What is the ultimate objective of ESO development?

Coo_PnT

Does the development team have a concrete vision of what they want the final game to look like?
Is it mentioned anywhere, including PvE and PvP?

Dragonnord

What we have is this:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/670691/studio-director-s-letter-2025-beyond

Xarc

What is the ultimate objective of ESO development?

money

Coo_PnT

Quoted post has been removed

I very much agree with you. However, the recent one-week Cyrodiil test was very interesting and I still have high hopes for ZoS. The fact that I posted here on the forum is another sign that I still have high hopes.

Syldras

They had a longer part during the stream about how this began as a combat-focused game, but that they got the impression people spend a lot of time doing non-combat things, so they aim more for an "Elder Scrolls online world" the players can "live in". They repeated that a few times. They also mentioned this trailer here was somehow mirroring their vision:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRRT1lq4Fm4

How exactly that translates to the content they'll release in the next few years, and how long they'll keep that direction this time (there have been lots of changes already, after all), I don't know.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Coo_PnT wrote: »

Quoted post has been removed

I very much agree with you. However, the recent one-week Cyrodiil test was very interesting and I still have high hopes for ZoS. The fact that I posted here on the forum is another sign that I still have high hopes.

My issue with the Cyrodiil test was ZOS showed lots of charts without showing the actual numbers being graphed. Without knowing those we have no way to determine if the purported performance improvement was significant or not.

Toanis

Triple the population, half the server load, and likely more important: much smaller load spikes. Seems pretty significant, too significant when you hope for a future where cyro skills and gearing isn't significantly different from PVE.

Obviously they won't show us (and thus their competitors) what the exact values are.

WhiteScythe

Xarc wrote: »

What is the ultimate objective of ESO development?

money

We all know it's true.

ESO's monetization is predatory [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]

Athan1

Adding new classes without adding new classes. Refusing to separate pvp and pve skills. Thinking they'll spend less time on dev through the above [snip] fixes when in fact from now on they'll just keep nerfing and rebalancing everything.

[edited for bashing]

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Toanis wrote: »

Triple the population, half the server load, and likely more important: much smaller load spikes. Seems pretty significant, too significant when you hope for a future where cyro skills and gearing isn't significantly different from PVE.

Obviously they won't show us (and thus their competitors) what the exact values are.

Conversely if the numbers were great you'd think they would want to crow about them a little and they wouldn't worry about the competition (especially since there isn't really an oranges to oranges competitor).

Aetherderius

Coo_PnT wrote: »

Does the development team have a concrete vision of what they want the final game to look like?/quote]

in my opinion, looks like they're going for "Fun"

Pepegrillos

I think their current aim is to entrench in ESO's current niche, which is Elder Scrolls first/Mmorpg second, casual, non-competitive game. This is how they were able to move out of WoW's shadow.

Ruthless

Xarc wrote: »

What is the ultimate objective of ESO development?

money

can we actually name a mmo that dosent?

aside from the makers of No Man Sky I cant think of a single one, maybe their MMO Light no Fire will be it

SilverBride

Syldras wrote: »

They had a longer part during the stream about how this began as a combat-focused game, but that they got the impression people spend a lot of time doing non-combat things, so they aim more for an "Elder Scrolls online world" the players can "live in". They repeated that a few times.

If this is their goal then I wonder why they are making Overland combat more difficult. I don't understand how any of these changes would accomplish that.

spartaxoxo

“I think the biggest take away – for either the new or existing player – is that there is something in Morrowind for everyone, Lambert told Express Online.

“As a new player, you’ll find a new tutorial, a new class and, because the game is not level restricted, you have the freedom to explore the game as you wish

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/813047/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Morrowind-Rich-Lambert-PS4-Xbox-PC-release

They called One Tamriel the best thing they've ever done back during Blackwood.

"We ended up settling on something that would be called “One Tamriel,” which involved removing all the barriers to exploration," Lambert said. "The arbitrary level gates that prevented players from exploring, the alliance-specific story paths, level barriers to grouping with your friends… all of these we removed to open the world up and give the players the freedom to explore the world at their own pace, and in their own way. It took us almost two years to do, but now that it's done it was probably the single best thing we did to the game."

