» Sun Mar 24, 2013 12:52 pm note i use the term Raid in quotes as obviously they won't exactly be called that in game. So if we want to use the general "End Game" or Adventure Zone or AZ for short go ahead.
So lets continue but with a more constructive and healthy and civil manner. Lets discuss our ideas and suggestions of what we want to see with what ZOS has in store for us. Lets discuss anything from types of encounters to how gear rewards and progression may work. Again lets turn this topic into something constructive and let ZOS know what we would like to see within the framework of what they will be providing us.
From Tamriel Foundry they got some really good clarification for Matt Firor:
http://tamrielfoundry.com/
in a interview with Matt Firor yesterday by the Tamriel Foundries leaders hopefully put this argument to rest.
When asked about his vision for raids and PvE endgame in ESO he explained the controversial IGN quote by recognizing that World of Warcraft is the best in the business at constructing competitive progression raiding. ZeniMax doesn’t want to become embroiled in a struggle to out-do WoW at it’s own game, and would rather develop it’s own brand of large group PvE which fits the Elder Scrolls context. Most WoW-style raids involve 20+ players hacking away gleefully at the ankles of a much larger foe, when Matt Firor claimed “That’s not Elder Scrolls” it was this type of confrontation in particular to which he was referring. The developers at ZeniMax would rather pit a group of players against a much larger force of threatening NPCs to emphasize that heroic feel which is latent throughout the Elder Scrolls series. While nothing explicit is confirmed, it does sound like adventure zones are definitely penciled in as post-launch content. Hopefully there is at least one such epic endgame PvE encounter in the original launch version of the game, but if not, I hope we can look forward to adventure zones shortly after launch as a good compromise for players which crave large group PvE endgame. We should have a better opportunity to talk to Matt further tomorrow afternoon, so I’m hopeful that we can get more juicy details then!
When asked about his vision for raids and PvE endgame in ESO he explained the controversial IGN quote by recognizing that World of Warcraft is the best in the business at constructing competitive progression raiding. ZeniMax doesn’t want to become embroiled in a struggle to out-do WoW at it’s own game, and would rather develop it’s own brand of large group PvE which fits the Elder Scrolls context. Most WoW-style raids involve 20+ players hacking away gleefully at the ankles of a much larger foe, when Matt Firor claimed “That’s not Elder Scrolls” it was this type of confrontation in particular to which he was referring. The developers at ZeniMax would rather pit a group of players against a much larger force of threatening NPCs to emphasize that heroic feel which is latent throughout the Elder Scrolls series. While nothing explicit is confirmed, it does sound like adventure zones are definitely penciled in as post-launch content. Hopefully there is at least one such epic endgame PvE encounter in the original launch version of the game, but if not, I hope we can look forward to adventure zones shortly after launch as a good compromise for players which crave large group PvE endgame. We should have a better opportunity to talk to Matt further tomorrow afternoon, so I’m hopeful that we can get more juicy details then!
another comment Fizzle one of the Leaders of Tamriel Foundry said about his interview relating to gear
Matt Firor also indicated when I pulled him aside that there will be individual pieces of gear as well as sets of gear that will take a long time to get; or at least will be one focal reward for PvE. First, the character creation screen allowed for you to toggle your character display between basic starting gear and set-armor, and the set for the Dragon Knight at least, looked awesome. Second, I am trying to think about the dichotomy between armor sets in Skyrim/etc and how armor sets/bonuses have worked in the past with MMOs. I don’t really want to speculate, but I would think if they are giving players armor sets that take a long time to get, they will probably want to be worn as a set, or at least a few pieces for a bonus. Either way I hope you can get decent bonuses by mixing sets because I really want to try a medium/heavy armor tank that focuses on pumping stamina/dodge from the medium pieces and survivability/+healing from the heavy armor
A second noteworthy point was when we were able to get Matt Firor aside for a moment after the MMORPG’s Future of Online Gaming panel he confirmed that players will be able to distinguish progression of players through raid content and that there will be plenty of long-term goals to focus on regarding PvE. Overall day 1 was great and we’ll learn more in the next two days.
