Thoughts on increasing player attachment to ESO

This thread is just one person’s thoughts after playing the Elder Scrolls Online for over eight and a half years as well as following discussion of the game across multiple platforms. It doesn’t address most things people talk about to “fix the game” or make it better but it does overlap some. It is also rather long and boring It focuses on a few areas/approaches to generate sustained interest in the game, which you may think isn’t relevant or worthwhile, but that’s what’s on offer in this thread. Caveat emptor, as it were
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OK, well, you scrolled down so that’s on you

Let me start by saying I’m 99% sure everything I’m writing has been discussed at some point at ZOS HQ, so there are probably reasons why some or all of this hasn’t already been implemented like budget, competing alternatives, different philosophy or approach to game design elements, etc. With that caveat out of the way, let us begin.

Also, I like the game. Some of my favorite zones for art, landscape, traversal and music are Craglorn, Northern Elsweyr, The Reach, and Galen. Not that I don’t also like others, but that’s a nice representation. I also have favorite NPCs and quests as well. Aaaaaand, I’ve done the base game (starter islands through Coldharbour) many times. But I tend to drift away from the game after the first few years despite the enjoyment I’ve had.

What helped me to really see a theme that might explain why was someone on social media a couple months ago looking for a new game and asking if they should try ESO. The answers were thoughtful and reasonable and the ones that stood out had a theme of the game being hard to stick with or stay with, which prompted me to think of why that might be.

The easiest answers are the ones that come up all the time: bugs, server performance, large swings with balancing and combat changes, too many things in the cash shop (rather than in game), etc. Plus some that get discussed or mentioned a little less like the fact that there is relatively little character development (for player characters or NPCs) because there isn’t a linear story that progresses clearly through time, which the year-long story format tries to address to a limited degree.

I have no doubt those things turn players off, along with the usual burnout or boredom from playing the same MMO day in and day out for those who log in religiously.

But the idea of it being hard for some players to get or stay attached to ESO stuck with me. I have 35 to 40 minute commutes for my job so there is time to think about lots of things, and I noticed how several of my “wish list” items could be seen as things that would help root me better in the game. Of course, that doesn’t automatically apply to all other players, but I’m not all other players and can only speak for myself and those of a like mind.

(Edited to add: I was writing this on a very on and off again pace over weeks whenever I had a few minutes. With Mr. Firor’s December 2022 message about the new development agenda for 2023 and beyond, I’ve been working a little faster to finish this as it’s become more relevant.)

So what helps people become more attached to a game?

Sufficient return on investment of time.

If you enjoy PvP activities and feel properly rewarded for it you will want to keep doing it. Same for crafting, dungeons, overland exploration, RP with friends, etc. If the activity gets boring or isn’t properly supported it will get frustrating/stale. One solution is giving out loot, loot, loot (including collectibles)! Or increased power. Playing through great stories of overcoming challenges are also a great ROI for gaming. And so on. Typical MMO carrots on a string.

But these alone do not a long-lasting game make. MMOs are unique in that you might play one for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years or more as part of a continually growing and evolving world and community. You will at times tire of the same activity you’ve done over and over for so long. A shiny new system or story really is nice, but you will consume it and then what? The biggest ROI for the long-term is how your collective short-term experiences, engagement, and memories are recognized and rewarded both immediately and in the future. It’s about how the player feels when they log in and play and log out. That involves emotional reactions to things like relationships with other players, seeing the impact your gameplay has had on the world, the vistas/visuals and music/audio, etc.

Skyrim, for example, is over a decade old and people keep lining up to buy the latest ultimate edition. For many, they are reliving that excitement and wonder they felt years and years ago. It stuck with them, and in the absence of TES VI, they keep going back to that well of emotion and nostalgia. Want an MMO example? A year ago FFXIV launched Endwalker (6.0), the culmination of a story that started with the relaunch of that game in 2013, and it tied everything together from eight years of storytelling with tons of fan service to give an extremely well-received conclusion to one long narrative arc and set the stage for the next.

I propose nothing so bold. But I do take note of triumphs (FFXIV’s Endwalker) and failures (WoW’s Shadowlands). Of course, ESO’s setting and narrative are different in many ways, but lessons can be gleaned nonetheless. Some of what I suggest would benefit me personally, other things (like RP features) less so or not at all. My suggestions and ideas are examples of things with the potential for increasing player attachment to get others thinking about it/thinking about it in new ways. They are not intended as part of an (incomplete) “wish list”. So the ideas are therefore all over the place, but you now understand the common thread to look for and why it matters, not only for these proposals/areas of interest but elsewhere in the game.

