[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[Jainzar]

Usually when games do betas, they have larger ones for the masses that takes place on the weekend (last ESO one had 300k people in it). They also have ones that go on till release that a smaller group take part in.

Just because the next beta weekend is going to happen soon doesn't mean there isn't one on-going. Trust me on this, Sarac is correct.

why are the beta Forums closed then since the last test in November?

[Sharuko]

why are the beta Forums closed then since the last test in November?

Generally in this type of testing for games, not all the beta tests use the same client or the same forums.

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The person that holds the title of Emperor will be a overpowered beast.

[Darksoldierr]

How exactly can you become an emperor? Is it trough PvP?

[Sharuko]

How exactly can you become an emperor? Is it trough PvP?

Yeah through PvP. Here are more details on it:

Killing other players, healing allies and taking control of a keep grants you Alliance Points as well as experience and loot. Conquering keeps also expands your territory and unlocks alliance-wide bonuses - the more keeps you control, the better the bonuses will be. When the Alliance with the most points takes charge of all the keeps around the Imperial City, the Alliance member with the most points is crowned Emperor, unlocking a further set of bonuses for his or her peers.

http://www.oxm.co.uk/68869/what-youl...crolls-online/

[Darksoldierr]

Sweet mercy that sounds amazing

[Ghostpanther]

Do you see a big difference between the combat system in Devil May Cry or God of War compared to WoW? Because that's what it is at the most conceptual level.

I'm sorry, but if you can't see a big difference between an action combat system and a static combat system I really don't know what to say. They're dramatically different in how they function, and if it's not readily apparent then I don't think any amount of explaining will be able to convince you of the difference.

Never played Devil May Cry, so can not relate to that. I do understand what you are saying, but I still do not think it is such a big difference as to be a selling point of a MMO. In other words that part does not excite me at all. Maybe they would if they have a good control scheme which is a non console based style. And that has been a issue with many who played Skyrim for example on the PC. Not just myself, but others I know who enjoy PC games. I do appreciate you replying however and you did a good job of explaining it.

[Deleted]

Sweet mercy that sounds amazing

yeah, not so much ... sounds a lot like ye olde PvP System in WoW.
Choose the side with biggest pvp crowd (red faction, most likely the ebonheart pact) and just invest more time than anyone else, or through account sharing or botting. Involvment of personal skill and abilities = 0
I don't like that system

I'm just wondering why there isn't a voting system of some kind involved ... something like guild X earned most Alliance points and gets 100 votes, runner up guild y gets 75 votes, etc. - now most of the players don't like guild X because of reasons and 37,5% of the votes are going to guild Y, whereas guild X ends up with 7,5% of the player votes.
Guild Y wins with 112,5 votes and guild X ends up with nothing because they only got 107,5 votes - Guild y gets to chose the Emperor of the month within it's own ranks (drama included)

[Sharuko]

yeah, not so much ... sounds a lot like ye olde PvP System in WoW.
Choose the side with biggest pvp crowd (red faction, most likely the ebonheart pact) and just invest more time than anyone else, or through account sharing or botting. Involvment of personal skill and abilities = 0
I don't like that system

I'm just wondering why there isn't a voting system of some kind involved ... something like guild X earned most Alliance points and gets 100 votes, runner up guild y gets 75 votes, etc. - now most of the players don't like guild X because of reasons and 37,5% of the votes are going to guild Y, whereas guild X ends up with 7,5% of the player votes.
Guild Y wins with 112,5 votes and guild X ends up with nothing because they only got 107,5 votes - Guild y gets to chose the Emperor of the month within it's own ranks (drama included)

I liked the old WoW system, then again highest I got to was Lieutenant General/Commander and didn't do the grind to Grand Marshal/High Warlord. But I still remember how cool it was to see a Grand Marshall running around with all his gear.

A voting system is boring and I don't see how that would solve the problems you stated like botting and no skill. This is supposed to be a war with multiple factions and guilds, not a democracy.

