The Elder Scrolls Online
- Thread starter Anomander Rake
- Start date
Also, who has ever been "wrong" arguing against an MMO release. They are all buggy and overcrowded when they come out and we all gripe. complain and get bored with them two months later.
IMHO this is the golden age of the genre because there are about 5-6 games out there that are very different from each other that you can play for short money and jump between them and still have fun. Looking at my desktop I have TESO (traditional leveller but new), Landmark (builder sandbox game), GW2 (action combat game with bi weekly updates to check out), Secret World (horror genre with fantastic stories), DDO (Dungeon Crawling and ridiculously complex character making).
Think of this as the post divorce age, take a lot of different lovers time of the genre. No depth of relationship like EQ or WoW was for many. Just good old dinner and a screw and you are off to another game.
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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Had not thought of that but it has nameds with named loot you camp. It has somewhat slower levelling. Public dungeons. No real control class like Chanters or Bard was but it does have 3 class roles. Hehe... I think we are projecting.
Kreugen
Vyemm Raider
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lol wat
I don't remember anything in EQ dying at Call of Duty speed.
It's like EQ.. if you're killing the rats and snakes in Freeport at level 30.
It's kind of annoying really - the combat would be much better than Skyrim, if things actually lived long enough to use your skills on them.
Elder Scrolls Online Interviews: Brian Wheeler Talks PvP and 'Darkness Falls'
MMORPG: Do you have any systems in place to deal with ?gaming? the Alliance War? E.g. trading or flipping keeps, Alliance Point farming, etc.
Brian Wheeler: For that, it hearkens back to some older mentalities, where flipping a keep or capturing a keep or resources are actually worth very very little on its own. But if a keep is fought over and lots of people are dying in it, and every time a player dies in the area of the keep or resource, its points are distributed not only to the people that killed you, or you know, you did the kill, but those points are also copied and put into the keep or resource, so when it?s actually captured, it?s worth more.
Also, conversely, when it?s defended, there?s a timer that?s going under the hood, where, if a keep is being assaulted and nobody is dying in a certain amount of time, the points are actually distributed to defenders. So, in terms of just running around and keep flipping for the most amount of points, that?s going to be a highly inefficient way of doing it. Also note that players, a solo player kill, at level 50, is worth more than flipping a keep, so it?s much more encouraged to fight other players and kill other players. In terms of worrying about the exploits of killing another player and getting tons of Alliance Points, there are obviously cooldown timers, so we don?t let you kill somebody repeatedly, over and over and over. They?re worth a zero amount for a while and then their value scales up over time, so you can?t just sit there off in a far corner in Cyrodiil and kill trade. It?s also gated on top of that by no resurrection abilities by players; you?ll need to resurrect them by using a Soul Gem.
***
MMORPG: How much do you rely on the three faction system to solve issues with population imbalance in a given campaign? Are there any systems in place to encourage players of a particular alliance to join a specific campaign?
Brian Wheeler: There are three things in play. One of them we?re working on getting in right now. The first one is that each campaign has a population cap per alliance, but obviously, you can still run into the case where it?s midnight and for some crazy reason the Australians are the Aldmeri players and the Ebonheart are the North Americans. You?re always going to run into that problem.
There currently is a scoring imbalance check, where if one alliance gets about double the amount of points that the other two alliances own, then the other two alliances get bonuses against that alliance. So, if Ebonheart has 2000 points and Aldmeri and Daggerfall have less than a thousand each, they each get bonuses against that alliance when they take keeps from them.* They don?t get it against themselves, but against the enemy that has the most, as well as for holding onto their own.* So it?s a little bit of incentive to make sure you hang onto your territory as well as take territory from the ?big bully? who has the most Alliance Points.
We?re also looking at population imbalance scoring checks as well. I can?t give too many details on that, because the system is getting implemented right now, but it?s basically to handle those cases where your scoring can?t catch up and your population isn?t high enough. We don?t want you to feel like you have to leave the campaign to go somewhere else. We want to give you scoring benefits to let you catch up and make the other team not feel like they can just always dominate somebody by pure numbers.
***
MMORPG: Can we ever expect something like Darkness Falls in ESO?
