Feedback from a Developer

Amunari · April 2020

Greetings.
I am here to provide my feedback on Elder Scrolls online and some changes that i think it should get and the direction the game should go in. This post will be rather long so i will present the changes in bullet point format to keep it simple for the development team.

Progression System
- Remove Champion Point System.
- In its place add a new "specializations" to each class. For example, Warden has a specialization called "Animal Companions".
- These new "specializations" will be called "masteries". Masteries will function like the current specializations do in ESO, however, With the condition of gaining "Mastery points" after level 50, and mastery specializations will only accept mastery points.
- Each Mastery specialization will have about 25 skill points (something similar to now), and the over-all mastery point collection process will cap at 50, effectively making your max level 100. (50 base level, + 50 mastery points).
- Additional Mastery sections may be added over time with future content updates.
- Masteries will be designed in a way to bridge the "Class Rainbow". Think of classes as being colors (Red, blue, green) and the traditional dnd classs concepts (wizard, druid, palading, etc) as the hues of colors (ie dark blue vs light blue). In this way we can expand the building of lose class design with out actually adding a significant amount of work to ESO (though this will consume a portion of development resources)
-
- Some idea's for classes for new "specializations" we will call "masteries" are as follows:

- Warden gains "Druid" and "Bard" Masteries
- Sorcerer gains "Mage" and "Wizard" Masteries
- Dragon Knight gains "Barbarian" and "Warrior" masteries
- Templar gains "Monk" and "Brew Master" Masteries
- Nightblade gains "Ranger" and "Marauder"

Trade
As a new player learning how the trade system works in ESO is complicated, but i feel a lot of this problem is really down to a few simple changes to the system. I had to be hand held through the process but this is largely because of the way it is being presented and not the system itself.
- Rename "guild store" to "Guild Auction House" so that players know more intuitively where to trade.
- Rename the banner tool tips (the signs near the building) and icons on map to "Bank and Auction house"
- Change the "buy" "sell" "list" buttons in the guild star (auction house) to text based buttons marked as such (buy, sell, etc) as the current icons tends to "blend the sections" in to much to stand out enough to catch attention to know they are actually buttons. This will make it far more clear the intent of the buttons.

I would like to say i believe that enabling every guild to trade in some capacity, for example internally, would be a good move for the game. The traders should be there specifically to allow external guild trade, but i am not hard-stuck on this change and believe the above changes are enough for the game (though this change would really improve the game).

Multi-Guild System
I have never been a fan of this system in any game. It largely invalidates guilds and i would out right and unconditionally remove it, however, it is "weaved" into eso, for example trading is largely built around it as if you could not have multiple guilds then everyone would be forced into a trade guild effectively invalidating the guild system.
This being said i think the game should look at adding on a second large to the guild system to help empower guilds for their specific goal and purpose. some changes to this would be
- Remove the options for secondary guild focus, this focus's the guild on a single purpose.
- Consolidate Trials and Dungeons into one option marked "pve".
- Creation of a guild related talent tree or skill system to empower the second large guild system in some way. For example, trading with out a trader for trade guilds (at the max talent level), or bonus Alliance points for a pvp guild.

Housing
Ok guys, big serious annoyance here. The houses you call inns, i can only term as "luxury coffins". They need to go. Houses should start at the size of "lunar hall" (non-expanded) and work up from there. Seriously, your dropping the ball on this and it has huge income earning potential.
- Shift a larger amount of resources to development of houses, and systems to support them (See QoL for more info).
- Rework the prices of houses so they they convert Gold rates to crowns accurately. For example, A house of 2000 crowns costs 400,000 gold, but you can buy it for 80,000. This means crowns is massively more effective to "sell" for gold, then buy the house in gold. This effectively means an income lost for the studio. Balance these rates so they are equal.
-
PvP

Battlegrounds
- Experience should no longer be granted based on kills, captures, etc. I have seen many people afking in pvp for this specific reason (ie farming experience) with absolutely no care for win/loss or the over all "pvp experience".
- Ending Win experience should now be increased by 80%, and loss by 50% of their current values (to off set the loss of above experience).
- All battlegrounds should be shifted to 3 man content.
- Gear has to significant an impact on BGS and should be changed, see "gear changes" below.

Rated Battlegrounds
- Now marked as "rated battlegrounds" in the activity screen (where you queue dungeons, pvp etc)
- Rated battlegrounds enable "group ques".
- Rated Battlegrounds will now grant you rank on a ladder and should be set up in a way that it has a cap (so the top players can keep inflating the ranking system by constant game play).
- Resets every season

Cyrodiil

Siege Weapon Reworks
- Siege variations (dominion, fire, ice, etc) removed.
- Siege have undergone a massive rework resulting in specific uses for each siege type and are as follows
- Ballista's are designed to fire quickly, have direct (forward) attacks, and moderate rate of fire (2 seconds) and moderate damage (10,000 per hit)
- Trebuchet's are now the only siege that damages walls, and are now designed for slow (3 second including gcd) rate of fire and high damage (25,000) per hit with no turning options.
- Catapults are now designed to be anti-siege damaging weapons the only one dealing damage to other siege weapons, and are now designed with slightly higher range (+10 yards) and fast attack speed (1 second)
- A new type of siege has been created called "siege towers" they enable players to drive the siege to the wall and a draw bridge drops to enable them to get in the keep with out having to destroy its walls.
- Pitch will no longer drop an aoe ground effect but will damage all people with a dot in the circle upon release (this is to improve the stability / lag).
- Battering Rams will now deal insanely high damage to doors only.
- Rebuilding walls, doors, etc will now have a 1 minute build time.
- Camps will now enable anyone to teleport to them with out charges, and will now last until destroyed, however, rival players may be able to destroy them by walking up and holding down the interaction key for 10 seconds (channel breaks on damage).

