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Upcoming Campaign Changes
Iselin
Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
We want to make significant changes to the types and durations of Campaigns. To do this, we’d shut down the currently-existing Campaigns and introduce five new ones per megaserver. Here are the Campaign types and durations we’re thinking about adding:
• Bow of Shadows: Veteran Rank only Campaign (five-day campaign)
• Blackwater Blade: Non-Veteran only Campaign (five-day campaign)
• Haderus: seven-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.
• Chillrend: seven-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.
• Thornblade: 30-day standard Campaign that anyone can join.
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Comments
I don't get why the campaigns need to end at all. It worked wonderfully in DAoC. Control changes hands naturally. Though, it would help to fight over more than just being an emporer. Adding the Imperial City as a 'Darkness Fall's' sort of reward would certainly help. Exclusive content for the controlling alliance would be nice.
Having completely artificial ends to these campaigns just seems weird. Well, so does 12-man trials that are nothing more than mob waves with a leaderboard is weird too. Really doesn't make sense in the ES IP...
I like the 90 day. 30 is too short.
edit - Official forum link here.
They don't "end" the map does not change. Only the score resets. I hear you though why even have that huh?
They are addressing the issue and that's the good news. They are "thinking about it" also, which means they are open to community feedback. I think now is a great time to go to that thread in the ESO forums with constructive feedback and suggestions rather than criticism of what they have proposed. I'm sure that there will be some great ideas from the community.
I'm glad to see this. Thanks for posting here, OP.
I don't like any Call of Duty in my MMO's.. lol
30 day campaign seem more reasonable. Maybe i buy a 3 month sub package to focus on a 90 day campaign and a month down the road i get tired and cancel the sub. There goes 2/3 of the sub wasted.
Hmm, that's an Interesting way of looking at it. I can see where you're coming from.
Having shorter campaigns may stimulate more involvement from the community. It gives immediacy to each campaign and a feeling of a more tangible benefit from being involved, that you "win" within the shorter time period rather than 3 months down the road.
I haven't done any PvP but I think something like this would encourage me to do it. I like the idea of a short time period commitment for it. I think ZOS should give it ago and see how the community reacts to it.
It was was a foregone conclusion in my book.
When I first saw that the campaign length was going to be 90 days, I thought it would be great. A sense of permanence and achievement.
My very next thought was "this is so not going to work", because I remembered the "average MMO player" mindset. Most of them wouldn't even be playing the game for 3 months IN TOTAL, let alone in one PVP campaign.
ESO is not DAOC and will never be. Zenimax want to capitalize on their huge IP, and tha won't happen with a playerbase of 200K. Casual is where the money is, and that's why the game will always be designed to be "inclusive" as opposed to being niche-focused.
It's only a matter of time before ZOS introduce battlegrounds or "instant-action fights" or some other format where PVP is delivered in short (15 to 30 mins) but high-intensity bursts. That is the most popular PVP format by far, and that is what the masses want. Console players will add strong demand for this form of match-based PVP as well.
The map doesn't reset, just the score.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I think the whole point of shorter campaigns is to give out better rewards more often. What those rewards are and how far down the leaderboard they go will be the interesting part.
The way things are now, other than the few players who get the Emperor skill line, we only see random green set items given out as "rewards for the worthy" as you play in Cyrodiil for earning "x" number of points. Contrast that with the shitload of purple drops you get in Craglorn or vet dungeons and the PVP rewards you get per hour of PVP played feels pretty meh.
Same for the XP gains imbalance that currently exist. Their goal should be to make different types of gameplay give similar XP and rewards with some consideration for the difficulty... i.e. let people play how they want without obvious disadvantages for one type of activity vs. others.
Their next step should be to increase the XP gains in Cyrodiil to be on a par with PVE....
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
My only concern is they do not start paying too much attention to the casuals, remember most of them have gone and are now descending on poor Wildstar, there is justice in this world after all.
ESO is far more casual than Wildstar in my opinion. At least the dungeons/endgame/leveling/pvp are more casual. ESO offers a leveling experience that is far more soloable. ESO offers endgame that is far easier to complete. ESO offers probably some of the easiest dungeons ever devised. And RvR PvP is one of the most casual PvP experiences you can have because it's so easy to hide in a zerg and bash a door. The amount of faceroll that is possible in ESO, especially when you devise (or more likely copy from a site) one of the few OP builds is actually astonishing. One of the main weaknesses of ESO is how casualized it is in my opinion.
The main "challenge" that ESO has is being able get through 100 million hours of fetch/kill quests. I suppose as long as you see patience to do something extremely boring for huge amounts of time challenging, ESO just might be one of the most challenging games out there.
