Official Discussion Thread for "The Road Ahead - May 1"

Romtim

Please add duels. I want to compete with friends and other people, test different builds, and so on. There are many reasons to add a duel system and it is easy to implement. Thanks.

tim_barteneb17_ESO

ZoS ... everything that are in the forums i read you will deploy.

OMG you are listening the players +1111 kudos!!! Even if this will be rolled out with millions of bugs i am happy

neiljwd

Really happy. Both with your relatively expedient sniping of bugs (CS team is poor though-probs time starved) and your future plans.

fantom

Sounds good to me, great update and thanks for being so honest with the community!

Thanks for the 5 days too.

Deownage

Need better PvP... 1v1 and 2v2 is a must

taurrannub18_ESO

Combat balance???

I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen numerous VR10 players walk away from this game in the past week simply because you've refused to balance some of the game-ruining PVP exploits and imbalances in lieu of focusing entirely on PVE content.

You're making a big mistake by ignoring PVP balance.

Let's start with a short list:
- Vampire exploits and overpowered skills compared to Fighters Guild. (there is currently no downside to playing a vampire)
- Oil pots being dropped in towers and spilled on the floor for defense.
- Werewolves are completely broken.
- Endless mercenary placement bugs.
- Underpowered melee styles in comparison to shield bash.
- Overall class balance between Templar, NB, and DK, for the most part.

kedz54

Slaunyeh wrote: »

My two primary concerns was not addressed, which makes me sad. What I would like to see is:

1) Improved grouping functionality. Right now it's really awkward to team up with friends and run normal content. I'm sure it's fine for dungeons, but for the rest of the world... not so much. This really should be #1, imho.

2) The ability to change appearance outside chargen! This might not be super critical, but it would be really nice. For a former City of Heroes player, it's pretty essential.

(Secret bonus issue: More character slots! 8 isn't nearly enough )

But all the negativity aside, it sounds like some great additions, both for slow-poke altitis plagued players like me, and the guys who are already lots of veterans. Keep up the great work!

Here's to another month of ESO.

They've mentioned fixing group phasing in here: "A system that allows grouped players to see each other even when they’re in different phases". I completely agree with your second point. As of right now I'm content with the appearance of my sorcerer even if he does resemble Duncan from Dragon Age: Origins.

kedz54

Deownage wrote: »

Need better PvP... 1v1 and 2v2 is a must

As far as what? Arenas? People set things up in DAoC (specific locations) where players weren't marauded by groups or zergs for just this thing. For instance: certain areas in the Labyrinth or Agramon were for just that. Start a trend.

AshTal

I like the road ahead post but really would like to see more feed back on forums, a lot of topics could do with an update. Off the top of my head in PvP the Vampire exploit questions and in Skill lines if racials will be adjusted and when both questions could really do with some sort of dev feed back, as well as probably a dozen other hot topics.

Haurt

First off I have to say it is very nice to give us 5 extra days. It wasn't something that we should have whined and complained about getting as this is launch, in this day and age even console games have major issues that need to be patched. Hats off and thank you very much for the extra time it's above and beyond what we should expect.

Now, I had an idea about guilds. First the ability to designate what style of guild you are be it PvP, raid, or if you are going to continue with the way auction houses are, trade guild. Second the ability to select a primary guild. For instance my friends and I all came to the game together, we may be in several different guilds but those other guilds are all secondary to us. I don't know if you are planning on allowing name plates but if you do, it would be nice to be able to show off our guild.

Thanks,
Haurt <Legendary>

kedz54

taurrannub18_ESO wrote: »

Combat balance???

I'll believe it when I see it. I've seen numerous VR10 players walk away from this game in the past week simply because you've refused to balance some of the game-ruining PVP exploits and imbalances in lieu of focusing entirely on PVE content.

You're making a big mistake by ignoring PVP balance.

Let's start with a short list:
- Vampire exploits and overpowered skills compared to Fighters Guild. (there is currently no downside to playing a vampire)
- Oil pots being dropped in towers and spilled on the floor for defense.
- Werewolves are completely broken.
- Endless mercenary placement bugs.
- Underpowered melee styles in comparison to shield bash.
- Overall class balance between Templar, NB, and DK, for the most part.

"Combat ability balance changes and fixes" is pretty vague to me. There's nothing in this statement that says either or.