-Keep Reworks
- Keeps walls will now have 50% less health
- Periodically a keep will become marked for "increased point gains" by a specific faction. For example a blue keep may be marked for red to take it, granting bonus alliance points of done with in a specific time frame (10 minutes)
- Attacks on a keep will no longer be able to be tracked by add-ons
- Map Markers for Attacks (the attack icon on map) on a keep will now update 3 minutes after a keep is attacked.

Guild Halls
- A new type of House is added to the game, known as guild halls. They will have their own "sections" in the gui (graphic user interface) in the game, and in the store.
- Guild halls will have various sizes like houses, and various costs
- Guild halls will now functionally work like houses, with the exception there there will be a limit 1 per a guild.
- Various halls can be "activated" by a guild leader or officer to set the "active hall".

Gear Changes
- Champion Points level removed from gear.
- Gear will now base its stat values on quality, and "equip" level.
- The variance between white, and gold will be about 20% in stats.

Quality of Life improvements
- Character stats for Physical and Magical Penetration, Physical and Magic Resistance, and similar stats will no longer reflect integer values in the character info screen.
- Instead all Integer values will now display as percentages.
- On the back end of the game the current conversion rate is around 700 points to 1% (about 680). This rate will be used to convert the current character info screen and all gear in game to reflect percentages. As a result players will now see +3% physical resistance on gear instead of +2000 physical resistance, and in the character screen will now see the total percentage gained from all sources.
- Skills will now reflect the above change by presenting percentages instead of integer values.

Class Balance
Ability Resistance Stacking
- Various Types of Resistances given will no longer overlap.
- This means that players cannot stack multiple abilities to gain insanely high damage reduction. Some exceptions may apply to this, like the abilities in sword and shield being able to be stacked with other abilities. This is kept in an effort to improve build diversity but not greatly impact the current tanking performance.
Absorption Effects
- Various types of Absorb effects will no longer overlap
In an effort to help improve the variance some abilities will need to be redesigned to give validity over others. For example mage bubble will return magicka at higher values, where as sorcerer self bubble (wind) will have larger absorption.

Sorcerer
- Encase Removed
- Added new spell "Crystal Shower" a spell that rains down crystals on the target every second for 3 seconds, dealing damage each shard.
- morph 1: Removes the magicka cost, adds a 8 second cool down and causes each shard to deal 800 damage but generate 1200 magicka.
- morph 2: Now drops a single large shard after 3 seconds that deals significantly more damage. Increases cost of Crystal shower.
- Rune prison now (instantly) stuns the target for 3 seconds and deals damage over its duration
- morph 1: Deals more damage over time
- morph 2: stun increased to 5 seconds

Warden
- Fetcher infection will now cause all enemies with in 20 yards of the target to gain the damage of time effect.

Weapon Balance
Light and heavy attacks have been redesigned.
- Weapons will now naively be counted as either a light or heavy attack. Light attacks will have only a GCC cool down but heavy attacks will have a 2 second cool down and will functionally work like current light attacks (having the charge mechanic removed)
- One handed weapons, Duel Weild, Bows will count as light attacks.
- Staffs and two handed weapons, Shield and sword will count as heavy attacks, and will generate smaller amounts of resources
- Heavy attacks will deal significantly more damage per a click then light attacks and will generate more resource
- Light Weapon damage increased by 28%
- Heavy weapon damage increased by 42%

Blocks
Blocking will now consume Magicka when having a staff equipped and will display a sort of "magic shield" Around the caster.

Consumables
- The cool down for all resource potions or consumables that grant instant class resource is increased to 1 minute 15 seconds.

Amunari · April 2020

See some typos int here, a by product for typing fast and not proof reading. Apologies.

GeorgeBlack · April 2020

Bro didnt read but if you are a dev dont post about being a dev, go make a new mmorpg. There is a market.

Amunari · April 2020

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

Bro didnt read but if you are a dev dont post about being a dev, go make a new mmorpg. There is a market.

Thanks for the feedback, but this is not really the place for it. Also I am actively working on a new mmosandbox game, however that does not stop me from wanting to learn from others, and help others. Some times we need breaks from our own games to clear our heads or just enjoy the fun.

I very much like eso, it seems to need some "clean" up done to it, largely in place of UX / QOL related issues. I am just trying to help make a good game, great.

