You want a naval mode for a game that explicitly does not have very detailed water physics requiring a complete ground-up rework of quite bluntly every single thing to even get a basic concept of "boat floats" working?

Congratulations. I am calling it right now folks. This is the most "impossible" request anyone will ever see on the forums for 2020.

/edit Just in case. I know what you are asking for and it's still not really feasible because it would look like horse crap on bear vomit without a ton of work. I just felt like having fun with the "no" was more interesting than simply saying I disagree.

I voted yes because I felt like it was the least I could do after the amount of time you put into your guide. Its highly unlikely that my vote will have any impact since this will never actually be added to the game.

Good read though!

The only kind of naval warfare you'll see in this game is a battleground map where you fight opponents on some ships tied to a dock or docks.

Considering gunpowder is not a thing in the Elder Scrolls (beyond some Dragonbreak wonkiness), ships should be equipped with Balistas as their primary weapons. We can probably recycle the code from Cyrodiil's gates and walls to let different parts of the ships have different durability.

Actual boats moving and being controlled by the players might be too much for this engine, so we need to consider the possibility of scripted manuvers for the boats or have an NPC at the steering wheel. This means that we need to come up with a way to make it fair rather than favoring the ship that has arbitrarily come in a position to fire first. It could be paired with mechanics on sails and oars to determine which ship is considered faster.
In a sense this PvP mode would have "PvE" components where you need to do mechanics to come into a favorable position first for the upcoming PvP part of the battle, thus making the mode somewhat more casual, which is not necessarily a bad thing, considering a lot PvE players consider leveling alliance war a chore. We don't have something like that in the game yet, so it would definitely be an interesting addition and perhaps even ignite some of the lost faction pride in the PvE community.

Because maps on sea would probably be (or feel) all the same for the most part, there could be different ship types to mix things up. Varying ship and fleet sizes would be cool, but most likely very impractical for such a gamemode. However the different cultures of Tamriel having different ship styles with different layouts and target areas is something worth looking into. If we consider that each of the nine races would have their own ship and that each ship type can be matched against 6 different types from the other alliances gives plenty variety already with 27 possible matchups (18 for each alliance) for only 9 ship types in total needing to be created.

Asymetric gameplay, with one team on the attack and one on the defense, could also be a possibility. The defending ship only needs to survive to win, but doesn't have the same opportunities to sink the enemy as the attacker.
Then there could also be a game modes with neutral (Imperial?) or indescriminately hostile (Maormer?) ships that serve as the objective or an additional hurdle that needs to be overcome.

All in all I think the naval world of Tamriel has been criminally underdeveloped until now. We barely even know if whales exist not to speak of giant sea monsters! The only clue for a whale we have that I am aware of is the bridge made of a whale skeleton in Sovngarde seen in TESV. All we know is that the Altmer have an impressive fleet, the Redguards are known to be pirates, the Bretons are big in the naval trade and Nords are the toughest seafarers. We can assume that Bosmer, Argonians and Orcs don't have impressive battleships because none of them are all that technologically advanced and/or organized. That doesn't keep them from being good sailors though!

To the people saying it's not feasible. All that is really needed is for this is an animation on the water and sails that makes it appear as if the ships are moving and if we give the steering wheel to an NPC, this could all be scripted.

The biggest challenge is probably increasing/decreasing distances between ships and keeping the players attached to the boat's surface at the same time. This is already somewhat possible in housing with an addon that allows you to "fly" on a magic wooden plank and the challenges that the game's engine faces with the furniture limit would not be as big of a deal here considering the ships would most likely only consist of about 5 big chunks with a hitbox that needs to calculate collision etc. rather than 700 + collectibles. It's probably not as hard as it sounds if done smart.

No.

If it could be as fun as Naval warfare in Assassin's Creed, then sure, I'm all for it.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

To the people saying it's not feasible. All that is really needed is for this is an animation on the water and sails that makes it appear as if the ships are moving and if we give the steering wheel to an NPC, this could all be scripted.

The biggest challenge is probably increasing/decreasing distances between ships and keeping the players attached to the boat's surface at the same time. This is already somewhat possible in housing with an addon that allows you to "fly" on a magic wooden plank and the challenges that the game's engine faces with the furniture limit would not be as big of a deal here considering the ships would most likely only consist of about 5 big chunks with a hitbox that needs to calculate collision etc. rather than 700 + collectibles. It's probably not as hard as it sounds if done smart.