Brian Wheeler: Everybody always asks me that and all I can say is that, if we?ve given you everything you want so far for PvP massive scale feedback, just, you know, stay tuned.* We?ll have more information on something that people have been asking for for a long time and I?m working on things that will try to give that same sense. Right now we have the caves, where you can go into them and kill people, but obviously people want things that are a lot more involved, like you guys said, like Darkness Falls.
***
MMORPG: *One thing that stood out to me in AvA is that I sometimes had trouble telling if I was hitting someone with my bow. Do you have any plans for a sort of hit indicator or something like that?
Brian Wheeler: Yeah, there?s actually some things we?re looking at internally right now, where we?re trying to give hitting both players and NPCs a little bit more impact. We have in there right now, if you show the health bars, it?ll do a little bit of a flash when you hit a target, but feedback has been asking for some more of that, especially for melee impact, so we?re looking at that right now. For the time being, if you turn on health bars, it?ll do a small little flash when you hit them to help out. It is tough to tell when you?re dealing with 40 or 50 people in front of you that are all enemies, but like I said, we?re trying to figure out some things for that now.
***
MMORPG: Can you comment on the Cyrodiil level scaling concerns raised in Isarii?s Tamriel Foundry piece?
Brian Wheeler:* The level scaling functions to adjust player stats up to that of around level 45-50 in average green gear with points spread between Magicka, Stamina and Health evenly. We are well aware of the issues with it and working on resolving them.
MMORPG: Do you have any systems in place to deal with ?gaming? the Alliance War? E.g. trading or flipping keeps, Alliance Point farming, etc.
Brian Wheeler: For that, it hearkens back to some older mentalities, where flipping a keep or capturing a keep or resources are actually worth very very little on its own. But if a keep is fought over and lots of people are dying in it, and every time a player dies in the area of the keep or resource, its points are distributed not only to the people that killed you, or you know, you did the kill, but those points are also copied and put into the keep or resource, so when it?s actually captured, it?s worth more.
Also, conversely, when it?s defended, there?s a timer that?s going under the hood, where, if a keep is being assaulted and nobody is dying in a certain amount of time, the points are actually distributed to defenders. So, in terms of just running around and keep flipping for the most amount of points, that?s going to be a highly inefficient way of doing it. Also note that players, a solo player kill, at level 50, is worth more than flipping a keep, so it?s much more encouraged to fight other players and kill other players. In terms of worrying about the exploits of killing another player and getting tons of Alliance Points, there are obviously cooldown timers, so we don?t let you kill somebody repeatedly, over and over and over. They?re worth a zero amount for a while and then their value scales up over time, so you can?t just sit there off in a far corner in Cyrodiil and kill trade. It?s also gated on top of that by no resurrection abilities by players; you?ll need to resurrect them by using a Soul Gem.
***
MMORPG: How much do you rely on the three faction system to solve issues with population imbalance in a given campaign? Are there any systems in place to encourage players of a particular alliance to join a specific campaign?
Brian Wheeler: There are three things in play. One of them we?re working on getting in right now. The first one is that each campaign has a population cap per alliance, but obviously, you can still run into the case where it?s midnight and for some crazy reason the Australians are the Aldmeri players and the Ebonheart are the North Americans. You?re always going to run into that problem.
There currently is a scoring imbalance check, where if one alliance gets about double the amount of points that the other two alliances own, then the other two alliances get bonuses against that alliance. So, if Ebonheart has 2000 points and Aldmeri and Daggerfall have less than a thousand each, they each get bonuses against that alliance when they take keeps from them.* They don?t get it against themselves, but against the enemy that has the most, as well as for holding onto their own.* So it?s a little bit of incentive to make sure you hang onto your territory as well as take territory from the ?big bully? who has the most Alliance Points.
We?re also looking at population imbalance scoring checks as well. I can?t give too many details on that, because the system is getting implemented right now, but it?s basically to handle those cases where your scoring can?t catch up and your population isn?t high enough. We don?t want you to feel like you have to leave the campaign to go somewhere else. We want to give you scoring benefits to let you catch up and make the other team not feel like they can just always dominate somebody by pure numbers.
***
MMORPG: Can we ever expect something like Darkness Falls in ESO?