Elwendryll · April 2020

I think your feedback is not presented in a format that will actually be taken into account by the devs. You can point out what is wrong with the game (or what you'd like), and explain why by backing it up with data/experience. Such a broad list with seemingly arbitrary changes will probably not get any credit ^^' For most of your points, I can't even start to understand why you'd want to change that other than "The game is not what I expected it to be". Also, not sure being a developer gives more credibility, I'm a developer too, there are plenty of developers everywhere, it doesn't make my feedback more valuable, if anything, my 5 year experience of the game would. I hope that doesn't come up as too toxic, have a good day

Amunari · April 2020

Elwendryll wrote: »

Such a broad list with seemingly arbitrary changes

They are not. They were suggested for very good reasons. If you'd like to talk about them we can.

Elwendryll wrote: »

For most of your points, I can't even start to understand why you'd want to change that other than "The game is not what I expected it to be

This seems like a childish response to suggestions. It seems to be common place in this game asi have had conversation or two that came up with my opinions about changing a few things which resulted in similar responses which seemed to almost be offended on a personal level

As for making changes to the game this is largely because i feel the game would be much cleaner, and easier to manage (from a development side) as well as enrich it, with some alterations to its structure. An example of that is removing champion point system and replacing it with the suggested system.

Another example would be removing level 1-6 of a skill and converting all that experience gain into 1 level, and then making morph not have levels to it. This would massively increase the over all look and quality of that system with no real significant change to it. The power gains that come from the levels could easily be swapped to being base line. The game has power gains on everything, its actually really not thought out all that well, luckily in many cases some revisions would massively improve the quality and over all stability of the game.

Elwendryll wrote: »

. Also, not sure being a developer gives more credibility, I'm a developer too, there are plenty of developers everywhere, it doesn't make my feedback more valuable, if anything, my 5 year experience of the game would.

Do you think that a random person given their opinion about heart operation will be good for the patient, or is that operation not extremely complex requiring large amounts of knowledge to fix?

Anyone claiming that developers with 5 years or even 2 decades of experience are equal to players is ignorant, and arrogant for thinking that they are on part with people of knowledge.

Amunari · April 2020

I'd also like to add to the list the following changes

- Players can now only be part of one guild at a time.
- i felt like this was largely invalidating the other guilds and their immersive content

Dungeons
- Abilities iwll not be marked as "Damage, Tank, or Heals" in the tool tip.
- Queuing a specific role for dungeons will now require players to have a set number of abilities corresponding to their role type, so that someone who is queueing as a healer will actually be required to heal.
- During high demand hours when dungeon queues hit a specific wait time, there will now obtain a bonus reward (5000 gold, and a bonus item) for players filling needed roles.
- Dungeons and battlegrounds will now all be 3 man content.

daemonios · April 2020

Elwendryll wrote: »

I think your feedback is not presented in a format that will actually be taken into account by the devs. You can point out what is wrong with the game (or what you'd like), and explain why by backing it up with data/experience. Such a broad list with seemingly arbitrary changes will probably not get any credit ^^' For most of your points, I can't even start to understand why you'd want to change that other than "The game is not what I expected it to be". Also, not sure being a developer gives more credibility, I'm a developer too, there are plenty of developers everywhere, it doesn't make my feedback more valuable, if anything, my 5 year experience of the game would. I hope that doesn't come up as too toxic, have a good day

This was my thought as well. The thread's pompous title of "feedback from a developer" made me expect some insightful suggestions, and instead this is little more than another wish list, of which there are many on the forums.

Just as an example, the changes to progression (removal of CP and addition of masteries) do nothing to address the fundamental issue, which is whether there should be vertical progression or not. CP were described as horizontal progression adding flavour to builds, but they are nothing of the sort, they are fully used to eke out every additional drop of potential from min/max builds. I can't see masteries doing anything differently, so why swap one for the other? What is gained other than something OP may find more appealing in some way?

In the mean time there has been zero level progression for years because the ESO player base apparently just want to hit cap and stay at cap, something I have some trouble understanding.

Irfind · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

- Players can now only be part of one guild at a time.
- i felt like this was largely invalidating the other guilds and their immersive content

Then tripple the bankspace and tradespace please ? I have 4 guilds and all guildstores ar full

1 Mainguild, 2 tradeguilds and 1 housing guild

Ectheliontnacil · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

Such a broad list with seemingly arbitrary changes

They are not. They were suggested for very good reasons. If you'd like to talk about them we can.

Well adding an explanation to your suggestions is pretty much the only thing you can do to give them credibility.
Also no offense, but imo the feedback from a very experienced player who knows the game and what the community wants is much more valuable than that of "a developer".

Like Elwendryll pointed out, these changes seem completely arbitrary. I've never seen anyone confused by the fact, that they're called guild stores instead of guild auction houses...like what?! If that trips you up it's your problem. Or maybe you just want to turn this into wow.

Also the community has been complaining about sweeping and unjustified combat changes for a long time now. And you're pushing for more of the same?

Bottom line: I don't think these changes would be healthy for the game and Zeni has more important things to take care of anyways. Fixing performance is priority #1.

Charon_on_Vacation · April 2020

a lot of your proposed changes are just personal preference.
if you want to bring the dev card in, then don't focus on your personal preferences, for example how you would like the classes to be. for example, a lot of people would disagree with your progression system, because it is not an improvement to the game, its a change. a change on personal preference.
as basically all other people here suggested, add notes why you wan't to change certain things and what the benefit of those changes would be.

