» Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:22 am I've also found a lot of information that I feel 95% of you never even heard of, even knew existed. So please, give this thread a read. Everything in this thread is sourced. There is a little bibliography at the bottom of this post containing all of the links I used to compile this thread. I’m only going to mention the interesting mechanics which haven’t been mentioned, or those which need clarification as many people have misunderstood how they work.
There is A LOT of information I discovered that REALLY surprised and made me scream (in excitement) as I read it, and I’m sure a lot of the things you will read in this thread will make you do the same. I also feel a lot of information will break many hearts and start rampart rioting… So please refrain from this.
Remember, all of these interviews are from last year based on Prototype/Pre-Alpha and Alpha variants of the game and are all subject to change when Beta is released, all the way through to release. So many of the information you read here may well be completely different from what we will see in Closed Beta.
Please, if I have missed anything out or you notice any corrections to the thread/misinformation, could you please post what it is with a source. I will not accept submissions that are not sourced.
Without further ado, let’s begin with the mechanics thread!
The Environments
So the entire world of Tamriel will be scaled as how the previous 3 games, Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind, have been. We will see all of the major towns and all important structures, buildings and dungeons as they were in those previous games. So the City of Windhelm looks and feels the same; The Palace of the Kings will look how it was before, carved in the same stone. The river moat outside the city will be exactly how it was in Skyrim. However, the layout of the buildings and homes within these towns and cities will be different, as this is 1000 years before Skyrim, and 700 years before Oblivion. The developers want the feeling of us, “going back in time” as well as giving us the feeling of nostalgia.
Not all of the world will be available at launch; many dungeons and areas in provinces will slowly be released through content patches, and expansion packs.
There will be a Day/Night cycle, but they will not comment on how this will affect the game.
ESO will also be heavily PvE focused until we reach level 10, which is where our story “really begins” to make a Heroic name for ourselves.
The Factions
So, we all know that we will all be locked in factions. We will not be able to go into other peoples provinces at all. At no moment in time would I, a Breton, be able to go into the Ebonheart Pact and venture into Skyrim. The developers want to separate the factions as much as possible; and divide up the population leading to interesting roleplaying elements. This, as a consequence affects guilds, which is discussed later on.
The faction system is very divided and stretched in this game, which makes it very interesting.
I will discuss the 3 way factions work in separate different paragraphs; as the Factions pays a part in many other mechanics in the game; including questing and guilds. As part of the lore, the other alliances are meant to be your enemies, the ones you kill. And to have open/free areas in the maps for all factions to go in wouldn’t make any sense, unless there was complete Open-World PvP. The developers have stated that they DO NOT want ganking in any shape or form in PvE areas, and this is why there is a strict faction lock.
Guilds
Guilds will be faction locked according to the sources. This is because the developers want the players instinctively hate the other factions and races as part of the Role-Play element and only see the enemies in the battlegrounds in Cyrodill. However, you will be able to do Public Dungeons with other people from other factions so Nords and Bretons CAN PvE with each other, which will be discusses later on in the thread. It is unconfirmed if in the newest version of the game that guilds will have the guild-faction lock lifted.
They’re incorporating Facebook and other Social Media sites into Guilds in ESO. One example was that you could create a Facebook group, and directly import the members in that Facebook group into an ESO Guild, as long as that person has an ESO account and has linked their account to their Facebook.
You can also import your Facebook friends list into your ESO friends list, as long as those people have their ESO account and Facebook account linked. Matt Firor really wants MMO Guilding to not only be an in-game community, but use social networks to revolutionise Guilding and ESO communities outside of the game.
Guilding also plays a part into PvP. Matt Firor has said that the best and most organised PvP Guilds will level up as a whole much faster and gain new rewards. This is done through doing various activities in PvP, such as capturing keeps in PvP
The developers also want Guilding, or grouping to be much more of an enjoyable experience than solo play, rewarding you more, giving you more XP and being able to complete content faster. However, this hasn’t been said how it will work. Most likely loot will be instanced, as the developers also do not want competition in PvE.
MegaServer
The MegaSever is multiple, individual servers which are all networked together to give the impression everyone is connected to one gigantic server, one world, one universe. It is all one real-time world, which is separated by instances. This is so people do not have to reroll characters to play with friends, or go through the hassle of finding your friends/settling in different servers for the most competitive gameplay.
I could be playing solo, and then decide to switch to my friends instance and play with him. NPC’s are also instanced, so I and a friend could venture into a town. I saved the town in a side quest, and they’re all cheering me on, shouting my name! Whereas my friend will see them all crying, depressed and upset.
This MegaServer instances you out and sorts you out with players you want to play with. So first, it takes into account with Guildies. If you have any Guildies online, it’ll instance you with those Guild mates. If you have no Guildies online, next priority is your friends. If you have neither friends, nor Guildies online, then it will phase you out, and place you in instances with people who’re similar to you. This is all done by a survey which you complete directly after character creation.