[Deleted]

yeah, not so much ... sounds a lot like ye olde PvP System in WoW.
Choose the side with biggest pvp crowd (red faction, most likely the ebonheart pact) and just invest more time than anyone else, or through account sharing or botting. Involvment of personal skill and abilities = 0
I don't like that system

I'm just wondering why there isn't a voting system of some kind involved ... something like guild X earned most Alliance points and gets 100 votes, runner up guild y gets 75 votes, etc. - now most of the players don't like guild X because of reasons and 37,5% of the votes are going to guild Y, whereas guild X ends up with 7,5% of the player votes.
Guild Y wins with 112,5 votes and guild X ends up with nothing because they only got 107,5 votes - Guild y gets to chose the Emperor of the month within it's own ranks (drama included)

Doubt it will work with the biggest faction as you have campaigns where a limited amouth of players can join that is split evenly between the three factions (although there could still be 700 ebonhearth and 200 aldmeri in the map for instance) and because there is one giant megaserver they can balance the factions better then you would with servers as they could just get players from other places when there isn't enough from one faction.

In the end I hope we will get a decent faction ratio overall like 27% 37% 36% for instance.

[Deleted]

Doubt it will work with the biggest faction as you have campaigns where a limited amouth of players can join that is split evenly between the three factions (although there could still be 700 ebonhearth and 200 aldmeri in the map for instance) and because there is one giant megaserver they can balance the factions better then you would with servers as they could just get players from other places when there isn't enough from one faction.

In the end I hope we will get a decent faction ratio overall like 27% 37% 36% for instance.

that would either create either an unbalanced campaign (10% more ebonheart-players than aldmeri?) or a huge queue for ebonheart-players ... both quite undesirable.
I had that in mind, and I'm not sure how they'll approach this ... SWTOR fixed the whole Sith-dominance in PvP with creating sith vs. sith warzones, but that won't work in 3-faction system.

I liked the old WoW system, then again highest I got to was Lieutenant General/Commander and didn't do the grind to Grand Marshal/High Warlord. But I still remember how cool it was to see a Grand Marshall running around with all his gear.

A voting system is boring and I don't see how that would solve the problems you stated like botting and no skill. This is supposed to be a war with multiple factions and guilds, not a democracy.

Sure it was cool, but remember how they got the rank 14 armor - Huuuuuuge time investment and account sharing, AFKing in BGs etc. - that's not very state of the art for 2014

I didn't propose a pure voting system (please read my post again), and it kind of solves botting/afk - "Hey, these dingbats are botting and afk'ing in campaing, let's not vote for them!".
For the "no skill" part ... I don't know how big and how much of a lagfest clusterfuck the battles are going to be. It sounds kind of huge and most of the time people tend to go whre the action is and zerging doesn't require a whole lot of effort and "skill"

[Deleted]

Well I don't see that kind of balance is "good" but it's decent. Look at wow, many servers 80:20 ratio, that just sucks. While 27%, 37%, 36% is alot more balanced and fairer. But I don't know how they'll fix it, they might let you "guest" but that wouldn't work very good either.

Although I think faction balancing is way better with 3 factions then with 2 as the two smaller factions could also work together to take that third down or everyone must join one single faction, but I don't see that happening when you have this mega server where there are alot of players, in the end that is more balanced then having a smaller group of players. It's also harder to join the "overpowered" faction as you might just be put in a temporary server that doesn't have that "overpowered" faction but instead has another.

Although it could still be possible especially for the fact that morrowind ánd skyrim is in one faction, but we'll see I guess. On the other hand I guess we'll see many players choosing aldmeri dominion aswell because they both have high elves ánd Khajit.

I know that I will be playing Ebonheart just for the sake of morrowind

[Sharuko]

that would either create either an unbalanced campaign (10% more ebonheart-players than aldmeri?) or a huge queue for ebonheart-players ... both quite undesirable.

I had that in mind, and I'm not sure how they'll approach this ... SWTOR fixed the whole Sith-dominance in PvP with creating sith vs. sith warzones, but that won't work in 3-faction system.

It is not going to be anything like SWTOR. This is how it will work, remember everyone in the game is on one server. So there will be multiple campaigns of the same battle. No queues or anything like that.

Campaign A

Faction A = Cap of 3000 players (making the number up)
Faction B = Cap of 3000 players
Faction C = Cap of 3000 players

So they designed the system to be balanced in terms of faction participation. It wont be hard wired like server systems in SWTOR and GW2. Now there will obviously be imbalance in terms of when people log on, and if there is coverage over night. But in terms of balance it will be as good as it gets in terms of players per side because of their campaign system.

[Deleted]

It is not going to be anything like SWTOR. This is how it will work, remember everyone in the game is on one server. So there will be multiple campaigns of the same battle.