MusCanus · April 2020

Elwendryll wrote: »

For most of your points, I can't even start to understand why you'd want to change that other than "The game is not what I expected it to be".

Exactly.

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

Bro didnt read but if you are a dev dont post about being a dev, go make a new mmorpg. There is a market.

Don't encourage please, mmo market is in a poor state already.

Elwendryll · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

They are not. They were suggested for very good reasons. If you'd like to talk about them we can.

Your feedback would be more valuable if these reasons were explained in your original post, most of your ideas don't come with a rationale or data to back them up.

Amunari wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

For most of your points, I can't even start to understand why you'd want to change that other than "The game is not what I expected it to be"

This seems like a childish response to suggestions.

Let's not get into personal attacks please? Getting a thread locked is definitely not going to help your feedback being read.
I'm merely pointing out that some of your ideas could use a reasoning behind them. What is wrong in the first place in the current system, and how your suggestions would fix that?

Amunari wrote: »

As for making changes to the game this is largely because i feel the game would be much cleaner, and easier to manage (from a development side) as well as enrich it, with some alterations to its structure. An example of that is removing champion point system and replacing it with the suggested system.

This is an explaination that would have its place in your original post.

Amunari wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

. Also, not sure being a developer gives more credibility, I'm a developer too, there are plenty of developers everywhere, it doesn't make my feedback more valuable, if anything, my 5 year experience of the game would.

Do you think that a random person given their opinion about heart operation will be good for the patient, or is that operation not extremely complex requiring large amounts of knowledge to fix?

Anyone claiming that developers with 5 years or even 2 decades of experience are equal to players is ignorant, and arrogant for thinking that they are on part with people of knowledge.

This game is made for the players, not for the developers. The feedback of a new player is important, as is the feedback of long time players knowing everything about the game. Taking your example, if you were a surgeon yourself, and getting a heart surgery, I can tell you the surgeon performing it on you wouldn't care about how you think it should be done, you're not the one performing it. What the devs care about is what you feel is an issue right now that should be fixed, and why it should be fixed, not how it should be fixed. You know for sure about the Class Rep system, nothing new about what kind of feedback they expect.

SilverIce58 · April 2020

Youre not discussing your reasonings tho, you're shutting people down under the guise of "notes aren't needed, this forum is for discussion" which then brings everyone back to discussing why you're not discussing your reasonings. Theres no real discussion going on here, just you talking down to people because you're a developer and they aren't.

vestahls · April 2020

How long have you been playing ESO, op?

I have to say, your changes sound a lot like WoW. They're not particularly good. Why have just one guild, for example? No sense at all. Likewise there's literally no point in renaming guild stores to auction houses. Nobody is auctioning i.e. bidding on anything, it's first-come-first-serve so it's a store.
By the way, every guild is able to trade internally, and traders are just there for external trade, I don't really understand that suggestion.

And sure the CP system should (and will be) replaced, but those masteries sound lamer than the base classes. No way a templar would be downgraded to a monk or a chef. Nightblades have nothing to do with rangers, nightblades are thieves and/or assassins. And for Sorc, Mage and Wizard sounds like exactly the same thing. And you didn't offer anything for Necros.
Also, what's your problem with the housing system? If you don't want small houses, don't buy them. Having the default be something huge would probably not mesh well with console. And we already have guild halls...

Idk, but to me as a player, a lot of your changes just don't make sense and just sound like WoW carriovers with little consideration of what ESO is actually like.

Elwendryll · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

Elwendryll wrote: »

What the devs care about is what you feel is an issue right now that should be fixed, and why it should be fixed, not how it should be fixed. You know for sure about the Class Rep system, nothing new about what kind of feedback they expect.

Incorrect. This demonstrates your lack of understanding about the development process. Are you sure your a game developer?

UX Design (user experience design) directly go's in depth asking how things should be changed and what they want to see about something. This is a vital part of the process of design. In fact it is very common for devs to get opinions about how and what should be changed and then run it through iterations, then turn around to run it through the ux designer who tests it on the players who made the suggestion to start with. Its all a big circle, and how things should be changed is very much part of it.

What I'm talking about is not about general development process, but what has been stated by ESO development team, as we're on ESO forums, I was referring to ESO devs. Ask any long time forum user or a Class Rep how feedback works here, your feedback has little value presented like that. Anyway, have a good day.

Olauron · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

- Some idea's for classes for new "specializations" we will call "masteries" are as follows:

- Warden gains "Druid" and "Bard" Masteries
- Sorcerer gains "Mage" and "Wizard" Masteries
- Dragon Knight gains "Barbarian" and "Warrior" masteries
- Templar gains "Monk" and "Brew Master" Masteries
- Nightblade gains "Ranger" and "Marauder"

First, these ideas are just awful as have nothing to do with the original classes or TES background. I have selected a templar class ("These traveling knights call upon the powers of light and the burning sun to deal massive damage to their enemies while restoring health, magicka, and stamina to their allies.") not to become some monk or brew master.
Second, each class already has three skill lines and any specialization (if it is needed for some reason) should be done with that in mind, emphasizing one or two of those lines.