Ranrach

Nice fixes to the game, I like it.
One thing though, when is exclusive full screen coming (along with SLI and Crossfire support)?

seanvwolf

We should know by this list that this group of developers is filled with avid gamers.

dnevill1b14_ESO

Very cool! Thanks for the look forward!

Sakiri

Rykoth wrote: »

It's bad enough people are prancing about with their summoned daedra in cities and cluttering up the streets, don't need dead things either >.>

Also, thumbs up to this road map.

Guild functionality IMO should be *the* priority

Summoned daedra with crappy textures that look like pink plastic.

My biggest disappointment is still no sales for people in smaller guilds and no opening of craglorn to smaller groups(duos mostly). If vr10+ is nothing but pvp and full group content theyre going to lose a lot of people, myself and my guild included.

RookBorn

Oh yeah, one more thing - please if you bring in the justice system, make it so Quest NPCs are unkillable. That would be super annoying!

Cepeza

This is beyond awesomeness! I am thrilled!

Thank you ZOS and thank you Bethesda for that great game, for your great work and that utter example of professionalism to deal with a broadside. Keep it up!

Ravinsild

Smaxx wrote: »

Ryskim wrote: »

WTF ZOS, where the hell is NECROMANCY? I expected at least to be in 2014 roadmap. WTF seriously?

Don't put your hopes too high. Necromancy is outlawed pretty much everywhere except Cyrodiil (and even there, authorities try to hide it from commoners to keep them at bay).

Yet I see it freaking everywhere practiced by nearly every race, mostly the humanish and elvish ones.

spammichtotb16_ESO

Thanks for the extra game time. As an EU player the badly placed updates and maintenances have really bugged me. You did know that 1st of May is a bank holiday in several EU countries?

Whatever, other than that there is not much I am looking forward to from that list. It is missing my main concerns, inventory/bank space and a global trade post/auction house. I spend about 20% of my game time just swapping characters to play the inventory game.

Also selling and buying items from players is a PITA and simply does not happen. This is not working for me and since I am not only am an economist, but have experienced many fine trading systems in MMOs the past 15 years, I am really disappointed with the lacklustre approach in this game.

Those bug fixes and the move of the EU mega server to Europe should be highest priority. US players probably don't realize, but an action based combat system such as here really suffers from network latency. Right now ESO combat plays really sluggish. At least part of that is due to speed of light being limited. The other due to ESO servers being too slow. But that is a different topic I hope will be addressed soon as well!

Sakiri

We do realize. In fact I typically pick server based on physical location. My wow server is in los angeles. I live in northern California. Funny thing, both myself and my friend in Sweden get the same latency to ESO. I think the servers on the east coast.

harvester100b16_ESO

seriously impressed with many of those features and all within this year the mind boggles as to what the years have install ..and i for one intend to be around for many to see this game bloom

Seedier

Loving the game so far and the roadmap looks mighty impressive...

Having said that I also agree with several of the comments above regarding balancing, timing of updates (which regularly seem to coincide with peak gaming times) and so on.

It would also be nice to get a commitment about fixing existing issues, for me at least most notably laggy performance and memory issues on the Mac. Rumours of 64 bit client surface regularly on the Mac troubleshooting forums - would be nice to see official timeline for this...

Edhelliell

Zenimax, could you give an estimation on dedicated Full-Screen mode? It's really ennoying when browsers, game clients or even desktop background keep popping up when playing...

Winnower

I have two accounts with 6-month subscriptions. Needless to say, I enjoy the game.

I've very glad that you have graciously decided to give out 5 free days; not because of all the whining about being "compensated" but because it demonstrates how eager you good folks are at Zenimax to represent your game.

And the rest of the list is just as good. Unfortunately some people would complain if you handed them a glass half full of gold dust, but what can you do?

Your efforts are much appreciated.

The Winnower

TGEK

So after hitting 50 with 2 characters and playing a few others here is my feedback:

Fix veteran leveling. No one should be forced to quest forever to get xp. I know they are adding XP to mobs but PVP should also be viable for leveling.

On PVP:
Holy *** fix the imbalance. I'm talking about the OP builds that can 1v10+ that's just brutal.
Add small scale PVP. Battlegrounds, arenas, etc
It's bad enough there isn't any real open world PVP, at least give us more PVP options.

Fix the loot. Bosses giving like 5g and a *** green? That's infuriating.

