Elder Scrolls Online - The Road Ahead #2

Couchpotato

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Elder Scrolls Online Director Matt Firor has posted his next update on the games website with information on what to except for the recently launched MMO.

As we reach the four-week mark of ESO and are about to embark on our first major update, now is a good time to talk about what we’ve been doing for the game in the past month, what we’re working on currently, and what exciting new content and systems we plan to add over the next few months.

First and foremost, as I posted in my mini-update last week, we’re working every day to reduce gold farming and botting, which detract from the gameplay experience for everyone. You may have seen Customer Support GMs in the game over the last week actively banning bots in dungeons. We’re also doing a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the game honest and will continue to do so. Please keep helping us by reporting botting and spamming activity in-game.

We’re also continuing to fix bugs as we find them and as players report them to us. In a world as large as ESO’s, with endless variations of gameplay by players, it is impossible for QA to identify all bugs before launch, but we’re working hard to find and close them quickly. We’ve fixed many quest blockers, especially in zone, NPC guild, and main story quests, but we know there are still others. These affect far fewer players, but they’re annoying when encountered and we will address them. Fixes are getting patched in during our regular weekly updates, and of course Update 1 (see below) will contain many more.

We recognize that some of the launch issues—especially black market botting and spam, de-synced quests, and the disappearing bank slot bug—affected the early gameplay experience of a number of players. Fixing these problems required us to take the megaservers offline, costing players time in the game. In recognition of this experience and to show our gratitude to everyone who supported the launch, we are giving an additional five days of included game time to every ESO player who set up an active account prior to 8pm EDT Thursday May 1st and who are currently enjoying their 30 days of included game time. If you’re eligible to receive the five additional days, a confirmation will be sent to your account’s registered email address. For further details, please visit help.elderscrollsonline.com. This is a small gesture to show our thanks for being part of the ESO community while we work to make this extraordinary game and service even better.

As we end this first month of our journey together, we want to express sincere appreciation to our loyal fans. Be assured that we are working diligently to keep ESO balanced, stable, and fresh for veteran players. We’ve gotten through our launch month well and are heading towards our first update soon. After that, expect many more good things in ESO. Thank you so much for your support and continued enthusiasm about the game.
More information.
 
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All I read was a bunch of gibberish...I translated it as: our game has tons of issues and will be Free2Play very soon.

Let the ESO hate continue!
 
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Let the ESO hate continue!

Sure go ahead but I will just continue to ignore what you write. :)

Now excuse me while I go play the game.;)
 
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What I read is Dark Brotherhood and thieves guilds quests coming-awesome!

It looks like they are working on getting rid of the spambots,gold sellers and trying to make it a better game. What is the matter with that?
 
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which detract from the gameplay experience for everyone.

How?

It seems that people who use botting, gold farming find the gameplay experience to their taste, they are interested in the end term of the game and head for that.

As to the others, how does it disturb their gameplay experience?

Banning cheaters on what ground?

In a SP game, there is no cheating. Cheating only happens when other people might feel themselves cheated by "cheaters" doings. Which are still unknown for this game.
 
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Chien, you usually have sharp insights, but in this case I can name several reasons why bots are harmful, even without playing ESO:

(1) players without bot assistance cannot make a profit at the auction house / black market when bots catch all the good deals

(2) through bots some players obtain gold at a high rate which leads to inflated prices that other players cannot afford

(3) farming of certain mobs by bots actively hinders players from killing those for quests and experience

(4) bots are even less social than most players and detract from the social experience in the MMORPG

(5) commercial use of bots leads to chat spamming from gold sellers which is both annoying for people using the chat function and breaks the fourth wall for those who want to immerse themselves into the fiction

I am sure there are a few more, but in online games, bot usage is a serious issue that must be addressed lest the experience suffers for everyone. Incidentally, I did program successful bots in an online game years ago, and I know it is tempting to justify their usage, but honestly, there are better ways to apply creative software development.
 
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How?

It seems that people who use botting, gold farming find the gameplay experience to their taste, they are interested in the end term of the game and head for that.

As to the others, how does it disturb their gameplay experience?

If you were in the game you would understand. 20 bots gathered around one resource node insta harvesting it because of respawn coding due to high numbers of characters in the area.
Imagine going into a dungeon to kill the 'boss' and there is 15 other players standing in the spawn location instakilling it every respawn.
The feeling of accomplishment died really fast with campers on every chest, every boss, every spawn.
I'm glad some people are enjoying this game, but many are not. Optimism is great, but if the toaster isnt plugged in, you wont get toast.
 
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How?

It seems that people who use botting, gold farming find the gameplay experience to their taste, they are interested in the end term of the game and head for that.

As to the others, how does it disturb their gameplay experience?

Banning cheaters on what ground?

In a SP game, there is no cheating. Cheating only happens when other people might feel themselves cheated by "cheaters" doings. Which are still unknown for this game.

First of all botters swarming a dungeon boss means I can't get a legit hit on the boss. If I however stand in the middle of the botters and do nothing I still get the credit for the kill but I won't have had an impactful hit on him so I won't get any loot off the boss.

And more importantly it takes challenge out of the game. I've had tough as nails bosses to fight when there weren't any botters around but when there are botters around, the dungeon boss is meaningless; he's often easier than the lowly grunts I had to fight in the same dungeon earlier.

If I didn't know what I was talking about I would ban camping of dungeon bosses too, but thanks to the botters I've had to camp too because often the boss went down quicker than I could swing my sword. So when there are thirty players around a boss maybe 20 are botters and 10 are legit players trying to get their hit in.

