but overall I think we are headed in the right direction and I'm pleased with this letter.

licenturion

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

So no more zone expansion to look forward to, no new story, no new world events, no new soundtrack release etc

I am going to wait and see but I will probably lose interest rather quickly. But good they announce this well in advance so that I don’t invest financially in ESO+ or crowns. It will be interesting to see how much the PvP crowd will invest financially, now that they become the priority for a year.

Just to clarify, no one said we are not doing things like this anymore. They just won’t be packaged under a chapter. We still plan on story content, music, world activities, etc. We’ll have more info to share in April.

Well that is good I suppose. So are you going to sell a ‘year pass’ instead of an expansion? Are seasons like Diablo where you have to restart every season to get the rewards? So many things are not explained here...

However this is very bizarre way of communicating. You drop basically a bomb shell of news on the community and will clarify the details in 4,5 months?

The fact that you had to post several times in a short span about this clearly shows this was not the way to deliver news of this kind of magnitude. Especially when clarifications are almost 5 months away. This just gives people a reason to speculate for months or don’t invest financially if there is an uncertainty. Just my 2 cents…

LadyGP

licenturion wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

So no more zone expansion to look forward to, no new story, no new world events, no new soundtrack release etc

I am going to wait and see but I will probably lose interest rather quickly. But good they announce this well in advance so that I don’t invest financially in ESO+ or crowns. It will be interesting to see how much the PvP crowd will invest financially, now that they become the priority for a year.

Just to clarify, no one said we are not doing things like this anymore. They just won’t be packaged under a chapter. We still plan on story content, music, world activities, etc. We’ll have more info to share in April.

Well that is good I suppose. So are you going to sell a ‘year pass’ instead of an expansion?

However this is very bizarre way of communicating. You drop basically a bomb shell of news on the community and will clarify the details in 4,5 months?

The fact that you had to post several times in a short span about this clearly shows this was not the way to deliver news of this kind of magnitude. Especially when clarifications are almost 5 months away. Just my 2 cents…

I think Matts letter a nice PR way of addressing current challenges this year has faced and a way they plan on handling them.

It's a "hey we want to give you a heads up this is coming.. but as for the specifics of the content we want to wait to do our global reveal". Global reveals/season reveals are important for PR and pushing new players into the game. If they didn't give anyone heads up and dropped the bomb on us then everyone would be asking questions like they are right now instead of focusing on the specifics of the content that was unveiled - which would not drive new players.

As for them coming into this thread.. this is them improving communications. They are immediately stepping in and clearing up any confusion before it goes off the rails - something we all have been asking for.

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Just to follow up here. The changes here are to make us more agile and produce more engaging and varied content. So from our prospective, it is not us "going into maintenance" but rather being able to address several concerns the player base has noted over the years.

For the record, I don't consider this maintenance mode. To me, that's what happened with Guild Wars 1 and I don't think we're there. Yet.

But, I can see why this is worrying for some, which I'll detail in a reply to Matt's letter.

Definitely different perspectives to be had on what "maintenance mode" means. The whole "more agile" thing indicates smaller team sizes needing a better fitting release cadence. At least in my experience. And, if things are done using Agile methodology, things are usually broken down into smaller deliverable chunks. That delivery method federates through the release cycle where there's no more monolithic, waterfall like releases.

So, simple question, and maybe it's more for Matt, but...has the team size increased, decreased, or stayed the same?

the1andonlyskwex

"Seasons" feels like a code word for less real content, more FOMO, and a good excuse to switch to a different game.

LadyGP

Destai wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Just to follow up here. The changes here are to make us more agile and produce more engaging and varied content. So from our prospective, it is not us "going into maintenance" but rather being able to address several concerns the player base has noted over the years.

For the record, I don't consider this maintenance mode. To me, that's what happened with Guild Wars 1 and I don't think we're there. Yet.

But, I can see why this is worrying for some, which I'll detail in a reply to Matt's letter.

Definitely different perspectives to be had on what "maintenance mode" means. The whole "more agile" thing indicates smaller team sizes needing a better fitting release cadence. At least in my experience. And, if things are done using Agile methodology, things are usually broken down into smaller deliverable chunks. That delivery method federates through the release cycle where there's no more monolithic, waterfall like releases.