Sneaky-Snurr · April 2020

No offense intended but most of OP's feedback is bad.
Especially the ones with Light and Heavy attack changes, to name a few, about putting a cooldown and removing charge times for heavy attacks.
The siege combined with keep walls/defence changes are also terrible. Doesn't the OP realise that destroying keep walls is easy as it is now? Further reducing the structure hp down by 50% will only make it hell for keep defenders considering keeps flag when the wall is <50% and the siege dmg proposed is 25k per hit on one treb. This spells trouble definitely.

However, kudos on recognising the QoL issue on char stats about having integers instead of a direct % number (but actually the change proposal is not needed as ZOS has put it as it is due to, I believe, buff stacks and the presence of hardcaps on certain stats).
Instead, ZOS could put the % number in brackets after the integers shown for those buffs.

Sorry, OP. Your suggestions are not optimal enough to even be considered a useable feedback. There are other threads that have presented better feedbacks/solutions/fix in the past.

thorwyn · April 2020

- Queuing a specific role for dungeons will now require players to have a set number of abilities corresponding to their role type, so that someone who is queueing as a healer will actually be required to heal.

If you really are a developer, you should at least properly analyse the status quo and then come up with waterproof solutions. It has been discussed hundreds of times already... there is no way of forcing people into playing the role they have queued for. Players can change their bars inside the dungeon, they can chose to NOT press that taunt button. Without further explanations on how to *exactly* avoid the mentioned problems, your suggestion doesn't change anything at all.
Changing fundamental game design desicions requires extended explanation. Don't just slap stuff like "players can be in one guild only" into the discussion because it comes with an endless chain of implications.
Takes this as a friendly advice from a fellow game designer with 23 years in the business and several shipped AAA titles under the belt.

redgreensunset · April 2020

Charon_on_Vacation wrote: »

a lot of your proposed changes are just personal preference.
if you want to bring the dev card in, then don't focus on your personal preferences, for example how you would like the classes to be. for example, a lot of people would disagree with your progression system, because it is not an improvement to the game, its a change. a change on personal preference.
as basically all other people here suggested, add notes why you wan't to change certain things and what the benefit of those changes would be.

Yeah that was what struck me too reading through this way too long and badly proof read essay was that so much of it is just personal preferences presented as a professional opinion, but without any sort of argument, reasoning or data as to why their way is better except they don't like the way it is: Eg, guilds and housing.

(They've also neglected to do any kind of research or they'd know why Hall of Lunar Champion is impossible as a starting point for house size and am entirely out of touch with the housing community in the game which have been asking for smaller houses since I started playing. Again personal preference presented as some sort of professional "truth".)

TradoTheOne · April 2020

Remove CP system? I kinda read that as you are not 810. I could be wrong.

Amunari · April 2020

SilverIce58 wrote: »

Youre not discussing your reasonings tho, you're shutting people down under the guise of "notes aren't needed, this forum is for discussion" which then brings everyone back to discussing why you're not discussing your reasonings. Theres no real discussion going on here, just you talking down to people because you're a developer and they aren't.

Yes, I am. I explained that "CP" is VP and is based for balance.
I Explained that the CP level on gear is bad for balance.

If you want to talk about a specific change, ask why i made that specific suggested change and i will tell you why i suggested it.

vestahls wrote: »

How long have you been playing ESO, op?

I have to say, your changes sound a lot like WoW. They're not particularly good. Why have just one guild, for example? No sense at all. Likewise there's literally no point in renaming guild stores to auction houses. Nobody is auctioning i.e. bidding on anything, it's first-come-first-serve so it's a store.
By the way, every guild is able to trade internally, and traders are just there for external trade, I don't really understand that suggestion.

And sure the CP system should (and will be) replaced, but those masteries sound lamer than the base classes. No way a templar would be downgraded to a monk or a chef. Nightblades have nothing to do with rangers, nightblades are thieves and/or assassins. And for Sorc Mage and Wizard sounds like exactly the same thing. And you didn't offer anything for Necros.
Also, what's your problem with the housing system? If you don't want small houses, don't buy them. Having the default be something huge would probably not mesh well with console. And we already have guild halls...

Idk, but to me as a player, a lot of your changes just don't make sense and just sound like WoW carriovers with little sense of what ESO is actually like.

MultipleGuild Systems
Having multiple guilds removes the players dedication to that guild, and at the very least splits their attention. This first has an impact on the guilds cohesion which directly impacts retention rates and players "social" loyalties. Multiple guild systems have never done anything to benefit the community in any significant way and are largely responsible for the "who cares i can get another guild" type of attitude which helps breed toxicity into the game.

In the end you end up with a more toxic atmosphere, and being massively loyal to one guild, and using the others. You could get far more quality out of one guild doing all things then you would out of many doing many.

Guild Store Names
Think about this. People come into ESO with an idea, a standard set by games like world of warcraft. Eso is not Wow, but the industry is massively influenced by wow, and people "expect" specific things. The trade system may or may not be better then wow but when multiple people tell me "trade system was hard to understand at first" and a designer is telling you "that could be fixed by familiarizing concepts from eso to the industry standard" You may want to give it some thought.

