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ZOS Explains Antiquities System Coming to Elder Scrolls Online Greymoor
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ZOS Explains Antiquities System Coming to Elder Scrolls Online Greymoor
Zenimax Online have shared some more details on the Antiquities system set to hit Greymoor, the latest chapter for Elder Scrolls Online.
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Can't see it changing now. They threw their hat into the "this is an action combat mmo" ring. It will be permanently limited by the hotbar format they chose.
Other mmo's adapt pretty well to pc and console imput, but this one decided it was console based, with the pc as a 'suppose we'd best do this as well' approach.
I believe a full hotbar format was available in beta, but removed after complaints it would give too much of an advantage.
From then on the combat was ruled by this console first decision.
There are screenshots circulating around that show early Alpha footage of ESO - it looked exactly like WoW - it had the same UI layout, action bar spanning from the [1] key all the way up to the [=] key, minimap in the top right, character stats in the top left, the works. The crosshair for targeting wasn't even implemented into the game and it was a tab-targeting game through and through.
I bet they changed their approach when they decided to go cross-platform and that made it OK for consoles, but a sub-par experience on desktop. I remember one shooter called Blacklight Retribution that was OK on PC, but they brought the console "improvements" to PC in one patch called "The Parity Patch", which ruined the experience the same way ESO's is ruined on PC and that caused the players to leave and the game to shut down soon after.
However; goodness how the community has changed. What an awful experience pugging is these days. Sadly long gone is the ESO community where once it could be considered one of the 'better'. It's really sad to see.
And just to clarify;
a) Pugging in ESO was once on the whole an enjoyable experience with the vast majority of players, both playing the game as it was intended, and being generally considerate of others in their group,
b) How a game's community on the whole interacts and treats strangers is generally a more robust criteria for it's health overall. After all, our friends, and guilds to a lesser degree, are extremely biased in both how they treat us and as a sample of the gaming population.
The antiquities system does sound somewhat interesting, but I know know... with any semblance of the community which it had, it's largely just a single player game, and in that respect there are - personally - far better options out there.
Just disappointed that there has been such a marked change in community values...
Probably not too surprisingly, it's got markedly worse since lockdown with schools being shut.
RPS: When you first revealed Elder Scrolls Online, you got a fair amount of backlash from fans. It’s not first-person, there’s a WoW-esque action bar, etc. Have you been listening, though? Do you plan on revamping any specific aspects of the game to address those complaints?
Paul Sage: It’s interesting, you know, there’s going to be reaction from a lot of things. One of the things that would be bad would be to react to something you just see – as opposed to when you play. When people are playing the game and giving us feedback, we’re absolutely going to be looking and saying, “That is something we need to change.” But a lot of people see the action bar and see it as something that’s bad, because they picture rotation’s going off – you know, these long chains they set up – as opposed to what we really tried to do with it, which is, you can’t pause combat during an online game.
So, for us, it’s a matter of having abilities that are easy to access on a keyboard-mouse setup. So it was really straightforward to put them on these shortcut bars and see how it works. Then, when you start playing, you realize you can use an ability with only a slight delay before you can use it again. But you can use it until your mana or stamina bar runs out, and you pair it with this real-time thing, and it really starts to feel good.
Back in 2014 and for the first couple of years when dungeons became available 3 at a time as you leveled you typically grouped with others at or near your own level so you were far more likely to get a PUG with others with the same degree of knowledge about the game in general and the particular dungeon you were in who wanted to run the dungeon properly.
Level scaling combined with the dungeon dailies to get keys for the "monster set" shoulders totally turned that on its head with PUGs for any dungeon having a mix of max CP players who just want to do it as fast as humanly possible, skipping anything they can skip and running way ahead of the group, together with low level players who may be doing the dungeon for the first time.
Then there are the DPS who queue as tanks or healers to get in a group faster who once upon a time used to be kicked for being queue jumpers who now rationalize it on the basis that normal dungeons don't need tanks or healers and people let them get away with it or fight about it.
As you can imagine there's a lot of friction because you have people in there for different reasons and some ruining everything by lying about their role.
People are still generally helpful and friendly in other parts of the game but definitely not in PUGs. They're a shitshow now.
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