We also made the game Buy-to-play, so you could play it without a required subscription, and finally – in 2016 – we added One Tamriel, that removed leveling as a barrier to player grouping and exploration. All of these were important, but with One Tamriel, the game really took off.

https://www.thegamer.com/eso-dev-one-tamriel-best-thing-we-did/

They actually feel that a world that is easy to explore in any gameplay style you want is essential to the identity of Elder Scrolls.

GI: You said that it didn't feel like the Elder Scrolls game fans were hoping for. From your perspective, what was it about ESO that wasn't coming across as an Elder Scrolls title?

RL: I think the biggest thing is we didn't have an identity; we didn't really know the game we wanted to be when we first launched because we were so focused on trying to please everybody and be in the middle. And so we didn't necessarily commit to the game, and that was one of the things we decided early on, after we launched, that we needed to decide what Elder Scrolls means. It means there are X [amount of things needed] to write great storytelling. It means the freedom to explore, to play the way you want to play. It's easy to kind of pick up and put down. Those are all the things that [factored] into a lot of the decisions we made at that time.

They think this way because they want new players and long time Elder Scrolls Fans to be able to play Overland however they want, and to always be able to jump into the latest expansion.

Under the new levelless system, players can jump into any part of Elder Scrolls Online and play which content strikes your fancy. If you want to start on Morrowind, you can. If you want to jump back to the beginning, that works too. This means new players have a lot of choices, and never have to worry about not being able to play with friends

And later in same interview

What we're trying to avoid there is the gen one MMO problem. The cool new content launches, and new players have to play through 18 years of old content. We definitely wanted to avoid that. If they're seeing marketing images about dragons, we want them to play Elsweyr," says Firor.

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/elder-scrolls-online-developers-elsweyr-player-milestones-and-the-season-of-the-dragon


I posted these statements in the context of the overland thread a couple years ago but these are statements they have made in the past about ESO's identity. So, if anything is choppy that's why.

DreamyLu

It's probably not their only motive, but money is of course a big part of it and it's normal: To keep a game alive is a money pit. No reproach/critic should be made about that as it's a hard reality for the whole game industry, especially when the game is ageing and don't fully match expectations and tendencies of the new generation of players.

spartaxoxo

Here's some more quotes on this from a different interview.

That was the basis for One Tamriel—being able to go anywhere, do anything, but also the freedom to kind of build your character any way you want. And, you know, really live in the world and experience the world. Those were like the big core kinds of pillars of our game, and what Elder Scrolls kind of is for a lot of people.”

Other Elder Scrolls hallmarks are what Firor describes as a combination of story, characters, and exploration.

They don't really even like calling this game and MMO.

And Firor has shipped exactly two games since 2001. Both of those have had extraordinary longevity and player bases and enormous communities. He says that more than 24 million players have traveled through The Elder Scrolls Online. And he thinks that’s because it’s not your typical MMO. In fact, if you ask him, it’s not an MMO at all.

“We’ve wanted to evolve away from that, so that people coming into the game wouldn’t hear the term MMO and think they were playing a super-grindy, Dark Age of Camelot-type game. They were playing an Elder Scrolls game.

“I will say that that term—online role-playing game—was just as much for our internal developers as it was for external because we had a bunch of hardcore MMO designers. And we had to keep reminding ourselves, you know, don’t just do the tried-and-true system, because everyone else does it. This game is different.”

All quotes from this article

https://store.epicgames.com/en-
US/news/the-rise-fall-and-rise-of-the-elder-scrolls-online-on-its-10th-birthday

There is other good stuff in the interview as well. For example, Rich met his wife playing an online game and he feels community is an important of the game and loves being able to give that back. The way that One Tamriel was 100% a relaunch and how Orsinum and Console's addition to game shaped into what is today.

My takeaway from this article is that they want to emphasize giving players more choices in how they interact with the world, encourage the community aspects of the game, etc. Which fits pretty well into what the things they've shown us thus far. More difficulty options, subclassing, the you belong trailer, etc.

SilverBride

Whatever the objective is, it's not working for me.