What does it hurt you its named Auction house? It does not, and it benefits the new players massively at freeing up confusion and giving them a hint "hey, the buttons are not named so well but your in the right place for buying/selling". Im not advocating for any changes out side of GUI related changes, really.

Mastery Idea/System
It does not have to be the above named classes. There are many many classes in the dnd pyramid, it was just an example of some class concepts people might like to see in eso.

Housing
Small houses like the "inn rooms" are really bad, there is no room and it makes me claustrophobic. It almost seems like a grab at money. The houses should sell themselves, and the dev team should not get cheated out of that money (buy taking alternative ways to buy a house). The housing system could be cleaned up a lot. For example just putting the houses into three sections (small, medium, large) and putting a small variance of size (10x10 block to 12x120 blocks) would clean it up a lot.

Im not advocating for huge-small houses. I am just advocating that the small houses are more then luxury coffins.

thorwyn wrote: »

- Queuing a specific role for dungeons will now require players to have a set number of abilities corresponding to their role type, so that someone who is queueing as a healer will actually be required to heal.

If you really are a developer, you should at least properly analyse the status quo and then come up with waterproof solutions. It has been discussed hundreds of times already... there is no way of forcing people into playing the role they have queued for. Players can change their bars inside the dungeon, they can chose to NOT press that taunt button. Without further explanations on how to *exactly* avoid the mentioned problems, your suggestion doesn't change anything at all.
Changing fundamental game desicions needs extended explanation. Don't just slap stuff like "players can be in one guild only" into the discussion because it comes with an endless chain of implications.
Takes this as a friendly acvice from a fellow game designer with 23 years in the business.

Did you really just say this when the solution is as simple as locking the skills once your in battlegrounds or dungeons?
It's not rocket science.

Kr3do · April 2020

Judging by half of those proposals you probably haven't played the game all that much or it's high effort bait. Anyone that spends more than 10 minutes in Cyrodiil would know that by reducing the HP of keep walls and having a 3 minute timer before they're flagged on the map would make it impossible to defend. Within 3 minutes the keep would be captured.

Amunari · April 2020

Sneaky-Snurr wrote: »

No offense intended but most of OP's feedback is bad.
Especially the ones with Light and Heavy attack changes, to name a few, about putting a cooldown and removing charge times for heavy attacks.
The siege combined with keep walls/defence changes are also terrible. Doesn't the OP realise that destroying keep walls is easy as it is now? Further reducing the structure hp down by 50% will only make it hell for keep defenders considering keeps flag when the wall is <50% and the siege dmg proposed is 25k per hit on one treb. This spells trouble definitely.

However, kudos on recognizing the QoL issue on char stats about having integers instead of a direct % number (but actually the change proposal is not needed as ZOS has put it as it is due to, I believe, buff stacks and the presence of hardcaps on certain stats).
Instead, ZOS could put the % number in brackets after the integers shown for those buffs.

Sorry, OP. Your suggestions are not optimal enough to even be considered a useable feedback. There are other threads that have presented better feedbacks/solutions/fix in the past.

There is two ways this can really be taken, increasing the defensive aspects of keeps, or lowering it. A lot more team to team fighting will take place if the keeps are weaker, making cyrodiil change more rapidly, and with a bonus point system encourage faster, small group engagements.

The larget scale battles while are fun are what are stressing the server causing lag, so pulling back from that and making the fights more constant and face pace would be a better move in fun factor, as well as stability. Further, removing alerts and delaying notifications of keeps under attack encourage scouting, defensive play, and enable smaller elite shock groups to take bases opening up the room for smaller, newer pvp guilds.

I have been there in 9000 player battles. Believe me, its not as good as you think, and going in that direction really is just not good for the health of the game, not until we have better cpu technology (like quantum chips) and new software based graphics technology (like that upcoming with euclidean and their innovations in point cloud data mapping).

Further,

with the revisions to siege there will be more strategic back and forth, this will enable the game play to be more skill oriented when it comes to siege game play opening up the defensive tactics on the castles to be more strategy / positioning based, and help validate multiple types of siege in that process.

The variations of siege really just make the game to complex, and new players have issues distinguishing what is good and why to take it, as well as all siege damaging all things really just does not make a whole lot of sense.

Amunari · April 2020

I also want to mention the topic of weapons.

The charging system on the weapons really feels unrewarding, but the concept of light and heavy weapons is unique and feels good itself. removing the charge and giving the weapons identity as heavy and light weapons is a good move in making them feel good.

Further the developments team to revise the current system is a sign they are not happy with the performance. As many know "kiss" it seems to suggest this simplistic approach to it is a good way to make weapons unique. Lastly, shifting weapons in this way will help give them more damage, which will massively improve their value. Think about it, if you do a 3k auto attack and 4k ability, you will definitely be more motivated to use that auto when you are out of resources, and that will happen with less "potion spam".

Olauron · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

MultipleGuild Systems
Having multiple guilds removes the players dedication to that guild, and at the very least splits their attention. This first has an impact on the guilds cohesion which directly impacts retention rates and players "social" loyalties. Multiple guild systems have never done anything to benefit the community in any significant way and are largely responsible for the "who cares i can get another guild" type of attitude which helps breed toxicity into the game.