So, simple question, and maybe it's more for Matt, but...has the team size increased, decreased, or stayed the same?

I think I remember reading somewhere that some of the original ESO devs have been put on the next game so I'd assume that there is a much smaller dev team compared to when this game launched.

Total assumption on my part there and I doubt we would ever get an official acknowledgment but yeah... the teams got to be smaller now, right?

OsUfi

I am here for this and absolutely stoked.
New Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild content? Yes please!
New Cyrodiil, absolutely!
Overland difficulty tweak, yes yes yes!
Craglon V2 mini edition, give it to me!
Heck, even improving the crumby Guild system, yes yep yar!

BenTSG

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Moving to seasons is a big red flag as if they're not selling an annual chapter upgrade, they're going to be trying to make that money up elsewhere. So how are they going to try and monitise seasons ? Via battlepasses ? If they start monitising via battlepasses then does that mean they're going free to play ? What's the alternative ? That we suddenly have to start paying for individual seasons several times a year ?

You raise a very good point. After reading the letter, I am on a mixed bag about this. On one hand, having new things being added to exsisting zones and the possibility of expanding on exsisting things like DB and TGs to name two potentials seems quite fun and a nice way to potentially lead the world 'forward' in a sense of the world progressing. On the other hand, the thought of *how* this will happen worries me an awful lot. I never even considered the cost, but I can tell you one thing for certain, these seasons best be perminent additions to the game, and if they are going to charge to access them, it best be a fraction of the cost of a full chapter.

Much like with everything else ZoS has said, we can only wait with baited breaths to see how well it's implemented.

colossalvoids

More agile development is what was asked for quite some time already, especially in the light of companies like ggg for example getting exposure lately and how quick to action those are, not being afraid with difficult implementations etc. people want companies to actually do something, that sounds pretty far from maintenance mode, last 4-5 years felt more like it honestly with stuff pre baked for 2 years ahead.

sarahthes

LadyGP wrote: »

LonePirate wrote: »

I am intrigued by the Cyrodiil changes. New class specific skills for PVP is a lot of work given there are seven classes. A new class requires 15 base skills, 3 ultimates and 12 passives. I would estimate at least 3 new skills per class. These changes and all of the necessary back-end work with the new campaign/disabling current skills is probably the reason there is no 2025 chapter. Keep in mind they have previously said that chapter work begins up to 2 years before it goes live so they have been working on the new content delivery schedule for at least six months. Or they will be reallocating work on the now cancelled 2025 chapter to other areas.

Having played the game and Craglorn at launch, I am not convinced this tougher content is anything more than a monkey’s paw for players. Regular players largely hated the higher Veteran level zones and Craglorn was certainly not new player friendly. I think increasing the difficulty of end bosses for delves might be good but looking at how infrequently world bosses in the chapter/DLC zones are played now, I am skeptical that wide scale tougher content is a good idea.

I guess we’re not getting Q1 dungeons this year so it will be over a year for new dungeons when the next ones (one?) arrive. The end game player loss will pick up if that remains true. The same goes for a June trial if it is delayed. It sounds like they have plans for new quest content which is good but the health and growth of end game content (both PVE and PVP) will make or break the game from a longevity perspective.

It’s certainly clear to me now why they cancelled the 10 year US meet up.

Reading the section in Matt's letter he said "PvP-specific (and more performant) skills". I am not reading this as "new skills" - although they could add a few.

To me this means they know that certain skills are causing the degraded performance. There was a period there where Azureblight bombs would literally cause my machine to bluescreen under specific conditions. Throw in heal stacking and what not.. there are just so many calculations going on at one time.

So take a bunch of skills out of the mix that cause problems, bump up some current skills so they work better in pvp groups, etc. and what not.

No doubt there is going to be a lot of work here. I'd love to see them really utilize battle spirit and add it to sets. This would allow them to balance sets for pvp and pve differently. I'd also like to see them remove like... 50% of the sets no one uses anymore or anything. Free up even more server space/calculations.

Either or.. the fact they moved to seasons and have opened the gates to experiment is awesome. It's going to take time.. things are going to work.. some are going to go very bad.. but they are trying and I appreciate that.