This also allows people to completely travel through the game without seeing anyone if they feel like it.
General World PvE
The Developers have mentioned something known as “Distractionary Gameplay”. This is their term for an environment which is filled with content which will stray you off your main quest objective. So you could be on your way to deliver an Item to an NPC, when suddenly a villager comes up to you, asking to kill these Bandits who’re harassing her Husband, or maybe stray you off with a dungeon you never noticed before, which is screaming “Explore me!” in your face, which then leads to another quest chain you start doing, even before you completed your main quest objective. This system is very similar to the Dynamic Events system we’ve seen in GW2, but the Developers want theirs to be very different and not “events”
Another element in “Distractionary Gameplay” are Daedric Anchors. Daedric Anchors are similar to what the Oblivion Gates were in TES:Oblivion. The Daedric Anchors are portal-like objects that randomly spawn throughout the world; they’re a gateway where the Daedra can spawn through and even attack us players. It’s up to us to kill the Daedra and banish the Anchor from the land of Tamirel.
Public Dungeons and Heroic Dungeons will also see light in ESO. It seems like Public Dungeons will be like how the LFR system is in WoW.
Public dungeons can be done solo or with a group. This is hinting that public dungeons are all instanced zones.
Some of these Dungeons, according to sources, may be randomised like what we’ve seen in a lot of ARPG’s, and even a few MMO’s. This is to ensure that not all content is the same experience over and over again and not easily predictable.
There will be something known as an “Adventure Zone” which is full of challenges and obstacles to go through. These also, can be done solo or in groups.
One very interesting thing is that PvE systems, dungeons and quests can be done in Cyrodill. This is indicating that Cyrodill is not only just a battleground for PvP, but an open-world PvP area, full of areas for people to not only PvP, but to also do dungeons and Raids. One of the developers lightly commented that in fact, public dungeons in Cyrodill are accessible to all races, indicating that PvP can in fact not only on the ground, but also underground in dungeons. That Nord messing up your dungeon run? Why not just slay that filthy Eboneart scum!
PvP In Cyrodill
So the Developers really want a Dark Age of Camelot feel to PvP. Instead of Realm Points which we gained from DAoC, we will get something known as Alliance Points. These Alliance Points allow us to, presumably, to increase our Magicka, Stamina and Health pool, similarly to how it was in DAoC where you could use Realm Points to increase certain stats and acquire new abilities.
Alliance Points also allow us to gain Alliance Ranks. Each new Ranking will give you a new Title and Icon next to your name and there will be a total of 23 Ranks at launch.
Emperor will be crowned to which player has the most Alliance points within the last 24 hours of gameplay. This will be a rotation that goes on every day at a certain time.
The Developers also have said “Everybody benefits from it”; In other words, they want your realm, your faction, to benefit from another players war effort. They’re referring to a system like how it is in GW2, where everyone in that realm gains buffs and extra experience points or rewards for their realms effort in the WvWvW. So yes, PvP will heavily influence your realm. Every man counts!
You can also Fast Travel between keeps that your faction owns. However, if that keep is under attack, you cannot fast travel to it.
Destructible environments are another aspect the Developers really want to push out in PvP. They want you to capture a keep however you want. Whether that means going through the front gate of the Keep, or blowing all the walls up around the Fortress, they want you to PvP however you want. They do not want people to be bottlenecked and only limited to 1 or 2 ways to breach a keep.
You can also upgrade siege weapons however you want. Make them deal more damage to take down gates or fortress walls, or coat them in armour to protect them from enemy attacks. You can even have guards protecting your Keeps and Fortresses, which you can also level up.
ESO will also have systems in place to ensure equal footing in PvP/Cyrodill. They do not want a Veteran-Only PvP game, where the Veterans with the best gear, best skills and most time invested into their character to completely overrun the battlefield. It is unconfirmed how they will manage this equal-footing, other than level scaling and tactical PvP. This balancing also needs to be in place, as there will not be separate gear for PvP in Cyrodill.
The scaling will make everyone in Cyrodill level 50, and will scale up their Hitpoints, Magicka, Stamina and other uncomfirmed stats/resourced. You will not gain new abilities through this scaling. So any armour and abilities you have, you will have to stick with them even with the scaling. It is unconfirmed if your ability levels will also scale upwards.
Combat
We all know about the synergy system and how it works, so I will not discuss this in depth. However, for those who do know what this is, you will be able to make combos with your allies to give you a strategic advantage. So if a mage sets off a firestorm AOE, a warrior can run in, create a “whirlwind” and fire off those fireballs for example.
Because the Combat System in ESO will be huge, I will separate this topic up a little.