Campaign A

Faction A = Cap of 3000 players (making the number up)
Faction B = Cap of 3000 players
Faction C = Cap of 3000 players

So they designed the system to be balanced in terms of faction participation. It wont be hard wired like server systems in SWTOR and GW2. Now there will obviously be imbalance in terms of when people log on, and if there is coverage over night. But in terms of balance it will be as good as it gets in terms of players per side because of their campaign system.

And on top of that there is a higher amouth of players that could join this campaign thus creating a more equal enviroment. The more players the higher the chance of balance afterall.

Edit : I do wonder how they will fix the "night claiming" in cyrodiil though. As one faction could just come online at night with 300 people and claim every single keep / crown a new emperor. Totally destroying what has been done over day like what happened in Guild wars 2 alot of times.

Ideally they would only make keep claiming avaible during certain times (14:00-1:00?) and have increased points from killing people during off-hours or some other reward. But they should fix that if they want this pvp to be fun.

[Sharuko]

Edit : I do wonder how they will fix the "night claiming" in cyrodiil though. As one faction could just come online at night with 300 people and claim every single keep / crown a new emperor. Totally destroying what has been done over day like what happened in Guild wars 2 alot of times.

Ideally they would only make keep claiming avaible during certain times (14:00-1:00?) and have increased points from killing people during off-hours or some other reward. But they should fix that if they want this pvp to be fun.

They have a design mechanism in place for that. I forgot the exact details, but most of the Alliance points you get during the campaign is by killing other players, not taking other keeps. I got to find the source for this but I am pretty sure they said taking keeps won't give you a lot of points. So if you take a keep over night where there is no defense, you will get some points but not a lot of points. The also have mechanics in place to defend a keep that you take so it won't be a merry go around like GW2 and WAR were.

Matt Firor was the brains behind DAoC in terms of the mechanics and design, which is why I have hopes for RvR in this game.

[Deleted]

It is not going to be anything like SWTOR. This is how it will work, remember everyone in the game is on one server. So there will be multiple campaigns of the same battle.

Campaign A

Faction A = Cap of 3000 players (making the number up)
Faction B = Cap of 3000 players
Faction C = Cap of 3000 players

So they designed the system to be balanced in terms of faction participation. It wont be hard wired like server systems in SWTOR and GW2. Now there will obviously be imbalance in terms of when people log on, and if there is coverage over night. But in terms of balance it will be as good as it gets in terms of players per side because of their campaign system.

jup, and what happens if there are only (numbers made up...) ...
2400 Faction A (26%)
3800 Faction B (41%)
2900 Faction C (32%)

What happens now? Huge queue for Faction B because theres only space for 2500 players? Unbalanced campaign because they're filling up to 3000 and leaving faction A with a 20% disadvantage ?

Or If you're willing to go for multiple Campaigns ..

9000 Faction A (30%)
11000 Faction B (36%)
10500 Faction C (34%)

what happens now? 3 completely filled campaigns with a 2000 people queue for Faction B and a 1500 people queue for Faction C?
"Almost" Balanced campaigns with (let's say...) 2800/3000/2920 and smaller queues? Or does everyone who signs up for a capaign gets instant access and balacning is once again screwed?

Edit:

They have a design mechanism in place for that. I forgot the exact details, but most of the Alliance points you get during the campaign is by killing other players, not taking other keeps. I got to find the source for this but I am pretty sure they said taking keeps won't give you a lot of points. So if you take a keep over night where there is no defense, you will get some points but not a lot of points. The also have mechanics in place to defend a keep that you take so it won't be a merry go around like GW2 and WAR were.

Matt Firor was the brains behind DAoC in terms of the mechanics and design, which is why I have hopes for RvR in this game.

And that would once again encourage zerging without any tactics and create a huge advantage for the faction with the most players available.

[Deleted]

They have a design mechanism in place for that. I forgot the exact details, but most of the Alliance points you get during the campaign is by killing other players, not taking other keeps. I got to find the source for this but I am pretty sure they said taking keeps won't give you a lot of points. So if you take a keep over night where there is no defense, you will get some points but not a lot of points. The also have mechanics in place to defend a keep that you take so it won't be a merry go around like GW2 and WAR were.

Matt Firor was the brains behind DAoC in terms of the mechanics and design, which is why I have hopes for RvR in this game.