PHASING/DIFFERENTIAL ASSETS

The game has phasing/differential assets for players at different quest stages! I can prove it because I left a character in Vvardenfell who still hasn’t stopped Baar Dau and it’s still hovering perilously low over Vivec City while the sky is perpetually dark and people keep screaming and screaming…

But you would be forgiven for not being sure ESO has these features because most areas look and feel exactly as you left them. Even when small changes or a few big changes here and there would show you had made an impact. In WoW they had Argus appear in the sky of Azeroth for months at the end of Legion to give a sense of menace and serve as a call to action. In FFXIV once you complete a storyline in Stormblood you can contribute resources to rebuilding the Doman Enclave and over time whole areas are permanently transformed.

Those are just two of many, many examples from other games. Why are some villages in ESO still ruined or burning years after players saved them? Why do so many NPCs still appear to think I am on a quest I finished in 2014? Given ESO’s limitations and constraints for linear, progressive story-telling and narratives, it is all the more important that it look and sound - to really feel - like you’ve left your mark on each zone you adventure through. More than just a few NPC barks.

This can include many things like new/altered structures or natural landscapes in some areas of the zone, having a new skybox, or even a new piece of zone music you only get for being a zone completionist. (It can also include crafting but we’ll get to that a little later.)

GROUP PLAY/ROLE PLAY/BASE UI

Of course, if you try to group up to do story quests in the open world then you are definitely aware of phasing because trying to do such quests with other players has always been a running joke since launch. If you’ve finished a quest and group with someone who hasn’t, or even if you are both on the same quest but at different stages, you will be phased differently. Even though there is no overland story quest anyone would want to “farm” for rewards other than “dailies” which could be excluded.

So maybe it’s a coding limitation that doesn’t allow the game to sync to the person with the least progress on an active quest? If not, then make it easier for people to play together, however “easy” it might be for experienced MMO players. Playing together in overland is a great way to experience parts of the game for new/inexperienced players. And if overland difficulty options are added, this is even better.

Also, while waiting to get into the ESO beta in the winter of 2014 I tried the Neverwinter MMO and it had a short bio you could add-in game for RP flavor or just to be silly. Other games give you a page for your account or a way to show which game activities you prefer/enjoy. Lots of room to play with that for additional customization and expression, whether a player likes play-acting style RP or not.

The above is a UI thing, so while we’re on that topic ESO has a great UI. For 2014-2016. It’s great to see what add-on makers can do, but even they are limited by the base UI and add-ons don’t help console players anyway. I was glad to see my “snapshot” system https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/381240/qol-saveable-specs for saving builds was apparently also an idea at ZOS which came out as the armory system. But we can’t move things around with an add-on and can’t move some things at all.

There’s plenty of other information both on the main screen and the support screens that could use work. Especially the convoluted system for trying to see which sets/pieces of sets or customizations you have or to browse and select them when you are trying to apply them. Consolidate, simplify, and make viewing simpler. Pretend these are items in the cash shop you hope we’ll see and get excited enough to buy.

Yes, a great UI is part of a great experience in an MMO and players’ positive and negative experiences so it shouldn’t be neglected. Make the decent existing UI an amazing one that better facilitates expression and allows for greater customization of our view of the game world.


CRAFTING/GENERAL ITEM REWARDS/OTHER REWARDS

So getting back to crafting and rewards, crafting feels like a system that was meant to be expanded more than it has been. I mean, you actually have to work at it to figure out why you are making something or who it’s for. Not everyone will care, which is fine, but if you do pay attention you learn that some stuff is for orphans, other things for building a city, and so on. Great!

But it’s fine print. You grab the quest, make some crap, click on a drop box. The end. Make some gold and move on. Do it faster on PC if you use the right add-ons. But what if you saw something in game that existed or was upgraded because of your crafting? Imagine your work being used directly or indirectly to build/rebuild something or upgrade it and you could see it.

Sure you might need to do like 25/50/100/250/500 daily turn ins to get the full thing complete in some extreme cases, but it’s something happening in the world because of you. How about an in-game letter thanking you (and allowing us to keep at least some mails such as making a permanent copy as WoW does. Maybe we could even craft a letter box for storing our favorites at our inn room or house.

NPC letters in general for helping out in the world in general, not just crafting, would also be great. Maybe even mini-quests you can unlock from crafting/gathering. I mean, after all, after you get the Master Crafter or Master Fisher achievement, why not? And there are so many other directions like a special outfit you unlock or a mount.