One thing I would ask is when they try new things.. if they decide to take it out... they communicate in depth the reason behind it. What worked about it what didn't etc. Solicit feedback and outside ideas from people who play the game daily.

Expand into the communication.. embrace it and dive deep into it. Some conversations may be hard... but overall I think we are headed in the right direction and I'm pleased with this letter.

I see it as every nb has the same, curated skillset in PvP. Same with every sorc and every dk and necro etc.

They just need to add in curated gear for PvP and then it would be good.

Treeshka

Any information about trials?

Sakiri

Treeshka wrote: »

Any information about trials?

Of course. they're going to stop adding them because they hate trial players.

I mean, that's why we've gotten one a year for ages, and things are so imbalanced, and they don't really do tuning for them either. If the trial community mattered they'd be adding more than one single item for them a year.

Servadei

Soft maintenance mode.

o_Primate_o

I read it on full. I'm hopeful. Hopefully seasons will be something engaging for the full season and not something that can be completed in a weekend. I'll shut down my negativity until then.

Servadei

Sakiri wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

Any information about trials?

Of course. they're going to stop adding them because they hate trial players.

I mean, that's why we've gotten one a year for ages, and things are so imbalanced, and they don't really do tuning for them either. If the trial community mattered they'd be adding more than one single item for them a year.

I don't think it's because ZOS hates raiders. I think it's because there aren't many raiders.

Sakiri

Servadei wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

Any information about trials?

Of course. they're going to stop adding them because they hate trial players.

I mean, that's why we've gotten one a year for ages, and things are so imbalanced, and they don't really do tuning for them either. If the trial community mattered they'd be adding more than one single item for them a year.

I don't think it's because ZOS hates raiders. I think it's because there aren't many raiders.

THey keep driving us off with stupid crap like the unfinished hybridization patch and balancing PvE around PvP.

o_Primate_o

I hope they shake up the holiday events with new quests. Thanks for harder overland content. Some ppl say they'll leave bc of it, so maybe consider a overland hard mode setting that maybe has its own instance?

zaria

allochthons wrote: »

My concern comes from some ignorance on how a lot of MMOs work.
My impression is that "Seasons" often mean that you essentially start over, and work for a goal for X months, but then lose all your progress (except the shinies) at the end.

So you end up basically re-leveling a toon every few months.

Can someone clarify? This is just what I hear (and very probably misunderstood) about Overwatch or other things, ESO is the only MMO I've ever played.
If it's more like a huge, longer Golden Pursuit, then, well, okay, but not great. I still want ESO to fill in large swaths of the map.

Although more activity in the base game zones is welcome. As is bug fixes.

Only played WOW seriously as in other MMO but the standard way is to release new expansions every second year.
This adds an new landmass who tend to be larger than ESO chapters even adding the DLC overland zone but WOW has simpler graphic and not voiced side quests. This raises the level cap and the new quest reward gear is better than your old raid rewards. So you start over in the new zone. This don't work for ESO, they tried it in the start, raising CP levels and so on.

It did not work so they went for one Tamriel who has worked well I say.
Its no way they can walk it back.

Not read it yet but just to put that to rest, now it could be something like battle passes who fits a bit with the golden pursuits.

tsaescishoeshiner

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

Moving to seasons is a big red flag as if they're not selling an annual chapter upgrade, they're going to be trying to make that money up elsewhere. So how are they going to try and monitise seasons ? Via battlepasses ? If they start monitising via battlepasses then does that mean they're going free to play ? What's the alternative ? That we suddenly have to start paying for individual seasons several times a year ?

I'm curious, too. It means that instead of one big predictable "Gold Road" marketing push, there will probably be a "Season of the Bosmer" or "Season of the Mages Guild" type of push, which I can see appealing to some players. There's still something exciting about a new Chapter or Expansion to many MMO players, but I also like that they're focusing on improving systems to keep players around.

And they haven't said anything about battlepasses, just seasonal release schedule for new zones, stories, and systems. "Battlepass" implies a lot of other things that don't fit with what they've said, and I think is just jumping to conclusions. Seems like we'll hear more next year.

