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Elder Scrolls Online: Panel - The Future of ESO
BMunchausen
Staff WriterMMORPG.COM Staff Posts: 400
For QuakeCon attendees, the countdown is on and one of the reasons for their giddiness is the upcoming Future of ESO Panel and Q&A session. For anyone who can't attend in person, don't despair - beginning at 5 pm CDT, Friday, July 18th, Bethesda's Twitch channel will be broadcasting the panel and subsequent Q&A.
Panel speakers include:
Lead Content Designer Rich Lambert – Veteran City of Ash dungeon, region three of Craglorn, dungeon replayability, and grouping improvements
Lead PvP Designer Brian Wheeler – the Imperial City
Lead Client Programmer Jesse McIntyre – facial animations
Creative Director Paul SAGE
– the Champion System and the Justice System
Lead Gameplay Designer Nick Konkle – Spellcrafting
Art Director Jared Carr – combat responsiveness and new PvE content
For more info or to discuss the panel, visit the ESO forums.
Comments
I fanboyed so hard over this game from mid-closed beta through about 2 months after release. Unfortunately, now, I feel that the game is doomed. They keep talking about all these cool things they want to do "in the future" but they're not doing anything to keep/bring back the lost subs.
Item dyes are nice and definitely needed with the abundance of lackluster armors, but the implementation is all wrong. It shouldn't be tied to achievements. People should WANT to do things, not be forced to do unenjoyable content just to make shitty-looking high end gear look slightly better.
I think the only saving grace for ESO would be the Thieve's Guild and Dark Brotherhood patch. But I fear that if they don't make it to the game by 1.4, too many people will be gone, not to return.
I'm hearing all this this cool stuff and can't help but like it. But the intrinsic problem with ESO is still there. It's still not a REAL OPEN WORLD. As long as the world is still ZONED and progression throughout those zones is still defined, I can't enjoy it as much as I would like to. MMOs and Elder Scrolls games alike are supposed to, for the most part, have seamless exploration between major land masses. That means NO level barriers, forced quests, mountains blocking your path, or high-level enemies in your face. I will give ESO another shot once Dark Brotherhood and Thieves guild comes, but here's to hoping they redesign all of Tamriel at some point in the future...
If they really want the future of ESO to be a success, they need to do what Square Enix did. with FFXIV.
I haven't played a ton of MMOs, but I've played a decent amount. I have yet to see a "successful" one that lacks all of those features. Maybe GW2, but I only played that for about 5 minutes on a free weekend last year.
I loved the content of TESO the story line is awesome and it feels Scrolls enough for me. Reason I left? MMO basics. You can't complete content together with friends if they have already done the content; they join you but they phase out of synch. So if your usual group got a little behind or a little ahead on the quest line you are left solo or to find random pick up groups. Whatever reason they introduced this mechanic (anti-farming?) they seriously damaged the social aspect of the game.
Add to this the 5 guilds per acct to further dilute the experience, no guild tags. What am I supposed to do for social content, grind dungeons over and over? In a rich story line Elder Scrolls game? I got to veteran on one toon and said thanks for the single player game.
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I pretty much agree with that altough allmost no chance for such a thing to happen.
Maybe over time they can slowly adjust...but honestly they deserve the hate they got.
Taking such a big title and using it to make money from another typical mmo, not cool at all.
Outside of the announced VR/endgame progression revamp, I can't tell of Zenimax is sticking to their original planned roadmap or re-prioritizing based on feedback.
I don't think ESO is a lost cause like the original 1.0 release of FF14. FF14 1.0 had A LOT of core technological server and client issues ON TOP of poor design choices. ESO is now mostly plagued by poor design choices and of course the aggressive phasing mechanics. Crafting is solid. Combat is mostly solid - though it seems to depend on the latest patch as responsiveness can swing from spot on to delayed and bloated. Levels 1-50 are solid except for phasing issues with grouping.
If anything, I just want them to be a bit more transparent and communicate more frequently. Yoshida pulled two miracles. He and his team almost saved the original 1.0 version of FF14 and he and his team successfully re-launched the game. All of this because of his ability to communicate and provide some transparency to players. Zenimax still feels highly inaccessible and out of touch. For me at least, these panels will make or break it for me.
I agree %100
Really hope they do it
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Its ironic that my favorite single player games of all times are (in order)
Skyrim
Morrowind
Neverwinter Nights
(kerbal space program belongs on the list of 4 but I am undecided where)
and I am not playing ESO but I did just spend $150 for ArcheAge
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I don't think any company aside from Square Enix will do that, specially western companies.
If the game don't sell well , they close it down and sell it to other company . It not like they hold any pride on they work.
TBH, one of my favorite things to do when I'd get frustrated with VR content was to log on a low level character and run around trying to catch/report speed hackers. I'm not quite sure why it was so fun to me. Maybe it was the challenge of trying to target them fast enough to be able to report them.
OMG! Great idea! They should turn that into a minigame! A weekly contest to see who can make the most legitimate bot/hacker reports! I'd resub JUST for that!
Must be nice to be privy to high level talks and all....
OT - IMPERIAL CITY!!! TELL ME MORE!
Come on bro... If you played the game, or had any idea about pvp in the game, your post would look like mine above.
The Imperial city is at the heart of Cyrodiil and will be a huge expansion.
I've seen a LOT of talk about people wanting it to go F2P. Do Y'all mean F2P, as in free download with a horrid cash shop, or B2P, like GW2 and TSW? I think at this point, if it went F2P they'd actually lose a ton of the current player base and end up losing a ton of income in the process. The game can't go F2P without making drastic changes.
I've not played a single decent free to play game.
All my favourites seem to be buy to play like the Secret World and GW2.
f2p will bring in more players of course, friends who wouldnt buy the game, freeloaders who never pay a penny on any MMO and I'm sure there would be people who would spend hundreds of pounds to sustain the rest of the playerbase.
The only problem is they lose the current sub revenue and gets replaced with a watered down freemium model that is not guaranteed to even have as many subscribers. Something that I personally hate and I'm sure most people willing to pay a sub dont want F2P gimmicks and restrictions everywhere.
I have found that F2P brings new players in ... not old players back (at least not nearly as often).
F2P is the death of community. ESO's issue is that they coded ways to not have community build to begin with through their phasing. ZOS has mentioned nearly every issue related to this and are addressing them. How well they work we will wait and see. They have 2 choices:
1. Keep the game p2p and nurture the existing community hoping the game becomes good enough to grow it's player base.
2. Go f2p and nickle and dime an eternal pool of noobies through a rotating door whilst destroying any chance of a large community as the mmo players leave to new games as is the norm over the last 10 years.
We know the direction most mmos take these days. I personally hope (even if I do not play the game long) ZOS has balls enough to go the community route ... if only because few other mmo developers bother to care about the genre which has always been community based. This has been forgotten long ago.
You stay sassy!
And I would imagine that most modern AAA subscription mmo's are designed with a view to churning maximum profit from sales and subscriptions within the first few months and switching to F2P once subs dip below a certain level. Projections on this basis must form part of the initial feasibility.
I want them to turn it into a sandbox like how TES games have always been, then I will return.
Also open world PVP is a must, right now you cannot even see the enemy faction in the world...