Anti-UI Combat Philosophy
The developers, and they couldn’t stress this enough in the video interview, DO NOT want a lame, boring UI combat system where you see cast times and numbers. They want their combat system to be all based on visuals; Colours and Animations.
They’re making us focus on enemy actions; React to the Reaction. They don’t want you to be looking at the UI; where I just Hard-lock, press buttons, and monitor my HP levels. They want a very active gameplay where you can interrupt enemy animations and stun them.
Monitoring the Environment and Animations
One example they gave was where a Giant could get ready for an attack. He’s slowly raise his club and prepare to swing it, and you as a group or players and stun him, sweep him off his feet and knock him down to counter the attack, rather than just tank it and call your healer.
Another thing is the AOE markers. All ally AOE pools will be marked in Green, where all of these will be safe to go in and synergize, or even gain buffs. Red AOE pools however are all enemy areas, dangerous, full of debuffs Areas of Damage.
They also don’t want people looking at their cooldown timers; in fact. Skills in ESO won’t have a cooldown timer at all. They’ll instead be resource allocated governed by your Stamina and Magicka for levels, except for Ultimates, which I will touch on further on in the thread.
Blocking & Dodging
Blocking can be used in many different ways according to the sources. It could mean:
- Migating/Taking less damage from attacks
- Using your shield to bash/knockback/stagger your opponent
- Can be used as a Stun-Block, or to break out of Crowd Control
The Developers have also confirmed that you can doge. Dodging will work by double tapping your WASD movement keys. Dodging will also consume stamina, just like blocking. You’ll also be able to stun opponents with little combo’s. One example given was
Tactical & Strategic Combat
Enemy mobs will have very intelligent AI’s. Smobs will stand back and kite, heavy armour/tanky mobs will try and stall out as long as they can whist the ranger can DPS you and your allies. Mobs will act like any other player would. This is because they want ESO to be a game of Strategic and Tactical Combat, rather than Hack n’ Slash combat.
- A really fast left click followed by a right click will stun or stagger your opponent
There are many combos and synergies in ESO you can take advantage of. This leads onto a system Zenimax Online call “Finesse” (Pronounced fin-eese)
The “Finesse” System
This system rewards you for taking advantage of Synergies, tactical advantages and strategic combat like Staggers and Knockbacks. The more you take advantage of the combat system, the more “Finesse” you get. This “Finesse” gives you more experience points during that combat, and also rewards you with either more loot, or more unique items.
Not much is said about this system; in fact it is only mentioned twice in all of the interviews and videos I’ve watched, so I cannot say much about this. However the Developers have stated that Finesse also pays a role in Guilds, and PvP in Cyrodill.
The Finesse system is also how you charge up your Ultimate. You have a bar which shows how much charge you have, and you can charge that up with Finesse. So people who hardly take advantage of Finesse will never be able to use their Ultimate ability. This also reduces spam of ultimate moves, and makes it so only the most skilled players or those who take advantage most will always have an advantage over other players.
Character progression
In ESO, we will be capped at level 50. This is to lead us into many expansion packs where our max level cap will be increased, giving us a real progression in each expansion release.
Paul sage has stated that he wants us, the players, to work hard to get the gear we want. He also stated that he wants us to feel rewarded, full of achievement when we do accomplish our goals of getting the gear we went. This is hinting towards a very long progression curve and grinding (Sorry! No freebies here!) They estimated that it will take 15 hours to reach level 10, which is quite a lot considering that’s 1/5th of your total level, whilst taking into account the downward slope scaling of the %XP/Time ratio (In other words, getting longer to level as you reach higher levels)
You will also be able to level up your weapons. This has vaguely been touched on and unconfirmed whether;
- The weapon itself levels up, or
- Through the perks/skill system.
They want us to be as free as possible with our character progression, so a Templar can become a healer wielding two handed sword, and switch to pure healing. Whereas another Templar could be pure mage, and switch to pure healing. This, is to bring up class diversity; Making every character unique in their own way instead of every class using the same build.
They want you to play however you want to; including the famous “heavy armour mage” back in Skyrim. The developers have said you CAN do this in ESO, however equipment does affect your skills in some sort, indicating that a heavy armour mage will be outputting much less damage than a mage in robes.
This also indicates that armours will affect resources, and have other unique buffs and debuffs. This line is purely speculation from what I read and may, or may not pay a part in ESO.
Vampirism and becoming a werewolf is available and this is obtained through the perks system. You can also get pets, again through the perks system.
This also ties in with crafting, but they do not want everyone to be a master of all skills. Instead, they want people to focus on becoming the master of a skill. There is no comment on how this will be implemented, but most probably will work through a finite skill/perk system where you only have a limited amount of points to spend; or this could tie in with the very slow progression system they want. So you could become a master of many skills or perks, but this will take months, even years, to achieve this goal.