Matt Firor also indicated when I pulled him aside that there will be individual pieces of gear as well as sets of gear that will take a long time to get; or at least will be one focal reward for PvE. First, the character creation screen allowed for you to toggle your character display between basic starting gear and set-armor, and the set for the Dragon Knight at least, looked awesome. Second, I am trying to think about the dichotomy between armor sets in Skyrim/etc and how armor sets/bonuses have worked in the past with MMOs. I don’t really want to speculate, but I would think if they are giving players armor sets that take a long time to get, they will probably want to be worn as a set, or at least a few pieces for a bonus. Either way I hope you can get decent bonuses by mixing sets because I really want to try a medium/heavy armor tank that focuses on pumping stamina/dodge from the medium pieces and survivability/+healing from the heavy armor
A second noteworthy point was when we were able to get Matt Firor aside for a moment after the MMORPG’s Future of Online Gaming panel he confirmed that players will be able to distinguish progression of players through raid content and that there will be plenty of long-term goals to focus on regarding PvE. Overall day 1 was great and we’ll learn more in the next two days.
Also ZAM got some further clarification as well:
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=32077
Also some quotes from Posters in the previous Raid threads with ideas and suggestions. Just copy and pasting here all credit goes to the original posters.
Here is a list of some of the features the ESO PvE raiding community would like to see when it comes to scripted encounters present in ESO:
1. Raids that are consistent with the lore and story to match the ES story line and IP. They need to feel appropriate to the Elder Scrolls universe.
2. Instanced PvE scripted encounter with moderately difficult bosses for groups to overcome.
3. Group sizes between 12 to 16 players.
4. Some sort of gear progression, but instead of being constantly a vertical progression, sometimes horizontal, so gear isn’t constantly being replaced and thrown away with each new content patch.
5. Gear obtained through raiding should be equivalent to what can be obtained through PvP, neither should be more powerful than the other.
6. Keep CC relevant. No tank and spank bosses.
7. Raids should have multiple difficulties, one normal mode and one hardmode. That way a much large group of people will have access to the raid content, and less people will be left out.
Quote
Valkar, on 20 March 2013 - 08:15 PM, said:
So first off, I am a fairly big fan of raiding and have done a fair amount over the years, but in all that time there's always been 2 things about raiding, and to a lesser extents general dungeons, that have bothered me:
1. Most are far too linear
2. Most are far too "The only way to progress is to kill everything" and like, purely combat orientated.
So personally, if ESO does end up having raids, or even just for future games here's a list of some stuff I'd like to see:
- Multiple ways to progress.
What I mean is that instead of just entering a room and then killing everything or completing some small but fairly insignificant objective, I'd like to see more of a focus on non-combat orientated progression methods. These could be simple things such as "having to sneak past some enemies as the room is full of death traps that they will active should they detect you" or "have someone go diving in a river to look for and activate a switch to continue while the rest of the group has to balance out a weight that is keeping a damn closed" or something like "Light all of the torches while fighting off the enemies looking to blow them out/block the air currents coming into the room" and so on.
I understand that as it's a game, and most importantly an MMO there will of course be limitations and restrictions, but I don't understand and won't hear any excuse for why we can't have more creative ways to progress within a raid/dungeon.
- Puzzles.
This is something that IMO the TES games and MMO's in general actually don't have ENOUGH of and should be a mandatory thing in most raids/dungeons. The beauty of puzzles is they can literally be ANYTHING so long as it requires you to think a bit, and having lots of them in raids/dungeons means that class and combat choice won't be everything, you'll actually need people who can think to move on as well.
- Multiple Paths.