And to make a brief point, if even 20-25% of the cash shop items had been made in-game achievement awards it would have made a huge difference. The in-game item reward system can be demotivating. There only exist two extremes: “Hey you bought the DLC and walked into a city or dungeon so BAM, reward unlocked” or “You must do this activity with no mistakes on God-mode in less than three minutes to earn an item.” That GIANT space in the middle? With crafting and gathering and fishing and full zone completions and getting all of those RNG drops from mobs for achievements and so on? It’s basically empty. Fill it up! People tell stories in other MMOs about earning special rewards. Let me try it for ESO: “Yo, back in the day I got this cool pet by purchasing a DLC zone then using a wayshrine to go there.” Yeah…

I mean, look at the players who’ve done PvP for years. How many special mounts or costumes or pets have they received despite playing in horrid lag just because it can be really fun when it works right. Speaking of…


PLAYER VS. PLAYER/ALLIANCE WAR

I wrote a ton of PvP suggestions in the past. To see them just search these forums for “PvP” and then again for “Cyrodiil” and once more for “Alliance War.” Enter my username as the author. Too much to repeat or even summarize here, plus some are outdated and the search will show them in random order.

But I’m not adding this section to plug my ideas. I just want to give those who mostly or even sometimes PvP a callout here. If the devs like the ideas I wrote long ago for PvP, great. If not, check out what other PvPers are saying and provide a real roadmap. Please.

As for the Alliance War in PvE, some like it, some don’t, but it is woven into the game so it will be addressed below.


QUESTING/ZONE EXPERIENCE

I now get to use my “Torture Razum Dar” anaology. Don’t worry, this one loves Raz. It’s just to make a point before diving too far into this section. The general rule of thumb for questing and zone experience is that if you care at all about the plot or who popular NPCs are, go do the main quest and play through your Alliance's starter zone(s), main zones, and Coldharbour. After that, go wherever you want. But people can technically start and play in any order they wish.

Some NPCs will show up regularly in DLC, which gives them plot armor because developers don’t know which order players will do the content. If Raz is captured and badly scarred and has other clear lasting signs of physical or psychological damage in DLC 17, what happens if you do that one first then meet him in DLCs 4, 9 and 12? He has to believably be the same Raz no matter the order you meet him in.

Something similar goes for the plots. The Court of Bedlam was a great idea but it barely got any use and now it’s defunct because the Daedric War plot is over and we must be careful of leftovers and carry-overs in a modular zone system.

While those are limitations for building on top of older content and limits to character progression (both PC and NPC), it can also free up or make other options available, such as really digging down on each zone. If a new quest features Raz, then MAKE IT ABOUT RAZ and not a mini-version of the main quest of a zone (ahem, his appearance in Galen).

Let’s also please stop only ever hearing about things like how Raz will have to tell us sometime about “the time Raz wore guar-skin speedos in a shootout over a gambling debt involving a three-eyed pig in a temple to Dibella”. Let us actually GO on the adventure and have our own story about the time we and Raz got into a shootout over a gambling debt involving a three-eyed pig in a temple to Dibella while he was wearing guar-skin speedos. Why are some of the best stories second-hand references?

How about this: Bring back that paranormal investigator and the hulkind from Summerset and our vampire-hunting Dunmer buddy to create an ESO Scooby gang and then let it become weird and campy. These are the types of cool things made easier by and a better investment for the one-off quests or quest chains that still can have “follow-ups” (of a kind) in new DLC. Who would forget or not have a reaction to such adventures?

Whether or not those particular stories ever show up isn’t the point. They are intended to illustrate what I mean by going all in on the one-offs or a series of related one-offs.

Moving on, let’s look at the NPC guilds. Why are there never any Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, or Dark Brotherhood quests in new DLC? I know that in some cases there wouldn’t be a chapter of that guild in a particular zone, but really? And yes, there are a few one-off quests in DLC that feature someone we know from one of those guilds, but that’s not what I mean. Even the Undaunted initially had extra quests in Craglorn (which technically isn’t a DLC but it was a new zone).

I get that we already see local quest givers, but no story quests or dailies from any guilds for any new zones? Or special quests once in a while from a guild HQ sending out to a DLC zone? The addition of dailies for the base game was great for Mages Guild and Fighters Guild but it’s odd how absent they typically are outside of the base game. It’s another area with NPCs and quest history that can help players feel more connections between parts of the game world.

Speaking of, I referenced the Alliance War in the previous section and a search for “Alliance War” on the forums with me as the author will give you more than you could ever want about my thoughts on the subject, but as with the guilds above it is part of the setting and the story. It is a chance to explore more of that for people who DO find it interesting and want to learn and experience more.

Imagine dailies that have you travel across Tamriel and beyond to check out threats, do scouting and reconnaissance, get update reports, find hidden caches, eliminate threats (and not just NPCs from other alliances), etc. Now picture some of these quests using the grappling hook, or antiquities, or tales of tribute, or blade of woe, or our legerdemain skill line, etc. Either required or as a faster option. Again, this hooks us back into deeper storytelling and action for “familiar” things and also integrates added systems.


CONCLUDING REMARKS

Well, that’s it for now. I think my perspective on increasing player engagement and attachment should at least be somewhat recognizable. Have a good day.