Brian Wheeler: Everybody always asks me that and all I can say is that, if we?ve given you everything you want so far for PvP massive scale feedback, just, you know, stay tuned.* We?ll have more information on something that people have been asking for for a long time and I?m working on things that will try to give that same sense. Right now we have the caves, where you can go into them and kill people, but obviously people want things that are a lot more involved, like you guys said, like Darkness Falls.
***
MMORPG: *One thing that stood out to me in AvA is that I sometimes had trouble telling if I was hitting someone with my bow. Do you have any plans for a sort of hit indicator or something like that?
Brian Wheeler: Yeah, there?s actually some things we?re looking at internally right now, where we?re trying to give hitting both players and NPCs a little bit more impact. We have in there right now, if you show the health bars, it?ll do a little bit of a flash when you hit a target, but feedback has been asking for some more of that, especially for melee impact, so we?re looking at that right now. For the time being, if you turn on health bars, it?ll do a small little flash when you hit them to help out. It is tough to tell when you?re dealing with 40 or 50 people in front of you that are all enemies, but like I said, we?re trying to figure out some things for that now.
***
MMORPG: Can you comment on the Cyrodiil level scaling concerns raised in Isarii?s Tamriel Foundry piece?
Brian Wheeler:* The level scaling functions to adjust player stats up to that of around level 45-50 in average green gear with points spread between Magicka, Stamina and Health evenly. We are well aware of the issues with it and working on resolving them.
Your old school cred is revoked.
Nec dual wielding pet exploit in Lower Guk the first months put any mob killing in TESO to shame, even comparing endgame original EQ to TESO level 15...
If all you do at level 30 is kill snakes in Freeport, then that's on you. Quit fighting overworld trash mobs unless they're a few levels over you, and start exploring dungeons. Not every game holds your hand to help you find the content you want. Sometimes you have to explore and actually learn the game.
From mrmoneda's article
And it wasn't only waves of attackers. That battle raged primarily between the Covenant and Pact. Even though the lore piece added for it only recognizes the Covenant and Dominion, most who were actually there can recall that the Dominion was rarely present. It went between Chalman Keep (held by the Pact -- I was one of those defenders) and Aleswell Keep (held by the Covenant). Yes, it was an amazing experience, but he's a bit dishonest about why it went the way that it did. Were it not for the false disconnects, either keep could have fallen several times over.
That battle will forever be etched in my memory as one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had in gaming, but this is twice now that they've rewritten the history of it. Let's not disrespect something so awesome that it overcame even forced disconnects and artificial lag to rage on for that long. Let's have at least an iota of recognition for the way it really went or we can't learn from it in design nor play.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing how easy that is when your servers force entire raids of attackers to disconnect at one time, isn't it? So if the attackers aren't allowed to play then small groups of defenders can hold them off indefinitely? Wowsers. Amazing. What was amazing about that battle were the sheer numbers involved, the time that it went on (I recall 4-5 hours from first push to last defense), and the fact that false stress on connections didn't bring the battle to an abrupt end. It won't work that way when some of the novelty wears off -- people will just quit.
And it wasn't only waves of attackers. That battle raged primarily between the Covenant and Pact. Even though the lore piece added for it only recognizes the Covenant and Dominion, most who were actually there can recall that the Dominion was rarely present. It went between Chalman Keep (held by the Pact -- I was one of those defenders) and Aleswell Keep (held by the Covenant). Yes, it was an amazing experience, but he's a bit dishonest about why it went the way that it did. Were it not for the false disconnects, either keep could have fallen several times over.
That battle will forever be etched in my memory as one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had in gaming, but this is twice now that they've rewritten the history of it. Let's not disrespect something so awesome that it overcame even forced disconnects and artificial lag to rage on for that long. Let's have at least an iota of recognition for the way it really went or we can't learn from it in design nor play.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Exactly, and sorry for the edits. I just can't stress enough how amazing that experience was even though it seemed some techie was pushing a "ruin it" button. And this happened to alliance members selectively, simultaneously, but not only on one alliance -- that's how we know it was fake lag. I hope they stop twisting the story and instead just focus on what actually happened and was actually amazing.
Going down the steps to Aleswell at one point where the Dominion was simultaneously attacking, it hardly felt like a video game. The sheer numbers, the amount of action going on made it feel like war in a way that no game has ever achieved. That was the crowning moment for PvP during that session, in my eyes. It's an experience I would gladly maintain a subscription to repeat (assuming it can when people start getting spread over instances).