Visuals are another aspect they lightly dabbled on. They want you to look however you want, whilst being effective. So yes, you could pull off that Glass Chestplate, with a Daedra Helmet look, whilst being as effective as someone in full Daedra, but yet this hasn’t been mentioned how this works. Most likely, it will work through the enchantment system (Yes, enchantment has been confirmed!)
Talking of armours, without the developers realising, they’ve semi-confirmed that will be seeing these armour sets:
- Daedric
- Glass
- Dwarven
Crafting
Abilities and Skills
In ESO, the Classes only determine what core abilities you obtain. You have a total of 8 usable skills. Left and Right click with your mouse, which is your main hand attack, block, and most possibly dual-wield/offhand strikes. Then we have the skill bar, where 1-5 which are your abilities and skills which you can obtain whilst levelling, and 6 is your ultimate.
Skills 1 & 2 are skills which are tied with your weapons. So if you have a bow, skill 1 & 2 are skills related to the bow. Skills 3, 4 & 5 are tied to your class. So a Templar is healing dominant, majority of his skills will be healing based. A dragonknight on the other hand, would have more physical abilities and destruction spells in their arsenal. As you level up, you will be able to get yourself an arsenal of 20, 30, or even 40 skills to play around with. You will unlock new skills as you level up your Health, Magicka and Stamina, as well as maybe obtain abilities through PvP.
The Ultimates are also tied with our class. Two examples given of Ultimates, with the dragonknight are:
- One Ability engulfs a pulsing aura around the dragonknight, constantly damaging all enemies around him/her
- Another grants the dragonknight invulnerability from all damage
There’s also an issue where a lot of abilities in MMO’s honestly, svck. We don’t look at them because they’re, well, terrible. The Zenimax Online developers do not want this outcome in their game. They want every ability useful or to be “cool”. So instead of an ability that just reduces their damage by 5%, they’d rather have a “shoots down fireball AOE projectiles and burns the area”.
One of the Developers has indicated that you may be able to customise your abilities to deal more damage, or deal more AOE. This was very lightly touched on, and the extent of this customisation is unknown. It could mean that there is a system where you can alter your abilities to suit you, or whether it’s a very linear levelling system for abilities, where levelled variants have a large AOE, or deal more damage, rather than for example, customise a fireball so you fire multiple projectiles rather than a single projectile.
Stealth
I feel that stealth deserves its own little section, as this a topic people have wondered how it works.
When you stealth, you will appear “shrouded” and dark to your allies, same how you’ll see yourself. To an enemy, you’ll be invisible as long as you are outside of the detection range. If you take damage whilst being in stealth, you fully uncover yourself and break out of stealth. Stealthing is all skill based, and every class can use stealth. It’s unconfirmed however how rogues play a role in stealth and whether rogues gain stealth perks which increase their stealthing abilities.
Story Progression & Role Playing
A lot of people have asked this… And yes. You CAN be the villain. You can go around and kill NPC’s for the fun of it. You can play that dangerous, barbaric character you’ve always wanted to be. Paul Sage strongly supports any fantasy elements in ESO, and that includes killing NPC’s. Though this is unconfirmed if you can kill NPC’s in your own faction or only in Cyrodill. They want everyone to have their own individual experience and story in ESO.
This leads onto the factions themselves. Each faction has their own unique and individual story you can go though which is separate from the Main Story with Molag-Bal. They’ve not commented on how the stories will differ, but they want every character to have their uniqueness.
The quests will influence our characters in some way. Again, it’s unconfirmed how this will take place, but this is to ensure that each character at end-game has is unique.
Majority of the Molag-Bal story-line will take place in ColdHarbour, which is Molag-Bals plane of oblivion. Unfortunately, this story-line is 100% solo and instanced, so you will not be able to request help in these story lines!
Books around the world will open up new quests, as well as be part of the Mages Guild Story.
Miscellaneous Information
Yes, there will be an Online Trading Post, where you can put items up for sale. Though the extent of this has not been stated whether it is faction locked or a Global Market, where you can sell through all 3 different factions.
You can also Loot items from crates and even from NPC homes. Maybe this was a slight hint that Lockpicking will also make an appearance in ESO?
Sources
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg3cMvTeV_8
http://mmohuts.com/videos/elder-scrolls-online-reveal-interview
http://voices.yahoo.com/paul-sage-talks-elder-scrolls-online-11993102.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27MjH8hi1zQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN38nu4cVg0
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/11/interview-zenimax-defends-elder-scrolls-online/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/jan/28/elder-scrolls-online-interview-matt-firor?INTCMP=SRCH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxJTsq2XeKY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dqCjnATWg
http://tamrielfoundry.com/2012/10/interview-brian-wheeler/