In the end you end up with a more toxic atmosphere, and being massively loyal to one guild, and using the others. You could get far more quality out of one guild doing all things then you would out of many doing many.

Do you understand that not every guild in ESO is trading guild? Or PVP guild? Or whatever guild?

Amunari wrote: »

Guild Store Names
Think about this. People come into ESO with an idea, a standard set by games like world of warcraft. Eso is not Wow, but the industry is massively influenced by wow, and people "expect" specific things. The trade system may or may not be better then wow but when multiple people tell me "trade system was hard to understand at first" and a designer is telling you "that could be fixed by familiarizing concepts from eso to the industry standard" You may want to give it some thought.

What does it hurt you its named Auction house? It does not, and it benefits the new players massively at freeing up confusion and giving them a hint "hey, the buttons are not named so well but your in the right place for buying/selling". Im not advocating for any changes out side of GUI related changes, really.

Looks like you are talking about WOW people. You see, there is no auction in TES games. There are guilds. Guild concept is very familiar for TES players, auction house is not.

Juhasow · April 2020

It really doesn't look like a feedback. And there is lot of bad points out there. Sounds more like a personalised wishlist rather then a feedback from the developer.

zvavi · April 2020

You can call yourself a developer or whatever but it doesn't change the fact that your "ideas" are just showing how disconnected you are from understanding game development.

Amunari wrote: »

- Dungeons and battlegrounds will now all be 3 man content.

This part shows how badly thought all your ideas are, I mean, queue is already strongly tilted towards "we have too many dds too little tanks+heals" and you want to escalate it further. Dungeon queue as dd already is way too long. This change will surely help (sarcasm).

Amunari wrote: »

Housing
Ok guys, big serious annoyance here. The houses you call inns, i can only term as "luxury coffins". They need to go. Houses should start at the size of "lunar hall" (non-expanded) and work up from there. Seriously, your dropping the ball on this and it has huge income earning potential.
- Shift a larger amount of resources to development of houses, and systems to support them (See QoL for more info).
- Rework the prices of houses so they they convert Gold rates to crowns accurately. For example, A house of 2000 crowns costs 400,000 gold, but you can buy it for 80,000. This means crowns is massively more effective to "sell" for gold, then buy the house in gold. This effectively means an income lost for the studio. Balance these rates so they are equal.

Ok mate, here you show that you don't understand how free market works. The crown market, is a free market, and that means supply vs demand. It changes, shifts, and most importantly, have different values in different servers, and yes, the difference in price in the US vs EU is huge. And obviously you can't balance house prices differently in different servers.

@Amunari do you want me to continue? Or are those 2 examples are enough?

Danikat · April 2020

Overall I have to say your post gives me the impression that you're quite new to ESO (and completely new to TES), confused by the differences between it and your previous MMO and seeking to make it more familiar to you rather than trying to adjust to the fact that it's a different game and will work differently.

It's certainly not helped by the fact that you included little/no explanation for why you think these changes should be made or how they'd make the game better, beyond claiming to be a developer and assuming that should give your opinions additional weight. Everything already in the game was designed, created and implemented by developers, even if it's true that you are also a developer why should your opinions outweigh theirs? What makes your ideas better than the ones they've already used?

It would help immensely if you could share your reasoning with us, instead of just assuring us there are reasons for these changes and then not saying what any of them are. That's not specific to you BTW, it goes for anyone making any kind of suggestion for changes, it's always more effective if you explain why your version would be better instead of simply stating that it would be.

Amunari wrote: »

Trade
As a new player learning how the trade system works in ESO is complicated, but i feel a lot of this problem is really down to a few simple changes to the system. I had to be hand held through the process but this is largely because of the way it is being presented and not the system itself.
- Rename "guild store" to "Guild Auction House" so that players know more intuitively where to trade.
- Rename the banner tool tips (the signs near the building) and icons on map to "Bank and Auction house"
- Change the "buy" "sell" "list" buttons in the guild star (auction house) to text based buttons marked as such (buy, sell, etc) as the current icons tends to "blend the sections" in to much to stand out enough to catch attention to know they are actually buttons. This will make it far more clear the intent of the buttons.

I would like to say i believe that enabling every guild to trade in some capacity, for example internally, would be a good move for the game. The traders should be there specifically to allow external guild trade, but i am not hard-stuck on this change and believe the above changes are enough for the game (though this change would really improve the game).

Saying that guild stores should be renamed to auction houses to make it clearer what it is only works if you assume everyone playing ESO has played World of Warcraft, which is absolutely not the case.

For me - someone who came to ESO with limited previous MMO experience which did not include WoW - the current name is much clearer. It tells me that these NPCs sell items on behalf of a guild, and in this context that's obviously a player-run guild. Beyond that it's fairly self explanatory. Whereas I only know the term 'auction house' from playing ESO and having to get used to the fact that some people insist on sticking to their first MMOs names for everything regardless of how little sense it makes. If it was called an auction house then I'd be looking at the UI with the assumption that I'm participating in an auction - placing bids for a single copy of an item against other players competing bids - and of course the UI would then make no sense at all because it doesn't do that, it's a store where you buy an item instantly at the price offered (or don't buy it, if you don't think it's worth that) with no bidding or waiting to see who won. So to me guild store is a much clearer and more sensible name than auction house.

