don't get your hopes up. An MMO is an MMO and a single player game is a single player game. Just think about it. That feeling of going to a remote area, exploring around an out of the way area, is completely destroyed in an MMO when you see 10 other people running around it looking for lewt or to kill the 10th winter wolf for their quest.
ZeniMax MMO - The Elder Scrolls Online Footage Leaked
- Thread starter Couchpotato
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don't get your hopes up. An MMO is an MMO and a single player game is a single player game. Just think about it. That feeling of going to a remote area, exploring around an out of the way area, is completely destroyed in an MMO when you see 10 other people running around it looking for lewt or to kill the 10th winter wolf for their quest.
D
Deleted User
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Oh yeah, seeing other people in a remote area, man, that just ruins everything. Wait, what???
I wish I could see this footage.
Zloth
I smell a... wumpus!?
Secret World looks pretty good. It's the only game I've seen so far that makes really good use of tessellation.
The problem in MMO graphics are the players. Showing scores of those custom characters with all their sliders must make rendering a lot harder than just showing half a dozen identical orcs.
P.S. One does not smite a potato, one mashes it.
Smart use of instances takes care of that.
You can show all players inside cities. 100%.
In the wilderness, you can choose to show only 20% of other players. So you have people travelling, fighting, etc, but it doesn't get too crowded.
If you want, you can build some bottlenecks in the wilderness, where you change the percentage of other players. Say, to enter a large valley, you have go through a tunnel with a gate in it. That gate changes the instance, and beyond it you can only see 5% of other players.
You can also choose to have invisible, regional borders in the wilderness, where players swap instances. But this can lead to other players magically fading away in your view, when they swap to another instance.
When you enter a special location, like a dungeon, inside it you show 0% of other players.
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Anyway, this project sounds awesome. It might be the first MMO I actually bother to play.
I don't get the complaints about the graphics. There are HD pictures and videos around, it looks better than Skyrim. And the landscapes, architecture, etc, are extremely varied.
I expect them to keep the same amount of complexity that we have in the official series. It's essentially the most complex virtual world we have ever seen.
And even better, Elder Scrolls series has the best modding kits in the market. We can expect ridiculous amounts of ambitious user-generated content.
The best thing would be that that they would build perma-iinstances for hardcore RPG players: Hard difficulty, slow levelling, maximum realism. And only for players who like to play a role, and act / speak in the world accordingly.
Action fans who simply want to have fun with friends can go to another perma-instance.
They took the complaints of Oblivions lack of challenge to the heart, and have since offered options for players who like to be kicked in the ass. So there is hope.
I don't get the complaints about the graphics. There are HD pictures and videos around, it looks better than Skyrim. And the landscapes, architecture, etc, are extremely varied.
I expect them to keep the same amount of complexity that we have in the official series. It's essentially the most complex virtual world we have ever seen.
And even better, Elder Scrolls series has the best modding kits in the market. We can expect ridiculous amounts of ambitious user-generated content.
The best thing would be that that they would build perma-iinstances for hardcore RPG players: Hard difficulty, slow levelling, maximum realism. And only for players who like to play a role, and act / speak in the world accordingly.
Action fans who simply want to have fun with friends can go to another perma-instance.
They took the complaints of Oblivions lack of challenge to the heart, and have since offered options for players who like to be kicked in the ass. So there is hope.
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Yeah, thinking about further, it might never happen.
It makes selling add-ons harder. So it might be no-go. But other Bethesda games also had add-ons, and yet they gave awesome modding tools.
Of course I'm not talking about modding the game mechanics, but allowing to create special areas, with the help of instances.
The only real problem is that it gives some players a way to cheat the game balance. What prevents you from creating a special area full of treasure, and then looting it?
A simple way to fix that problem would be that uploading a special area to online mod lists would require you to pay for your area. Say, you create a dungeon which has 1000gp worth of treasure - Well, that treasure is out of your pocket.
People who create mods are experienced players anyway, so losing that 1000gp might be worth the investment to them. They have a signature dungeon - it cost them money.
Another way to cheat would be creating easy XP. Say a high-level monster with convenient super-traps around it, allowing for easy kill.
Again, I think the "dungeonmaster" should lose the XP that a player can gain from his mod. A high level player can afford to lose 1000xp for creating 10 standard orcs, three tough orcs, and one leader orc.
That kind of approach would fix balance and cheating issues.
If you're creating an elder dragon with your modding team, you can divide the loss of experience between each member of the modding team.
Anyway, that's probably not something the gamemakers are interested in doing, so we probably never see any mods.
...And besides, I just realized it's stilly easy to cheat the system, when you work as a team. One guy creates a loot room, loses money. But 9 friends enter the room one by one, each collects the money, so the team overall has 9 times more money than what was spent.