Curious...
How many "moving platforms" have you seen in ESO that are interactable?

Did you know one of the main engine upgrades between FO3 and FO4 was the ability to attach objects to objects in motion? Did you know that single thing was horrifically complex to do at the time? (and still is you can just copypasta parts)
This single thing isn't a "challenge" is a ridiculous mountain that has so many minefields between you and that mountain you would commit suicide even attempting it without a crapton of money and talent set aside.

Did you have any idea how hard it is to just "add animation" to water beyond a texture with no depth?

This is one of those things that people love to say "Hey it's not that hard" while understanding .01% of what is required for actually doing it. If you didn't plan for it at the start of your project it absolutely is not something you just "patch in later".

They can't even get the ground combat down and you want them to take on naval?

Cygemai_Hlervu wrote: »

Daus wrote: »

They can't even get the ground combat down and you want them to take on naval?

I want to know if you want a naval PvP mode to be present in the game one way or another irrespectively of the land warfare troubles you meet and the difficulties the ZOS might encounter while making it. I gave an idea of another PvP mode, you vote, the ZOS decide if they will and are able to make it or not. World's peace is not riding on that naval PvP mode - personally I like the game in spite of the decision they make on that. It's simple.

I'm not happy with the game so I'm not going to say one way or another. I'll leave the voting to those who actually login.

nafensoriel wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

To the people saying it's not feasible. All that is really needed is for this is an animation on the water and sails that makes it appear as if the ships are moving and if we give the steering wheel to an NPC, this could all be scripted.

The biggest challenge is probably increasing/decreasing distances between ships and keeping the players attached to the boat's surface at the same time. This is already somewhat possible in housing with an addon that allows you to "fly" on a magic wooden plank and the challenges that the game's engine faces with the furniture limit would not be as big of a deal here considering the ships would most likely only consist of about 5 big chunks with a hitbox that needs to calculate collision etc. rather than 700 + collectibles. It's probably not as hard as it sounds if done smart.

Curious...
How many "moving platforms" have you seen in ESO that are interactable?

Did you know one of the main engine upgrades between FO3 and FO4 was the ability to attach objects to objects in motion? Did you know that single thing was horrifically complex to do at the time? (and still is you can just copypasta parts)
This single thing isn't a "challenge" is a ridiculous mountain that has so many minefields between you and that mountain you would commit suicide even attempting it without a crapton of money and talent set aside.

Did you have any idea how hard it is to just "add animation" to water beyond a texture with no depth?

This is one of those things that people love to say "Hey it's not that hard" while understanding .01% of what is required for actually doing it. If you didn't plan for it at the start of your project it absolutely is not something you just "patch in later".

I find it hard to believe that World of Warcraft can do moving ships that players don't fly off of, but ESO somehow can't. There don't even have to be interactable objects on the ship (aside from Balistas I suppose). But alright, suppose that's true for the sake of the argument and it's really not possible to make moving ships. All that really means is that relative distances of the ships can't change.

We can still create the illusion of movement by having ocean waves move past the ship as if everyone was moving. That is definitely within ESO's capabilities. There doesn't need to be actual land within view and ZOS likes to paste images of landscape onto the horizon anyway. It shouldn't be too hard to get those to cycle or move very slowly either to create the illusion of movement. Then we could probably toy with the inverse foot kinematic that ZOS is so proud of and use it to make it appear as if she ship was actually moving in the waves and our characters had to adjust to being gently shaken around.

It's really not that hard to make it look good enough and this would probably be a big feature for ZOS to use as a selling point in a chapter and building the foundation for it will pave the way to recycle these tricks for future dungeon DLCs etc. Maybe we will have a dungeon on the open sea and fight a kraken one day?
It's not as unrealistic as people claim, the question is if ZOS wants the game to go into that direction or not.

I think it's worth it to give PvP more love and add some more interactions between the factions outside of Cyrodiil. It's not the only place the war is being fought at anyway and the open sea is not in the way of DLCs.

I think it would be an interesting idea, I know I'd participate in it. I'd just hope it would come off being as fun as the naval warfare in Assassins Creed, even if the mechanics would have to be entirely different. I don't have much to contribute mechanics wise, other than that I like a lot of the ideas I've seen in the thread.

I'd personally like to throw in my desire to see customizable ships/sails/flags, though, because I have a dream of sailing a maormer vessel now that I've got my maormer fish skin >w>