So, I've been a longtime fan of Elder Scrolls games from Daggerfall up, and I've also played a few MMOs in my time (namely WoW and Darkfall, of which I wish TESO would be more like the latter). One of the big things that draws me to TES is the ability to do your own thing, yes there are quests, yes there is a story, but there's so much else that makes a world feel REAL.

I know that there's a huge variance in the way people play, but for me the biggest appeal of TESO is the chance to actually RP the lore and characters with other people (PLEASE let there be RP servers). That being said, RP can only sustain itself for so long in a MMO without something to support it.

I call this fluff, basically it's anything that adds dimension to a game that isn't necessarily related to actual gameplay or character progression. Some examples of fluff in MMOs are things like:

-Companion Pets
-Animated emotes (dancing, etc.)
-Mounts
-Customizable armor (dyes, etc.)
-Drinking
-Interactive objects (chairs, beds, fireworks, you name it)
-Collectible Items
-Achievements

The biggest issue most non-RPers have with Fluff is the belief that they'd rather see developers spend their time on other pursuits instead of this, but this is a HALLMARK of TES games. So in turning it over to the community, let's discuss Fluff for a minute, I'd like to see other's opinions on it's value in TES:O as well as forseeable issues or even suggestions for what and how Fluff should be implemented

What you are asking for is pretty basic MMO stuff,i can see them all making an appearance in TESO.

Oh and DarkFall Online is a heap of poop.

I'm not asking for them to include it, I know most of that will be in, it was more of showing what "fluff" is, sorry for the confusion, but I'm looking for towards getting general ideas of what's the best way to encourage a strong roleplayer community within TES:O through actual gameplay elements

PS: DFO wasn't that bad, it just catered to too small a crowd.

I don't see myself committing to end-game raiding again, so I certainly hope there is ample non-progression content. Games that are only enjoyable by those willing to spend lots of time grinding for rep and mats and schedule their lives around raid times have a limited audience. Your "fluff" is my essential.

I think Cataclysm taught Blizzard this. It would have been fine to have more challenging Heroics (although not encounters requiring interrupts more frequent than you could count on in a random), if there had been an adequate number of regular dungeons, crafting was better developed so that leatherworking, etc. allowed players to make themselves items that would have eased the transition from regulars to heroics, and they'd given more thought to group activities for non-raiding guilds. Part of massive is that you need to cater to a variety of playstyles. Some players are all about challenge. Some are looking for drop-in fun. With all sorts of variants in-between. Developers need to think about how each group will experience the game. Will my heroic dungeon or raid actually be challenging? If I were to log onto TES Online tonight, what would be fun to do?

I definitely agree with you, as much as people love to bash the living hell out of WoW, for what it is it does it well. I understand the gameplay between WoW and TES is Apples and Oranges and I understand why people don't want WoW with a TES skin on it, but that being said outside of gameplay mechanics, they do tend to offer a wide variety of different aspects. For me I'm mostly looking forward to the social aspect of the game, I've done the raid thing, and the high end PvP and found it very tedious and redundant, and yes, I don't want to schedule my life around a video game, it's supposed to be a break from number crunching and calendar tracking. So for me it's all going to be about "what else can I do without doing high end PvE or PvP content?"... for many players they think anything but those two things is a waste of time, which fortunately for many TES players is not the case.

I think above anything though, in addition to the fluff, I hope that despite factions we will be able to interact with all races on our OWN terms. Yes I understand that there may be a war going on, but if I'm an Altmer, and I walk into a city inn in Elsweyr, why can't I run into an Argonian and actually have a conversation with him? (with all the "talking down" that entails obviously.)

While these are nice features (with the exception of achievments, but that's a personal issue), they are mostly standard features for all generic MMO's... some more elaborate then others, but still.

I do very much agree they should focus on things besides progression (I'd actually go so far as to say progression shouldn't come first), but I'm thinking along the lines of customisable player housing (non-instanced), player communities with effects in the game-world (guilds "owning" zones and setting the rules in these zones, players taking over/having a role in existing game-guilds such as thieves guild, mage's guild), a crafting system which is more than collecting and combining nodes/loot, a trading system which is more than an auction drop-box, etc. etc.

One of the things I'm wary of is the balance between what's humorous and what's ridiculous. Take mounts and pets. I'll take a pet, baby white Guar, but not a hot pink panda. Same with mounts. Horses of all 'normal' colors, and no striped, lime green rhinoceroses, please.

Good Devs will put in quirky fun stuff without going too far and treating the fluff like a free pass to disregard all the lore and logic of the game.

Although I'll admit to riding a bright pink dragon while my pet baby pink dragon followed... /sigh, please none of this in TESO.

I also love one time use clickies - and the fluff I absolutely love the most: costumes and illusions!

Achievements if done right are just one of those opt-in, opt-out type of things, I think it's good for giving non-progression minded players something to work towards.

I played Darkfall Online rather extensively for about a year or so, and I saw how many of the features you mentioned can fail/succeed.

Non-instanced housing is going to be really hard to do, for one you can't just let someone pop a house anywhere they please, well Darkfall thought they had that solved, they added about 40 or so villages to the game world, with about 10 or so housing plots, and house deeds were rare drops in the world, and you placed a house, and if you didnt pay weekly taxes on it, it became forfeit and anyone could claim your house. So there were about 400 total house spots, and they were all taken up in a few months, and that left everyone else who wanted a house in the dark, not to mention half the players didnt even care about the house, all it was to them was a quick teleport to the other side of the map... in short: MAJOR FAIL IN EVERY CATEGORY.

Now I'm not saying non-instanced housing cannot be done right in an MMO, but to do it you need to allow for a much larger number of players to own one, and make it NOT dependent on random world drops. So basically to make it work you'd need to give over about half of every city's actual space to just player housing, and that's assuming all major TES cities are there. I'm pretty sure though they already said there won't be housing, at least at launch.

I definitely think we'll be seeing actual professions, whether or not they are cut and dry MMO faire is hard to say but I hope to see a more robust deep crafting.

A player driven economy without auction houses is nice too, but doing it solely via trading becomes tedious and makes the economy slow and stifled, you need player owned vendor stalls.


As for guild owned territory this DOES work if done right, in Darkfall except for the main racial cities, every other city you conquered with a clan and controlled. However I didn't read anything about clan vs. clan warfare, it seems more faction based, so not sure if this will be in or not.

I like the idea of non-instanced, player made housing to be used for storage and to get an extra port or recall. I cannot see any reason this wouldn't be doable, other than the scary reason that the world isn't very large.

Not only are they standard mmo fluff they are also thing that are pretty much in every TES singe player game as well.


P.S Darkfall is still a great game and one of the best sandbox pvp games we have today, you wont find anything better buddy. Not only that its the closest thing to an actual TES out today, i would venture to say that other than lore/story its more TES like than TESO.

I don't see the problem with non instanced housing but i think they will go the instanced way to be honest.

I would like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5lXH4PIxww

I think it will be more in line with this though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiBUbMIk5uM

Or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYNMn0_vjes&feature=related