tomofhyrule wrote: »

The Reddit AMA is less than two months old. That's basically the most recent communication we have from the devs on any topic. We don't even have information on how the current game will be balanced or anything coming up in 2026, and we won't get that until January at the earliest.

ZOS is in the habit of dropping information only when it's 6 weeks out.

All we know is it's in an early state, and they're not going to say anything about it until it's ready to release. So don't hold your breat.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

afaik they just said they are looking into it not that its 100% confirmed that it will come

They said "at this point is in active development" if I recall correctly the Reddit AUA. But it's early and I'd expect it to be launched the same year the next-gen Xbox come out, so likely with 2027 content, if not 2028, after the launch.

GeneralGrundmann wrote: »

SolarRune wrote: »

I think a year away is being optimistic. I would have put it at the 2027 content release at the earliest.

Yeah, what you say. I don't have much knowledge concerning this technical side of ESO, but a friend of mine who is a professional IT guy with decades of knowledge has.

Three different platforms with two world regions each and background tables to merge and make stable playable is a HUGE effort!

Biggest problem is that the base code was never written with crossplay in mind. To implement that now is terrible difficult. To get it right means to invest lots of working hours and still it remains risky.

To shut down PS and XBox completely and let players choose to which PC server they want to move to would be much much easier. So if the player numbers are really declining, and only ZOS knows that for real, to merge all platforms on PC would be the easiest and safest option.

Only, but most important, question is: how many players would the game lose?

Personally, I expect a poll per email or something else at sometime in the future where every player is asked if he would migrate or quit playing if his platform get closed.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

SkaiFaith wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

afaik they just said they are looking into it not that its 100% confirmed that it will come

They said "at this point is in active development" if I recall correctly the Reddit AUA. But it's early and I'd expect it to be launched the same year the next-gen Xbox come out, so likely with 2027 content, if not 2028, after the launch.

IF a next gen xbox comes out...which would probably also mean end of series S support..

Lets hope they have enough time till then...not only looling at the dwindling player base but also msoft support.

Series S? Man, OG Xbox One is still supported XD

DenverRalphy wrote: »

This is the entirety of what was said on Sept 9th during the AUA on Reddit..

licenturion wrote: »

fizzybeef wrote: »

I think PC to TV connect you also have some sort of delay dont you? Wich is probably fine for certain activities but sweaty endgame content with delay is not to nice.

But i guess it depends on the technical circumstances

Those remote gaming things are good for singleplayer games if you have a high tolerance for slight desync or image quality that sometimes takes a dive depending on your connection.

But it's pretty useless for online gaming, PvP and PvE. Too much latency. Cool technology, but not for me.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I have a sneaking suspicion this is one of the reasons ZOS gives us minimal communication. They don’t want to have to deal with incessant demands for updates.

They said they were working on it. And then less than two months later, we get “are we there yet? are we there yet? are we there yet? Hey Kevin, please give an official statement again. are we there yet?”

If they hadn’t said they’re working on it, then they wouldn’t be inundated with people begging for updates. And god forbid they give a date in it and then get delayed. Much easier to just not communicate, right?

They’re working on it. It took 9 months to get horses to swim, so there’s no way a full rearchitecture of the game will take less than a year to finish. I’m sure they’ll tell us when they’re close.

I would hope they give updates along the way (especially since one of the major fears is potential name conflicts, and a lot of us would feel a lot better if they guaranteed us we would not be forced to change names), but demanding monthly updates for this is crossing the line.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To be honest, this is something that IF they rush it could kill the game. For something of this scale I would prefer they take some time to get it right with a LOT of testing. Anything less than a year of dedicated dev time would concern me. And I would like to see 2 or 3 live PTS tests before it goes through.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

amiiegee wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

To be honest, this is something that IF they rush it could kill the game. For something of this scale I would prefer they take some time to get it right with a LOT of testing. Anything less than a year of dedicated dev time would concern me. And I would like to see 2 or 3 live PTS tests before it goes through.

I agree and i do not think it should be rushed. Just thought there might be something i could of missed, i did not know a simple question would cause so many negative vibes

Part of that is the fact that the playerbase is working on a massive amount of general frustration right now, and it feels weird for something like Crossplay or Overland Difficulty (which have gotten recent confirmations that yes, they are working on them and will release eventually) to get more attention when things like general Class Balance (or even any new zones or features for that matter) have not gotten anything beyond “we can’t talk about that yet.”

We have seen the same argument over and over. We know it’s needed. But after this year, a lot of stuff is needed. More challenge. Better story. More Classes. Balance. Every player thinks a different one is the priority, and at the rate ZOS is going, we’re probably going to have some things forgotten about. Again the glacial pace of updates had made a lot of players dejected and caused players to fight against other players for their chance to be heard. This is back to the whole discussion of how, in the absence of dev communication, players are now seeing each other as enemies instead of as allies.

Add to that the fact that Crossplay, while desperately needed for consoles like XB and the PvP community on PS, really won’t change PC players’ lives much. The PC populations (sans BGs) are healthy enough… at least at present. That means that PC players are likely to be much more concerned about things that will be important to them as opposed to something that will likely take a lot of dev time to give them little benefit. Especially after this year’s feature was almost 100% intended for casual players, with little to no consideration of vets. (And let’s not forget there’s a server event right now that is literally pitting servers against each other)
In fact, some PC players are actually fearful that Crossplay would cause problems for them, namely in terms of name conflicts. And ZOS is not coming out to reassure anyone that players will not need to change the name of the RP main they’ve played daily for 8 years because some console player who stopped playing 9 years ago has that name as well. Other games that have transitioned to crossplay have had this issue, and have forced name changes, so that fear is not unfounded. Again, this is a factor that mostly affects PC - most console players are getting enough benefits from crossplay that a forced name change could be an acceptable tradeoff, but PC players would get much less benefit from crossplay, so that definitely is not something they’d generally brush off

Finally, a lot of people are tired of the dead horse standard arguments. “But but but the original console setup!” “No, that’s different since those servers were empty.” “But but but the PTS planemeld!” “Probably not the best look to highlight a bug that banned people for 11 days as evidence of success.”
Anyone who does anything with databases knows this will be a massive undertaking, and if even one datapoint is out of line, it could bug out banks and storage for every person on the server. This is going to be a tectonic plate shift level of change, and some people are fearful that instead of the earthquake bringing the ocean closer and give them a beachfront view, it’ll just destroy their house.

I’ll also add that ZOS is in the habit of playing Monkey’s Paw with major requests too, so we don’t know what to expect - consider all the people who asked for “stackable writs and surveys” and got “well, the old ones don’t stack, but any new ones go into this mystery envelope so you don’t have any details,” or the people who wanted “more accessibility into endgame” and got “if you’re not beaming, you can’t sit with us,” or the “please give Maelstrom weapons on normal!” that became “lol new stuff from vet so run it again!”
Point is, Crossplay may not end up looking like what many people hope it will. I originally thought that they’d probably use Vengeance as a ‘crossplay server’ since the way that works is it makes a template character in a new zone (that’s why all of Cyro shows as undiscovered and all the quests are back active and you get all rewards upon leaving) and then they could just do crossplay with that mode specifically. I assume now they’ll try to merge the six megaservers into two megamegaservers, but I highly doubt anyone will get to merge their PC and PS accounts; it’ll likely stay as two separate ones. There’s also no guarantee of cross save either.