This is fairly straightforward I think. Too many games these days don't provide enough paths and options on how to complete content, and even if they do they usually don't do much with them. I think it would be great for some raids/dungeons to have non-linear paths (that do all meet at the same end of course) so you aren't just walking in a straight line the whole time. Some great gameplay options could be made as well by deepening the system and say putting restrictions on how many people can all take one path. For instance, you might have a team of 8 that comes to 2 paths, both paths only allow 4 players to enter each one so the team has to decide on the best possible combat combinations for their group and how to divide themselves. Then both paths have objectives that correspond to the opposite path, so in order for team A to advance along path A, team B needs to complete some objectives on path B for that to happen, and vice versa.
I don't know, I just think that giving players more options in how to complete things, and deepening those systems by having a wide variety of objectives would add another more interesting layer to the gameplay rather than it just being a straightforward fighting affair.
- Make It Dynamic
What I mean by this should be pretty clear. Make the experience dynamic, whether that means the entire piece of content changes from run to run or there's simply random events or changes that occur. Just ensure that there's something in place so that every-time (to an extent of course, it might be difficult to provide a unique experience 30 or something times over) a group does that content, they notice something different and new.
Well that's basically all I can think of for right now. I'm sorry if any of these have already been suggested/talked about, or even if some of them exist in other games or I have just not yet experienced them, but there's my contributions to how things could be improved.
- Val
Valkar, on 20 March 2013 - 08:15 PM, said:
So first off, I am a fairly big fan of raiding and have done a fair amount over the years, but in all that time there's always been 2 things about raiding, and to a lesser extents general dungeons, that have bothered me:
1. Most are far too linear
2. Most are far too "The only way to progress is to kill everything" and like, purely combat orientated.
So personally, if ESO does end up having raids, or even just for future games here's a list of some stuff I'd like to see:
- Multiple ways to progress.
What I mean is that instead of just entering a room and then killing everything or completing some small but fairly insignificant objective, I'd like to see more of a focus on non-combat orientated progression methods. These could be simple things such as "having to sneak past some enemies as the room is full of death traps that they will active should they detect you" or "have someone go diving in a river to look for and activate a switch to continue while the rest of the group has to balance out a weight that is keeping a damn closed" or something like "Light all of the torches while fighting off the enemies looking to blow them out/block the air currents coming into the room" and so on.
I understand that as it's a game, and most importantly an MMO there will of course be limitations and restrictions, but I don't understand and won't hear any excuse for why we can't have more creative ways to progress within a raid/dungeon.
- Puzzles.
This is something that IMO the TES games and MMO's in general actually don't have ENOUGH of and should be a mandatory thing in most raids/dungeons. The beauty of puzzles is they can literally be ANYTHING so long as it requires you to think a bit, and having lots of them in raids/dungeons means that class and combat choice won't be everything, you'll actually need people who can think to move on as well.
- Multiple Paths.
This is fairly straightforward I think. Too many games these days don't provide enough paths and options on how to complete content, and even if they do they usually don't do much with them. I think it would be great for some raids/dungeons to have non-linear paths (that do all meet at the same end of course) so you aren't just walking in a straight line the whole time. Some great gameplay options could be made as well by deepening the system and say putting restrictions on how many people can all take one path. For instance, you might have a team of 8 that comes to 2 paths, both paths only allow 4 players to enter each one so the team has to decide on the best possible combat combinations for their group and how to divide themselves. Then both paths have objectives that correspond to the opposite path, so in order for team A to advance along path A, team B needs to complete some objectives on path B for that to happen, and vice versa.
I don't know, I just think that giving players more options in how to complete things, and deepening those systems by having a wide variety of objectives would add another more interesting layer to the gameplay rather than it just being a straightforward fighting affair.
- Make It Dynamic
What I mean by this should be pretty clear. Make the experience dynamic, whether that means the entire piece of content changes from run to run or there's simply random events or changes that occur. Just ensure that there's something in place so that every-time (to an extent of course, it might be difficult to provide a unique experience 30 or something times over) a group does that content, they notice something different and new.
Well that's basically all I can think of for right now. I'm sorry if any of these have already been suggested/talked about, or even if some of them exist in other games or I have just not yet experienced them, but there's my contributions to how things could be improved.
- Val
