New Seasons and DLC ?

Castagere · January 8

So they say they will be giving past DLC's to base game owners. Most of those DLC's were group-focused content. Will they be adding a solo mode to all these DLC's?

Soarora · January 8

I haven’t seen anything about making dungeon DLCs free yet. Only story DLCs that are already solo-capable. Aside from the trial, I guess. Dark brotherhood gets you Maw of Lorkhaj and Greymoor gets you Kynes Aegis. I’ve not seen anything about making solo modes of trials. Orisinium adds Maelstrom Arena, which is solo.

heimdall14_9 · January 8

Castagere wrote: »

So they say they will be giving past DLC's to base game owners. Most of those DLC's were group-focused content. Will they be adding a solo mode to all these DLC's?

from the lil info gave it sounds as if they will be doing them all within time

tomofhyrule · January 8

It is interesting that the first dungeons that they are making solo modes of are March and Moon Hunter, which are from a DLC. That does make me think that eventually they will be intending to make more dungeons to have solo modes and will do some of the other DLC dungeons.

My fear though is another quote from Nick from another article today:

Are there no new dungeons for this year? Is the Night Market aimed at the players who would normally expect dungeons?

Nick Giacomini: Right now, there are no new group dungeons planned for 2026. We do have a Trial that's going to be coming. You mentioned the Night Market. And solo dungeons are going to be coming. That will allow players to engage in dungeon content solo, and there will be different difficulties and rewards associated with those. That was one of the trade-offs that we had to make in order to do solo dungeons. It's one of the things that we're trying to invest in generally. That Chapter model and its 18-month lead time was really restrictive in terms of what we could do on top of that to respond to player feedback to do more exciting things, and this is an example of that.

Believe me, we would like to do more dungeons. It is highly likely that dungeons are going to be in the future, but this year, as we invest more in the core experience of the game, this was one of those trade-offs that we had to make.

It is looking like remaking the existing dungeons to be soloable is very much associated with not making new ones for those of us who like the group dungeons.

I'd be amenable to 2 new group dungeons while they modify some old dungeons per year, but zero new group dungeons just leaves the players who actually do like to do small-scale group content (in an MMO, imagine that...) out in the cold.

MashmalloMan · January 8

Castagere wrote: »

So they say they will be giving past DLC's to base game owners. Most of those DLC's were group-focused content. Will they be adding a solo mode to all these DLC's?

I think they're using this as an opportunity to slowly drip feed the past content into the base game with combined seasonal events and refreshes to hype up the new free content they release. It gives old and new players something to do instead of blasting it all out in 1 patch.

For example, season 0 gives all the year one content for IC, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Wrothgar.. which leads into season 1 which has a new Thieves Guild questline and other content that may or may not be related.

In season 0, the wolf is named after Winterhold, with season 2 introducing large scale storm events in "Skyrim", with Greymoor being added to the base game. To me, it seems like they're preparing players to visit Winterhold by the end of season 2 or for season 3. Maybe the trial or ship event takes place over there.

For solo dungeons, also another way to revitalize old content, they're doing 2 dungeons by season 2, and will probably continue the trend every few seasons. Based on the terminology, it seems to me they're completely reworking how those dungeons scale and function to accomodate solo play vs just doing a blanket buff or skipping mechanics type of situation, so presumably it can take some time.

For all the old content becoming free, I wouldn't be surprised if they coincide them with events like double drops or xp in those areas.All in all, looks to be plenty of content and I can see how the seasonal structure will better suit my playstyle where I was previously hyped for chapter releases, played full time maybe a month, then waited for dungeon releases to just beat them in a few days. Those are the type of people they're trying to keep around for longer than a week, now 4 times a year, and I can't fault them for it. I think it's a much better structure, the old one was stale and had little wiggle room.

Soarora · January 8

tomofhyrule wrote: »

It is interesting that the first dungeons that they are making solo modes of are March and Moon Hunter, which are from a DLC. That does make me think that eventually they will be intending to make more dungeons to have solo modes and will do some of the other DLC dungeons.

My fear though is another quote from Nick from another article today:

Are there no new dungeons for this year? Is the Night Market aimed at the players who would normally expect dungeons?

Nick Giacomini: Right now, there are no new group dungeons planned for 2026. We do have a Trial that's going to be coming. You mentioned the Night Market. And solo dungeons are going to be coming. That will allow players to engage in dungeon content solo, and there will be different difficulties and rewards associated with those. That was one of the trade-offs that we had to make in order to do solo dungeons. It's one of the things that we're trying to invest in generally. That Chapter model and its 18-month lead time was really restrictive in terms of what we could do on top of that to respond to player feedback to do more exciting things, and this is an example of that.

Believe me, we would like to do more dungeons. It is highly likely that dungeons are going to be in the future, but this year, as we invest more in the core experience of the game, this was one of those trade-offs that we had to make.

It is looking like remaking the existing dungeons to be soloable is very much associated with not making new ones for those of us who like the group dungeons.

I'd be amenable to 2 new group dungeons while they modify some old dungeons per year, but zero new group dungeons just leaves the players who actually do like to do small-scale group content (in an MMO, imagine that...) out in the cold.

Without the DLC model, could even give us one and make the other one a solo version of an existing dungeon. Then repeat later in the year, one new, one solo version. Or give us leaderboards to dungeons or something.