Corithna

flameweaver wrote: »

Whilst this is all great, positive and welcome news, much of this could have been sorted prior to launch if ZOS had been less precious about the beta and NDA restrictions. In my view they should have:

• Had a Beta available 24 x 7 for at least the 2 months prior to launch and perhaps longer.
• Lifted the NDA much earlier
• Kept the BETA forums open, rather than closing them after each beta weekend

At least this would have promoted the kinds of discussion that are taking place now and provided ZOS with much more feedback much earlier.
And maybe, just maybe, many of the issues would have been fixed for launch.

That said, I'm subbed for 6 months and look forward to the proposed changes. Maybe this could be the game to pull me away from 10 years of playing EQ2, but for now I'm sitting on the fence and will make my mind up at the end of my sub.

Just a note on your complaint about beta availability. There were a dedicated group of beta testers who did have 24x7 access for the last six months prior to launch. I was part of that group, the little weekend stress tests were exactly that, a way in which to test systems under varying amounts of user stress to identify what problems the system might encounter when literally millions of players where attempting to utilize their in development systems. And for at least part of that time there were additional groups who also had access round the clock on separate forums/server id's. The kinds of discussions that are taking place now have been hashed out for many months with the exception of those concerning botting / gold spamming as we didn't have that issue to deal with. But we did have many more issues that were resolved prior to launch. At least two separate crafting systems, various iterations of spells and combinations of spells that went through nerf cycles. Encounters that were broken, overtly punishing, too easy, added and sometimes simply removed. Every game system in existence debated day in and day out for the live of the beta. This game has come a long, long way since 2013 when we all started as a group.

Be glad you didn't have to deal with the issues that were present back then. Many of things that are cropping up now really only presented themselves in the live environment. That was expected, planned for, and work proceeds at a good pace to resolve them as quickly as possible.

dalgrimar

Gravord wrote: »

All great but avoiding adress most game breaking abilities: Bat Swarm, Mist, Bolt Escape make you loose pvp players rapidly.

Bat Swarm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb9NlqRfCH4

Mist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kc2ehFqcyI

Bolt Escape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPR7oUbG0IM

Its little slice of how this broken abilties working in pvp and they should have no place in balanced pvp system.

Aslong as they dont nerf bat swarm and continue with adding an aoe cap on ultimates i and allot of other people will quit this game

DaniAngione

The list of stuff to come is absurdly yummy. It's actually so sweet I might've contracted diabetes.

Justice system (npcs, stealing, etc)?? More interactables and item looting from the world?? Spellcrafting?? Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood?? Better facial animations? Imperial f...reaking City pvp dungeon?
Oblivion yeah, now we're talking!

Keep up the uber-amazing work, folks!

Halrloprillalar

AryaWythers wrote: »

Just another pillar of the intelligent internet community that will try to personally insult than to come up with some real thought...KEEP INSULTING PEOPLE THOUGH.

Not FREE when they do it to compensate for a broken product that people pay for...and yet again have to PAY for by subbing...classy business sense Zeni.

I know you have your hand in my pocket Zeni and that is just a roll of quarters because I'm not that happy to see you...sorry for the awkward moment

Any more names you want to call me tough guy?

Firstly: you bought the game knowing full well that it's an MMO and requires subscription.
Secondly, yes, while there were bugs and downtime (who knew fixing bugs requires downtime??) but the included 30 day game time WAS free: re-read the fine script, the money was put back into your account within several days, it was only to verify the credit card. And now there is yet another free 5 days to make up for the said downtime.

I don't think I've ever seen another company do the free playtime to make up for downtime, ever. And yet, here we are, people complaining that they want EVEN MORE free stuff.

To ZOS: the lesson is that people will never stop complaining.

To everyone happy with this SOTG post and the upcoming changes: ... *highfive*

To you, @AryaWythers‌, whoever you are: I do not feel obliged to apologize for my opinion. Your complaints are baseless, and you annoy me. You are entitled to your deluded opinion, however, and I wish you luck in other games.

Crescent

Killing and stealing from NPC's that other players interact with as well has incredible potential for griefing....

You've already made the game antisocial by having overworld chests and material nodes that other players can steal right away from you, why would you add another layer in which other players can negatively interfere with your game experience?


Armor dyes and spellcrafting sounds good.

And fix Werewolf it is a terrible line.