Please, provide some names of those easiest dungeons ever devised !!!
Or are you simply making this up !!??
I Think you do, or you have only played the dungeons that are ment for solo/casual play ..The Delves ??
I have a concern.
They propose closing all the existing 3 month campaigns and I can't find a single post in the official forums against the idea. Did Zenimax get their design so wrong? Run no testing? Or were the campaigns "still born" - blitzed by a few guilds whose members power-levelled to 50?
Lots of comments about dead campaigns; so dead that getting APs needed to transfer is hard.
So is it the 90 days or the "dead" nature of the campaigns.
I think useful data could be obtained from opening a new 90 day campaign per server - just one per server to start next week say. With a list prior to launch for people to express their interest. If 2k people per faction are interested the campaign goes ahead; if more than 2k are interested a selection process will operate - preference given to higher ranked characters / guild affiliation.
I'm not saying that the changes won't be beneficial btw; just concerned that Zenimax are not thinking of how to solve "a problem" rather than "how did the problem arise". They thought 90 days was the way ahead at launch after all.
The pre-VR campaign is going to be the most busy. One major issue with ESO right now is that hardly anybody enters AvA pre-vet because you simply get face rolled due to power discrepancy.
Bugs and skill balancing aside (always as issue in early mmos) the most impactful additions to this game are those that exclude players at this time: Pre-VR AvA and phasing ruining group content. It would be extremely wise for ZOS to add low VR level Adventure Zones as an alternative to VR quest grinding. The increased size of delves should assist with pre-VR adventuring greatly as well. All this creates content for even level capped players once levels are adjusted to group leader. I also highly expect VR difficulty to be adjusted once class balancing is evened out.
When this is implemented this game may finally start feeling like a real mmo!
How long this all takes is going to be the issue.
You stay sassy!
They also need a V1-V5 or even V1-3, or maybe just a V1 with the option for players to retcon their character to V1 if they don't feel like leveling to V10 but are already V2+
I mean seriously, what are newly minted lvl 50s (which get turned into V1), supposed to do if they don't want to keep level grinding?
In between his description of the questing and that of the dungeons, the only question is whether he played it at all, or whether he tried a beta weekend for a few hours.
Depends what you classify as casual. The only stats I have ever seen on the subject would suggest that around 80% of online gamers consider themselves to be casual. The lower levels of ESO still seem pretty full to me so I would say that there is still a fair chunk of 'casual' gamers (as in people who don't have many hours to game) still playing.
In any event if the large proportion of online gamers are casual if you want to see any success for the game you will want to make sure that you do not actively discourage them from engaging with the game through mechanics designed solely for hard core gamers. You need to find a balance to keep them both entertained. That is why I think varying campaign length options is a good idea. For anyone interested:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/123288/Study_66_Of_US_Online_Population_Are_Casual_Gamers.php
Hopefully they will leave ONE 90 day Campaign left..Please do not casualise this game any further..You had an idea with these long Campaigns , STICK with your VISION please..
The guys who left this game won't come back just because of these Changes, or a VERY small percentage will, once you have quit an MMO there is not many that does comeback regardless of it's Changes, players have already moved on to the next MMO or some other game.
The big problem I see with this is the alliance inbalance. I am in EPact and frankly there are only two campaigns right now where we are not horribly outnumbered and in the two where there is more balance, we are not a majority or even close.
The change here will make the less played realm unable to pick one realm where we have at least a shot. My guess is we will be around 15% evenly on all of the options making us have the Altdorf problem back in Warcraft where far too many people chose Chaos over Order. Once the number of realms was reduced due to merges, the places where things were balanced went away and Order was just rolled over on the merged servers.
That was actually the reason why I left Warcraft. I was fine with the game. I was fine with the people. Our server merged into a bloodbath, of our own blood. Chaos had a small advantage where I came from. A merge happened and Altdorf was taken FOUR TIMES in the first day. This continued as the ratio was such that Order had no chance of holding anything simply due to tremendously lower numbers. Skill can overcome a 1.2 to 1 advantage. Nothing overcomes a 2 to 1 advantage.
45-35-15 makes things very unhappy for people on the 15 side.
Centkin, the side that's 35 works with the side that's 15. That makes it 50 versus 45. The two weaker sides do not attack each other they attack the big guy and an assault on two sides is hard to handle. It worked in DAOC, its working in TESO. Not in every campaign mind you, some campaigns seem to have players who are unwilling to work together or are just unaware of this principle. You don't even need to discuss it much, you know who the big guy is, you attack them. But with communication you can arrange for pincer attacks at the same time.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.