Sakiri

zaria wrote: »

allochthons wrote: »

My concern comes from some ignorance on how a lot of MMOs work.
My impression is that "Seasons" often mean that you essentially start over, and work for a goal for X months, but then lose all your progress (except the shinies) at the end.

So you end up basically re-leveling a toon every few months.

Can someone clarify? This is just what I hear (and very probably misunderstood) about Overwatch or other things, ESO is the only MMO I've ever played.
If it's more like a huge, longer Golden Pursuit, then, well, okay, but not great. I still want ESO to fill in large swaths of the map.

Although more activity in the base game zones is welcome. As is bug fixes.

Only played WOW seriously as in other MMO but the standard way is to release new expansions every second year.
This adds an new landmass who tend to be larger than ESO chapters even adding the DLC overland zone but WOW has simpler graphic and not voiced side quests. This raises the level cap and the new quest reward gear is better than your old raid rewards. So you start over in the new zone. This don't work for ESO, they tried it in the start, raising CP levels and so on.

It did not work so they went for one Tamriel who has worked well I say.
Its no way they can walk it back.

Not read it yet but just to put that to rest, now it could be something like battle passes who fits a bit with the golden pursuits.

Right now WoW does seasons.

They launched the expansion with 8 dungeons. only four of them are in the random queue, along with four of old expansions dungeons. Next "season", the other four new ones and four different old ones will be in. The mounts, titles, gear awarded by the current season will no longer be available as you will not be able to run the current season's dungeons on the relevant difficulties.

That's the part I'm leery on. They release a dungeon, then take it away for a while, but somehow it's set ends up being something you MUST have. So in order to avoid that scenario, you farm the ever loving crap out of that dungeon til you hate it to fill out the stickerbook so you can pull it out later when it becomes the best set for whatever.

I_killed_Vivec

licenturion wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

licenturion wrote: »

So no more zone expansion to look forward to, no new story, no new world events, no new soundtrack release etc

I am going to wait and see but I will probably lose interest rather quickly. But good they announce this well in advance so that I don’t invest financially in ESO+ or crowns. It will be interesting to see how much the PvP crowd will invest financially, now that they become the priority for a year.

Just to clarify, no one said we are not doing things like this anymore. They just won’t be packaged under a chapter. We still plan on story content, music, world activities, etc. We’ll have more info to share in April.

Well that is good I suppose. So are you going to sell a ‘year pass’ instead of an expansion?

However this is very bizarre way of communicating. You drop basically a bomb shell of news on the community and will clarify the details in 4,5 months?

The fact that you had to post several times in a short span about this clearly shows this was not the way to deliver news of this kind of magnitude. Especially when clarifications are almost 5 months away. This just gives people a reason to speculate for months or don’t invest financially if there is an uncertainty. Just my 2 cents…

The "Global Reveal" for the Gold Road Chapter came out in January 2024. If they had been going to release a chapter in 2025 it would have had to have been pretty well fully developed by now... maybe the Q1 DLC is, which is why they are continuing with that. I suspect that whoever pulled the plug on the chapter will now be telling devs to see what they can pull out of the wreckage to release as "season" content.

Whoever pulled the plug on the new chapter will also have pulled the plug on the US meet, just how would they have dealt with the inevitable "Where's the new chapter set? When is it coming out?" questions when there is no new chapter?

Remember, they say there will be an announcement in April, that doesn't mean that there will be new content in June. Or certainly nothing as substantial as a chapter. I imagine they are just buying time and in March they will say "OK, what we got, and how are we going to spin it?". Then fire up the PR machine. Then, several months later, drop a "Season". Rinse and repeat.

As season content diminishes blame it on all the work on PvP - and vice versa.

Defatank

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

"Seasons" feels like a code word for less real content, more FOMO, and a good excuse to switch to a different game.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom has already stated that "Seasons" are not going to be removed.


ZOS is simply going to be adding more content for players to do as it is ready throughout the year as opposed to waiting each year to dump what the team has worked on for months and then players play that content for 3 mo and then leave. The new design I believe is to try and keep "new" content in the pipe through the year while still having all the other content to complete for new / returning players or even your daily players who decides to switch up some content they're playing.