You are aware, I hope, that this isn't a single player game. Yes, instancing is used but to only sections of the Main Quest and Fighters and Mages Guild quests are instanced.
 
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It looks like they are working on getting rid of the spambots,gold sellers and trying to make it a better game. What is the matter with that?

I just have too high standards...I expect a $60/$15 game to deliver a positive experience...rather, ESO is like an Early Access game with loads of issues...yet they want a premium price. Hence, I do not support this because it is bad for the industry.

Sorry, I just enjoy hating on ESO so much!
 
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You are aware, I hope, that this isn't a single player game. Yes, instancing is used but to only sections of the Main Quest and Fighters and Mages Guild quests are instanced.

Fair enough for the explanation.

The limitation of instancing, where does it come from? A design will or is there something more behind it? Does it command a superior gameplay aim?

As to not being a single player game, it looks as a single player with a single player gameplay and a multiplayer player mode, leading to overlapping single player experiences.

Botting reveals that. Botting would be made extremelly harder in a multiplayer game with a multiplayer gameplay. The decisions made following a multiplayer gameplay are not that easy to delegate to an AI.
 
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I never thought I'd play another MMO, nut I am actually enjoying this one. You can actually play it almost entirely as a si gle-player game. I am just soloing quests, which are mostly pretty good, and that is an excellent way to level. No camping required. I sometimes see people trying so hard to play this like a more-usual MMO and have to shakes my head and wonder why.

What sold me, someone who was stauchly opposed to MMOs after playing several for many years?

1. Questing as a legitimate, and perhaps best, way to level. No grinding on spawns. And the quests are decent.

2. The huge variety and freedom in how you develop your character. Finding an unusual and interesting build is what I like to do in RPGs in general. You can make just about whatever you want in ESO, yet the limitation set on hotkeys forces you to make tough decisions and doesn't let characters get out of hand and too powerful, or so it seems so far.

3. I haven't done PvP yet, as I want all my skills first for my unusual build that will rely upon them, but I watched several videos before buying. The system appears to be a near copy of Dark Age of Camelot, with a few refinments. This is a good thing. That game had the best PvP I have played by far, before EA bought the company and homogenized the entire system to suit the Call of Duty mindset.

4. The world is huge. Exploration is for real, and there is real variety. I'm currently enjoying poking around the desert. I can sstill get that feeling of discovery as I see something slowly revealing itself over the next dune.

5. I don't have to talk to anyone. Aside from roleplaying a character who is a mute, the game systems and even the UI encourage this. This may be a big negative for most people but not me. Frankly, it's other players who mostly ruin MMOs for me. The culture seems to follow, as well. Most people keep to themselves. I have only answered one direct question, which I did by emoting hand signals.

Sorry for the long post. I've just been surprised to find how much I'm liking the game so far. That may change if PvP winds up getting on my nerves, but I already feel I've gotten my money's worth and can always cancel later.

Also, my vharacter is level 30, and I've only en ountered two small bugs: One, I had to relog to get a portal to show up. Two, an NPC was supposed to arrive to unlock a door but didn't. Had to abanfon that quest and start over later, when it worked fine. A pretty short quest, and I didn't lose much time. Seems like a remarably smooth launch forman MMO to me.
 
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We play the game in the same way. I'm having a really good time with it.

Also seems like they've got some control over the spammer bots - they're not dominating the chat anymore.

pibbur, who after looking at the avatar, doesn't want to hug the captain
 
5. I don't have to talk to anyone. Aside from roleplaying a character who is a mute, the game systems and even the UI encourage this.

Yeah... I mean no offense to you, but I have absolutely no interest in a massive multiplayer game for introverts. An online game is, by its nature, going to have more shallow content than a single player game. You may get more of it, but it's immediately forgettable; your actions have no real impact on the world with everything resetting ad infinitum.

And so, after you've invariably exhausted the content, you're left bored, unsatisfied. I personally feel the point of an online game is the social experience - creating lasting friendships and helping one another - not living in a bubble of shallow content. From everything I hear, TES Online is just another by-the-books single player game with nothing to interest me.
 
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If ZoS really loved the Elder Scrolls universe, they do a FF14 reboot. They would go back to the drawing board and remedy the basic issues. Issues which can't be tinkered with by merely some patches. Some of the very fundaments are wrong - too many to name here - and ES would deserve a superior MMO than this.
 
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Sorry for the long post. I've just been surprised to find how much I'm liking the game so far. That may change if PvP winds up getting on my nerves, but I already feel I've gotten my money's worth and can always cancel later.
I actually just want to thank you for your post. As someone with similar desires to you, it is nice to hear you are enjoying it. Sure, I've been a big ESO hater but mostly because the game had so much potential. I do see the appeal to play it through single-player once…I just personally will wait until it's free to play.
 
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A month in and I am having a good time still.. There are some flaws, but I haven't run into anything that made it really bad or whatever. Heck, I its in a much better state than many other games I've seen and a majority of MMOs upon launch. (WoW, Eve, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call 2, Shadowbane, Age of Conan these are a few mmos that had really rough launches)

The gold spamming and the bot farming dungeons & nodes has greatly improved...which is good too :)
 
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About 200 hours in game. I stopped and I have no plans to continue. It was a nice journey through TESO world. I'll probably return to it one day.
 
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Now comes the big test - whether they can retain their player base long term or even mid term.
 
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Wow, I just watched the Angry Joe review...5/10. The first 3 minutes sum it all up: painfully average game that is very disappointing.

And Angry Joe is usually quite forgiving compared to other reviewers. I appreciate how he clearly shows how much of a cash-grab ESO is.
 
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