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Elder Scrolls Online: Latest AMA Transcript Posted
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The latest Elder Scrolls Online Ask Me Anything transcript has been posted to Reddit. Participating in the event were Paul Sage ESO Creative Director, Matt Firor ESO Game Director, Nick Konkle ESO Lead Gameplay Designer, and Brian Wheeler ESO Lead PvP Designer. Questions ranged from Early Access dates to the cash shop to racial skill mechanics.
The cash shop. I and many other players are very concerned about "premium" content. The game hasn’t even launched and there’s already an entire race and two mounts we’ll have to pay extra to access. Extra, on top of the game’s already-hefty $60 price tag and $15 monthly subscription fee.How are you planning on dealing with this? The point of a subscription-based game is that they don’t need to rely on things like cosmetic items and other cash shop gimmicks to turn a profit. Personally, I don’t care about vanity pets, but the fact that the ability to play as an Imperial, a race that’s been available in every single main Elder Scrollsgame, is already being sold, is a huge red flag for me and many other potential players.
The starter islands. Why did you decide to make characters start in the first main city with an option to go to the starter islands, rather than starting characters on the starter islands with the option to skip? I’ve met a number of people who hadn’t played before the last beta test who didn’t even know the starter islands existed and were very confused when they were quickly outleveled on the mainland. example
The "any race, any alliance" preorder thing. This seems like a way to make it so that there are only a limited number of characters playing in factions that don’t fit their race. Will there be some ingame way to change factions for people who didn’t preorder?"Cash Shop": The next items available for purchase are a name change service, and possibly some vanity pets. We have no timeline for these, so don’t expect them soon, and there aren’t concrete plans for anything else at the moment after that.
Starter Islands: We made this decision to give the players lots more choice in the early moments of the game. Not being able to leave the starter islands was too much on rails. So, we made the starter islands just "islands" and let players explore them when they want, along with other level 3-8 content. But after (much) feedback, we made it too hard to find the quest giver to send you to the island, so we are making one more change before launch: now, you’ll find a questgiver directly outside your front door to direct you to the islands. You don’t have to go there, but you can if you want. Choice.
Explorer Pack Bonus: playing any race in any alliance is a pre-order perk. We have no plans to offer this bonus in any other way.
Read the full AMA on the Elder Scrolls Online Reddit.
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Comments
"The starter islands. (...) I’ve met a number of people who hadn’t played before the last beta test who didn’t even know the starter islands existed and were very confused when they were quickly outleveled on the mainland."
Well, duh!! You're supposed to go explore! What's this hand-holding going on here?
"Weapon swapping lag/unresponsiveness is something we are working on to fix"
Wait, what? There is lag in ESO? No. Way.
"You can turn on healthbars of enemies to be always on in the options to make it easier to identity them as enemies due to the lack of nameplates"
I wonder from how far away those health bar pop up? And will they be obscured by terrain? Or will they be the giant red arrow over your head, yelling at any enemy player int he area "I'M HERE!!!"
It was confusing for first timers last beta to be dumped on the mainland with no guidance how to get to the starter island. I'm glad they are changing it up but their proposed change is not the best solution. What Zenimax should do is drop everyone on the starter island and have an NPC right in front of you that, after you talk to, will allow you to skip the island and port you to the mainland.
how convenient to be teleported to the city after been in molag bal's realm.. funny thing is the "starter islands" are the same as the rest of the game.. one quest after the other; and content after level 15, same stuff; so who Zenimax is listening? to the crybabies who were beta testing the game and were tired of re-playing the same starting areas all over again; it was not until the last beta events when zenimax let people to play with their toon without a wipe
they need to work on phasing..seems they don't know how to fix the issue when multiple players are doing the same chain quest and sometimes the NPC won't let you continue with the quest..this is the #1 thing that needs to be addressed, otherwise launch day will be a trainwreck; by the way I saw a lot of these issues in the starter islands, go figure
I had enemy health bars always on, and they pretty much show up at about max casting range. I can't give you specifics as I don't really pay attention to the numbers. It was buggy though. They didn't always show up. In those instances, even the damaged health bar didn't show up. So it may have been linked to another issue. I was also using a few addons.
It's clear you don't like the game from all the bashing you do here. Can i ask you, why do you care so much? Just move on..
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
So you keep saying, if you're not happy move on:)
I agree. Phasing bugs are (or were in last beta) a real problem. If they don't fix them until launch, I guess they will be in trouble. Not being able to progress in a quest, log-relog-relog-...-relog and relog, and keeping the issue, it's not an enjoyable experience.
So yes, skiping some islands, shortening the prision, those are the real things that matter... just hope phasing is solved by launch Zeni...
as a future paying sub costumer.
i expect they focus on fixing the phasing bugs on the quests- they really disancouraged me from going forward in the game.
last beta left a bad taste on my mouse.
and i prefer a character recustimizing in cash shop than pets...pets really?
Yep, totally agree. They're doing it back to front. I can't understand how they don't see that.
I really don't get it. The obvious thing to do here is to put players on the starter islands, and put a NPC very close to them, giving the option to skip said island. I really am starting to wonder about the decision making at Zenimax. What they did is so ass backwards, it makes no sense to any of the players, and they are feeling it in their forums.
How in the world does it makes sense to default new players past the new player experience? Whoever made that idiotic decision needs to be slapped. Yes guys, we are going to push new players past the NEW PLAYER experience. WHAT!?
I FEEL LIKE I WOKE UP IN BIZARRO WORLD!!!!
The phasing in the game is the single worst function at the moment, buy far. Immensely frustrating, yes. It's an MMO, I don't believe it's too much to ask to be able to play the game with others and not have them disappearing constantly, or being barred from entering various areas with them.
Thankfully though there has been talk that development is looking at the issue and will be working on it to not split up group members like it did so often in the betas. If they fix that, and the mob-spawning problems that were both rife in the betas, it will be happy days.
My plan was to start playing maybe a month after launch in order to avoid overcrowding and server issues.
In other words it doesn't matter to me when the game is launched, where it not for this huge preorder bonus of choosing faction. I might still preorder, but if I miss it I won't buy the game. In my opinion it is a poor business choice to offer a preorder bonus that is such a big deal to many players.
I don't expect to play for more than 2-3 months so whatever, I'll play something else if I miss the preorder date.
i think the best thing todo is actually have NO islands. that was a silly standard mmo descision- and we know Elder scrolls is unique in its own right.
sometimes u need to take risks -seems they are following every mmo rule in the book from the past 8 years.
Anyone else notice they pretty much stonewalled the Cash Shop question and what they did address was about as vaguely done as possible.
yupp.
Glad I pre-ordered too