The mods would need to be monitored before allowing for publication, by a moderator team. That would be the only way to do it. But it would be a too complex system to monitor, really.
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Those are some interesting ideas. Neverwinter has a content creating device for the players called the Foundry.They get around the idea of a player creating loot maps by letting the game decided what's in the chest and after looting many,many of them, I can tell you that a green item is the best you can get. You can't make a level with an uber boss for maximum experience.
There are lots of limits as to what you can do but I have seen lots of creative ideas already. Instead of penalizing a mod maker with experience loss, they have taken the opposite approach and given a player who uses one of the created maps a chance to rate and tip(in game money) the creator. I like that approach as it gives more incentive. I would love to see some kind of device in for users to create content for ESO.
There are lots of limits as to what you can do but I have seen lots of creative ideas already. Instead of penalizing a mod maker with experience loss, they have taken the opposite approach and given a player who uses one of the created maps a chance to rate and tip(in game money) the creator. I like that approach as it gives more incentive. I would love to see some kind of device in for users to create content for ESO.
D
DArtagnan
Guest
Significant user-created content is very rare in AAA themeparks. In fact, I'm not sure there's been a single example of it. You have games like Star Trek Online and Neverwinter - but they're heavily instanced almost lobby-based games with small development cycles and limited budgets. They don't have large coherent worlds to think about and they don't concern themselves much with lore, and they're clearly relying on the players to provide much of their own experience.
ESO is a major player aiming very high and believe me, if user-created content was an intended feature - it would have been one of the first things we heard about.
Nothing can be ruled out entirely, but I'd be extremely surprised if this was going to be a major feature of the game at any point in time.
ESO is a major player aiming very high and believe me, if user-created content was an intended feature - it would have been one of the first things we heard about.
Nothing can be ruled out entirely, but I'd be extremely surprised if this was going to be a major feature of the game at any point in time.
ChienAboyeur
SasqWatch
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The video is removed.
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While I agree that modding tools are unlikely, it's still fun to speculate.
Considering how active and ambitious the Elder Scrolls modding teams have been - Going as far as creating entirely new games like Nehrim - I think the community would be just as excited, if they could create areas and quests for an MMO ES game. They would probably gain greater visibility and appreciation in the MMO world, as players would be hungry for new areas and quests.
Actually the quickest fix for loot rooms made for personal benefit, would be that you can't gain loot and XP from your own creation.
But that still wouldn't solve the problem of team cheats...
But actually, I do think there could be a solution: Since the modders have their own community, let *them* decide. When someone makes a new mod, he has to submit the finished version to a closed modding community for a 2-week trial period.
Since the modders play each other's mods anyway, the community can test the mod. If it's not a loot room, or other kind of danger to game balance, it gets official approval, and can be activated in the game.
Only established members of the modding community - Those who have had at least one proper mod published - could test the mod.
If a member would do a cheat mod together with someone, they would get permanently banned from the community.
And mods would have some maximum limits anyway. A first-timer could only put 1000gp and 1000xp to his mod. A senior with published, high-rating mods could use 10.000gp and 10.000xp.
The mod-creators could be rewarded for highly rated mods by in-game money, donated by other players.
A practical way to activate user-generated quests in the MMO world would be townhalls: There would be a signboard with quests, each with a star rating. The quests would be of course related to that particular world area.
When you choose a quest, it activates an instance, like an entrance to a dungeon.
A system like that could work very well, I think.
Considering how active and ambitious the Elder Scrolls modding teams have been - Going as far as creating entirely new games like Nehrim - I think the community would be just as excited, if they could create areas and quests for an MMO ES game. They would probably gain greater visibility and appreciation in the MMO world, as players would be hungry for new areas and quests.
Actually the quickest fix for loot rooms made for personal benefit, would be that you can't gain loot and XP from your own creation.
But that still wouldn't solve the problem of team cheats...
But actually, I do think there could be a solution: Since the modders have their own community, let *them* decide. When someone makes a new mod, he has to submit the finished version to a closed modding community for a 2-week trial period.
Since the modders play each other's mods anyway, the community can test the mod. If it's not a loot room, or other kind of danger to game balance, it gets official approval, and can be activated in the game.
Only established members of the modding community - Those who have had at least one proper mod published - could test the mod.
If a member would do a cheat mod together with someone, they would get permanently banned from the community.
And mods would have some maximum limits anyway. A first-timer could only put 1000gp and 1000xp to his mod. A senior with published, high-rating mods could use 10.000gp and 10.000xp.
The mod-creators could be rewarded for highly rated mods by in-game money, donated by other players.
A practical way to activate user-generated quests in the MMO world would be townhalls: There would be a signboard with quests, each with a star rating. The quests would be of course related to that particular world area.
When you choose a quest, it activates an instance, like an entrance to a dungeon.
A system like that could work very well, I think.
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