(I would however like the option to put items up for auction and have players bid for them - so if I don't know what something's worth I can simply list it, maybe with a reserve price, and wait to see what buyers will pay. But that's also very different to simply pretending the guild stores are auctions.)

Also you've already got your wish with the traders - all guilds with enough members do have access to a store where their members can buy and sell items amongst themselves. Traders just allow other players to buy from that guild. (At this point I'm starting to wonder if you've actually got enough experience with ESO to be making these kind of suggestions, or if this is another "hey this doesn't look exactly like my last game, can we fix that?" topic?)

Amunari wrote: »

Multi-Guild System
I have never been a fan of this system in any game. It largely invalidates guilds and i would out right and unconditionally remove it, however, it is "weaved" into eso, for example trading is largely built around it as if you could not have multiple guilds then everyone would be forced into a trade guild effectively invalidating the guild system.
This being said i think the game should look at adding on a second large to the guild system to help empower guilds for their specific goal and purpose. some changes to this would be
- Remove the options for secondary guild focus, this focus's the guild on a single purpose.
- Consolidate Trials and Dungeons into one option marked "pve".
- Creation of a guild related talent tree or skill system to empower the second large guild system in some way. For example, trading with out a trader for trade guilds (at the max talent level), or bonus Alliance points for a pvp guild.

I'm completely the opposite, I much prefer the multi-guild system because it allows me to join different guilds for different purposes instead of having to pick just 1 guild and then seek other ways to find players for other content. Bear in mind this game only has a group finder for dungeons and battlegrounds, for everything else you're back to spamming zone chat and hoping someone happens to be in the same place at the same time looking to do the same thing. The ability to join more than one guild at least gives us another route to try to find players with mutual interests who are available to join in.

Similarly I think it's misleading to assume that every guild only has 1 focus, or should only have 1 focus. One of my guilds is primarily a social and casual PvE guild but also has a progression trial group for those who want it. Why should we have to choose between those two when we're quite capable of doing both?

On a related note there's so much more to PvE than just dungeons and trials and I think it would be a mistake to throw all those options in together. How then would you distinguish progression focused trial guilds with new player or casual friendly guilds focused on doing open-world PvE together? (Unlike games you may be used to open-world content remains a big part of ESO right up to end-game and beyond for a lot of people, not simple something to grind for XP until you can do dungeons instead.)

Amunari wrote: »

Housing
Ok guys, big serious annoyance here. The houses you call inns, i can only term as "luxury coffins". They need to go. Houses should start at the size of "lunar hall" (non-expanded) and work up from there. Seriously, your dropping the ball on this and it has huge income earning potential.
- Shift a larger amount of resources to development of houses, and systems to support them (See QoL for more info).
- Rework the prices of houses so they they convert Gold rates to crowns accurately. For example, A house of 2000 crowns costs 400,000 gold, but you can buy it for 80,000. This means crowns is massively more effective to "sell" for gold, then buy the house in gold. This effectively means an income lost for the studio. Balance these rates so they are equal.

Firstly the free inn rooms are designed to be a 'demo' of the housing system. You get enough space to practice decorating so you can get a sense of how it works and then if you want more you buy a house of your choice.

But I'd be very wary of calling for a minimum size to houses or claiming that offering more large houses will automatically lead to more income when anyone who has spent any time in the housing section of this forum or discussing housing with interested ESO players will know there's a constant request for new releases to include more small and medium sized houses and not just the large manors ZOS tends to prefer.

So again you appear to be asking for something which is already happening, which suggest a lack of familiarity with the topic, and assuming your personal opinions reflect those of all other ESO players when experience within the community says that's not the case.

Finally it's not possible for ZOS to match crown store prices to gold-to-crown prices because those are set by players so there is no definitive price. It's different on each platform and server, constantly shifting and if you take the time to shop around you can find many different prices for crowns all being offered at the same time. The best they could do is implement an actual exchange instead of letting players use the gifting system, but even then the exchange rate would change over time and between servers.

Amunari · April 2020

Olauron wrote: »

Do you understand that not every guild in ESO is trading guild? Or PVP guild? Or whatever guild?

That does not mean that other guilds should not have trading options.

Olauron wrote: »

Looks like you are talking about WOW people. You see, there is no auction in TES games. There are guilds. Guild concept is very familiar for TES players, auction house is not.

It does not matter. What matters is tes. Tes does not set the industry standards. Mean while Many, many games have ben influenced by wow which means many, many more games have players familiar with industry standards.

I am not saying ESO/TES should change the trade system, i am saying that the text on the button you click in game, and the sign next to that shop should be labeled in a manner which the familiar aspects with the rest of the industry are in harmony to clear up obvious confusion so many are having.

Its text and buttons graphics we are talking about, and its insane to not give this serious consideration. It is literally a few minutes of work to fix a massive state of confusion.

Mumbles_the_Tank · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

Did you really just say this when the solution is as simple as locking the skills once your in battlegrounds or dungeons?
It's not rocket science.

Did you really just suggest this when gear and skill swapping for specific encounters is a standard practice for veteran content?

Perhaps learn a little more about how the game is really played on more levels before making suggestions? It’s not rocket science.