Muligan
Trakanon Raider
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I would like to know what elements you are referencing. I've heard this a couple of times but do not see it personally by reading many of the posts here and other sites. Care to elaborate? May cause me to actually purchase the game.
Everyone stack on the door!
Man I would ALMOST consider platying TESO to hear drunk Tuco leading AvA in TS again...
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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I wasn't there but I know what you mean. There have been some surreal moments in the warfare MMOs we've played. I remember in Shadowbane the entire server allied against us, organized by a guild that betrayed us. The planning for the inevitable bane and attack was done in a week in advance and prepared 800 people (the count from the GM, not ours) to attack our 300 people (again, the count from the GM). Moving the massive enemy force took some time and I remember waiting for them to arrive. We had various tactics to slow them down and harass them, and we had eyes on them the entire time but it was great to see them finally appear to siege us. A few hours they were destroyed.
Another good one was the first ever siege of AoC which happened on the server all the PVP guild piled onto. It was a 5am siege (Chosen automatically or through bugs, not intentional from the attackers) and I remember standing on the wall scanning the tree horizon at dawn waiting for them to start popping up. It was very similar to hunting at dawn. The actual fight wasn't that memorable except that it was the first siege in AoC worldwide. They didn't have the numbers and the siege warfare was so buggy it was almost impossible to win. We counterattacked a few days later and destroyed their keep.
The last one I'll mention was in GW2 somewhat early on in the campaign against the alliance of Team Legacy, Lords of the Dead, RUIN gaming, Fist of the Empire and a bunch of others. It was the first day of the campaign and RUIN publicly announced they were going to just focus on ensuring we didn't win, no matter the cost. Up to this point we pushed hard for our victories but it was never really in doubt that we'd win, and we rarely were in a losing position even momentarily. We were able to gain a good foothold at first, but Ruin was employing the strategy of sending wave after wave of their forces from their spawn to our spawn, so our supply lines were cut and we couldn't engage in any meaningful way outside of our spawn. After 4 hours of this we were pushed back to the center of our spawn's keep, with our keep lord dying many times within minutes of spawning and almost no walls or gates left in the entire fortress. This state persisted for over two hours. What's interesting to note is that getting all of our team into the map was a huge problem usually, but as the night wore on and we were getting pushed further and further back it got easier and easier and soon there only two groups of people left: those in PRX and those who were going to join PRX after that night.
Eventually the third server broke discipline and started taking easy targets from RUIN. RUIN ignored them and let them take their land, but without a focused effort we were able to push them back. That was the closest we ever came to losing our keep and but we never let it happen in any WvW campaign. We also won that war.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Haha that strategy was always a coin flip, largely based on whether they could manage to get the oil pot built on top of us. I hate stacking in any circumstance and never understood why there is ever an AE cap. If I rain fire down on your head it doesn't matter if you have twenty dudes next to you, you're taking the same amount of damage.
Kreugen
Vyemm Raider
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Which has absolutely nothing to do with the ridiculous comparison of ESO and EQ. In EQ, you had to look to find things that you could kill effortlessly for some measure of profit. In ESO it's the other way around. Which is fine, I don't care that you don't have to find 5 other people just to go outside the town gates, except they go way too far with it. It doesn't feel like combat, it feels like assassination. It feels like being level 30 and killing ratsall the time - unless you go out of your way to find something challenging.
That's why I was baffled by the comparison. The pace is so ridiculously far from EQ - kill mob in 2-4 hits or one or two special attacks, regen back any resources used within seconds, repeat - vs a minute long slugfest followed by 15 minutes of sitting on your ass. Both represent the furthest extremes from one another. There's a happy medium somewhere, and this isn't it.
This is also something that could very easily be changed, if they wanted to. Otherwise I wouldn't bother discussing it. I'm not often someone that says "the combat would be better if it lasted longer" because man, I remember the twats from various betas who think every rat and snake should be a 2-5 minute affair. But in this game it's just true.
khalid
Unelected Mod
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That shit was fun as well. The entire time I was wondering how they couldn't manage to take the Keep, it was unbelievable that they never managed to.