I've found the past 2 years to be disappointing. I couldn't care less about Scribing and have only scribed one skill to use for when the endeavors pop up to defeat enemies using a scribed skill. And I find the World Bosses and Incursions too tedious to hang around West Weald once I finished the zone story there. I had already decided that if these World Bosses and Story Bosses were just going to keep getting more difficult that I wasn't going to purchase any more Chapters and would just play the older content that I do enjoy.

This year we have less value with our ESO Plus membership and another feature (sub classes) that I have no desire to participate in. So it doesn't really matter what the World Bosses and Story Bosses will be like, this alone is making me question if I want to pay for content I don't want to experience.

Then there is the increased Overland difficulty. I just hope they are able to get an opt-in to work.

I will see what feedback comes from the PTS and when it goes live before I make up my mind. I don't plan on leaving because I still have a lot of zones to complete on 3 of my 7 characters, so there is plenty to keep me busy. I just don't want to pay for something I may not use.

ImmortalCX

My guess is to keep as much money coming in, with as little resources, until their new mmo launches.

shadyjane62

Xarc wrote: »

What is the ultimate objective of ESO development?

money

Amazing, because my first impulse is to not sub for another year.

loosej

My guess at this point is that the goal is to learn how to become a real game company before their new mmo releases. Marketing and legal seems to be something they figured out, selling graphic assets is also working ok, but man the actual technology is hard...

Tandor

SilverBride wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

They had a longer part during the stream about how this began as a combat-focused game, but that they got the impression people spend a lot of time doing non-combat things, so they aim more for an "Elder Scrolls online world" the players can "live in". They repeated that a few times.

If this is their goal then I wonder why they are making Overland combat more difficult. I don't understand how any of these changes would accomplish that.

They're only giving an option for greater difficulty, the default Overland combat will remain the same. They made that very clear.

I guess it's part of their recognition that people play ESO for a ton of different reasons and therefore enjoy different aspects of the game, so it makes sense for them to cater for those who want greater challenges in the Overland content but purely as an opt-in for that particular subset of players.

Heren

I don't think there will be a final game. I don't think there can be a final game - aside a final version of the game before being shut down. I don't think it's even relevant to ask about a final game.

Just like other mmo, ESO will continue to evolve, try new things, implement new systems, etc. There might something like a final fundation of kind, but one can say the fundations are already there, and what came, and will continue to come, are just iterations built upon these fundations.

Sure, some systems will become more grounded, and they will see iterations upon them - housing, mythic items. Some will stagnate - hello crafting system. Some will see continuous update and changes, like the combat - from hybridization, to 'slight' changes about buff and debuff durations, light attacks value, to enhancement for heavy-attacks builds, one-bar builds, scribing, and now sub-classing.

MMO evolve constantly - or at least regularly. Talking about a final game, asking about it... really I don't think it's relevant at all.

Destai

I'd just like to know how far out they look/think when making combat changes. There's been a few times where they basically undo a change made in a recent patch. So, it seems like there's wild swings. Good example, we recently got buffs to non-pet sorcs in the last year-ish, and now they're essentially undoing that because of subclassing. It just seems very incremental. Genuinely curious what the 'final product" of combat would look like, or how far ahead they can look.

tomofhyrule

Tandor wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Syldras wrote: »

They had a longer part during the stream about how this began as a combat-focused game, but that they got the impression people spend a lot of time doing non-combat things, so they aim more for an "Elder Scrolls online world" the players can "live in". They repeated that a few times.

If this is their goal then I wonder why they are making Overland combat more difficult. I don't understand how any of these changes would accomplish that.

They're only giving an option for greater difficulty, the default Overland combat will remain the same. They made that very clear.

I guess it's part of their recognition that people play ESO for a ton of different reasons and therefore enjoy different aspects of the game, so it makes sense for them to cater for those who want greater challenges in the Overland content but purely as an opt-in for that particular subset of players.

That is what they said, true.

Just like we now have the option of Subclassing - it’s not like they’re nerfing any aspects of individual classes, or giving so much power to Subclasses that pure-Class builds are left in the dirt, right?

“Optional” isn’t really optional if you’re being coerced to take one choice and the other choice is knowingly taking a big L.

Elowen_Starveil

SilverBride wrote: »

... I wasn't going to purchase any more Chapters...

Well, well, well, does ZOS have some good news for you! /s