Last year there were some really popular new features and systems added, like the Antiquities system. Do you have plans for any new systems or features in that kind of vein this time?

We do. There will be new antiquities that you can dig up for sure, because that was such a big thing. But I think that the big new system that I’m really excited about is companions. Companions are essentially your permanent adventuring buddies. So, you unlock them in the Blackwood chapter by doing some quests, and once you have them unlocked, you can level them up, you can equip gear on them, and you can assign their roles and their ability – so you can choose for them to be more of a tanky, healer, or damage dealer role. And there’s also a rapport system associated with them, where they have specific likes and dislikes. As you level up through those, you unlock more quests.

It’s definitely something that we have seen players ask for a lot, especially those that have played Skyrim. Companions were a big part of that. This is our way to give players another avenue to roleplay their characters and develop social bonds without necessarily having to do that with players. You’ll be able to use these companions pretty much anywhere in the world – we’re still doing our tuning and tweaking and performance assessment impact on these things. I’m pretty sure they won’t be allowed to be used in PvP, but anywhere outside of PvP, you can use them. And they would essentially replace a player, so if you and a buddy wanted to do a four-player dungeon, you could do that and have two companions, and you can complete the content.

We also have a new tutorial coming. So, every chapter, we always build a new tutorial. And this year is a little bit different in that we’re still going to teach you the basics of the game in terms of how to use your map, how to equip abilities, those kinds of things. But the big difference this year is we’re going to let you choose your own story.

This has been something that players have requested for a long time. So, there’s a point in the tutorial where you get to choose, ‘Do I go to the base game? Do I go to Elsweyr? Do I go to Summerset? Do I go to Greymoor?’ It’s up to you what you want to do, rather than in previous tutorials, which were so focused on the story of the new chapter. That’s going to be a thing that I think our players are going to be excited about.

exeeter702 wrote: »

Now it only zos could add a system in place that would create a sense of agency and involvement in overland content for fully built end game characters.

There is no scenario where I would ever feel any incentive to interact with this new feature and that sucks tbh.

If properly suiting up and building out my companion so that I can survive certain obstacles while doing the one type of content that makes up nearly 80 percent of this entire game, were actually a thing, I would be very happy here. But the fact that overland content is such a joke even for the casual competent player. This just feels like a missed opportunity for me.

I'm here hoping zos announces something that would make end game characters want to engage with the overland content experience and they add a feature that makes it even easier lol.. But I understand the economics of it at the end of the day, the longer you are a player of an mmo, the less you become the target demographic for it.

For those who weren't here at launch, I should perhaps explain exactly how overland was made so laughably easy. It's not just a matter of the "normal" player-dealt DPS increasing five-fold or more since launch, and it's not just the fact that they made the mobs have less HP and hit less hard. The nerf goes much deeper than that, and no simple debuffs or voluntary crippling of your build can fix it properly.

The problem is that they both dumbed down and slowed down the AI for all PvE enemies. Regular trash mobs used to employ jumps and dodges, they blocked your blows, they snared you, and they used combinations of abilities which you needed to counter properly to defeat them reliably. Combat with even a single trash mob could be engaging. Two was busy, three was a challenge. Telegraphs were shorter and easier to miss.

This game used to be quite hard for a solo player. I am not saying it was better, because people rage quit over, say, not being able to progress in the main quest or kill the wretched Doshia in the Fighters' Guild quest. The changes they made to the game have very obviously made it survive.

In my personal opinion, I'm sad to see this challenge gone, but there is nothing that could bring back that for individual players without changing the experience for everyone else, except splitting the world into different instances depending on some "difficulty" toggle.

exeeter702 wrote: »

Iccotak wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Now it only zos could add a system in place that would create a sense of agency and involvement in overland content for fully built end game characters.

There is no scenario where I would ever feel any incentive to interact with this new feature and that sucks tbh.

If properly suiting up and building out my companion so that I can survive certain obstacles while doing the one type of content that makes up nearly 80 percent of this entire game, were actually a thing, I would be very happy here. But the fact that overland content is such a joke even for the casual competent player. This just feels like a missed opportunity for me.

I'm here hoping zos announces something that would make end game characters want to engage with the overland content experience and they add a feature that makes it even easier lol.. But I understand the economics of it at the end of the day, the longer you are a player of an mmo, the less you become the target demographic for it.

Fun Fact about what the game USED to do

For those who weren't here at launch, I should perhaps explain exactly how overland was made so laughably easy. It's not just a matter of the "normal" player-dealt DPS increasing five-fold or more since launch, and it's not just the fact that they made the mobs have less HP and hit less hard. The nerf goes much deeper than that, and no simple debuffs or voluntary crippling of your build can fix it properly.

The problem is that they both dumbed down and slowed down the AI for all PvE enemies. Regular trash mobs used to employ jumps and dodges, they blocked your blows, they snared you, and they used combinations of abilities which you needed to counter properly to defeat them reliably. Combat with even a single trash mob could be engaging. Two was busy, three was a challenge. Telegraphs were shorter and easier to miss.

This game used to be quite hard for a solo player. I am not saying it was better, because people rage quit over, say, not being able to progress in the main quest or kill the wretched Doshia in the Fighters' Guild quest. The changes they made to the game have very obviously made it survive.

In my personal opinion, I'm sad to see this challenge gone, but there is nothing that could bring back that for individual players without changing the experience for everyone else, except splitting the world into different instances depending on some "difficulty" toggle.

Most of us who have been here since day zero remember this. The leveling experience was very satisfying. Often the rebuttal ths is brought up is craglorn. But that is an incredibly weak one as there were so many other issues with the core game and its various indecisive aspects of end game at the time.