I read that interview today, but becoming emperor is a matter of claiming all keeps. So if you have the keeps someone of your faction will become emperor. So it's easy to get all the keeps in the night and get an emperor during the day. That's why I think that there should be a system that protects these keeps during off-hours which could be anything, new claimed keeps to not be claimable for X hours, strong defenders, not making it possible at all (Besides the ultra-ultra hardcore I doubt anyone would mind no cyrodiil during times that almost no-one plays like 3am). That's one of my main issues with pvp, I am not a pvp player but I enjoy doing this mass worldpvp every now and then but everytime there is a faction that ruins all the progress you make by stealing everything in the night. It doesn't make pvp fun nor gives it incentive to even try as in the night it will be stolen anyway.

@grantji I am going for almost balanced campaigns. Like 2000-2000-2000 and that is the cap, no more players then that. But if one faction just has 100 while the other's have 2000, then that's just bad for them. (But with megaservers those other 1900 should get filled up quickly) Besides this I think that when you encounter a queue you should be able to join another campaign where your faction is underpopulated and you get a reward for doing so. Even this makes pvp more balanced.

[Sharuko]

jup, and what happens if there are only (numbers made up...) ...
2400 Faction A (26%)
3800 Faction B (41%)
2900 Faction C (32%)

What happens now? Huge queue for Faction B because theres only space for 2500 players? Unbalanced campaign because they're filling up to 3000 and leaving faction A with a 20% disadvantage ?

Why would it go up to 3,800 players? Where there is a cap of 3,000? Each faction will have their own individual cap.

Or If you're willing to go for multiple Campaigns ..

9000 Faction A (30%)
11000 Faction B (36%)
10500 Faction C (34%)

what happens now? 3 completely filled campaigns with a 2000 people queue for Faction B and a 1500 people queue for Faction C?
"Almost" Balanced campaigns with (let's say...) 2800/3000/2920 and smaller queues? Or does everyone who signs up for a capaign gets instant access and balacning is once again screwed?

Everyone that signs up for that campaign gets instant access, they will never have queues. Everyone in the game will be assigned to their own campaign. And there will be soft caps and hard caps for the population.

And that would once again encourage zerging without any tactics and create a huge advantage for the faction with the most players available.

It would depending on how the map is designed. You will see zergs in large scale PvP, that is the whole point of large scale PvP. But if it is designed well like it was in DAoC then small groups of 8 players can make a huge impact in the overall results.

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I read that interview today, but becoming emperor is a matter of claiming all keeps. So if you have the keeps someone of your faction will become emperor. So it's easy to get all the keeps in the night and get an emperor during the day. That's why I think that there should be a system that protects these keeps during off-hours which could be anything, new claimed keeps to not be claimable for X hours, strong defenders, not making it possible at all (Besides the ultra-ultra hardcore I doubt anyone would mind no cyrodiil during times that almost no-one plays like 3am). That's one of my main issues with pvp, I am not a pvp player but I enjoy doing this mass worldpvp every now and then but everytime there is a faction that ruins all the progress you make by stealing everything in the night. It doesn't make pvp fun nor gives it incentive to even try as in the night it will be stolen anyway.

@grantji I am going for almost balanced campaigns. Like 2000-2000-2000 and that is the cap, no more players then that. But if one faction just has 100 while the other's have 2000, then that's just bad for them. (But with megaservers those other 1900 should get filled up quickly) Besides this I think that when you encounter a queue you should be able to join another campaign where your faction is underpopulated and you get a reward for doing so. Even this makes pvp more balanced.

Supposedly it is really hard to take and keep all of the keeps. I am sure it will be easier at night. I really don't think it will be that easy to just take over everything at night, but if that is possible it would suck.

http://youtu.be/qf5LjypWZNs?t=10m32s

[Deleted]

Why would it go up to 3,800 players? Where there is a cap of 3,000? Each faction will have their own individual cap.

Because Faction B is much more popular than Faction A (see Republic/Sith in SWTOR, or Alliance/Horde in WoW, etc. ) and a lot more people from Faction B sign up for campaign than from Faction A. There might be a cap for how much people can join a single campaign but there wont be a cap for general population for a faction.

Everyone that signs up for that campaign gets instant access, they will never have queues. Everyone in the game will be assigned to their own campaign. And there will be soft caps and hard caps for the population.

And how exactly will they implement that system? That was my original question ... how will they stop one faction from either being completely dominant in PvP or have huge queues ?

It would depending on how the map is designed. You will see zergs in large scale PvP, that is the whole point of large scale PvP. But if it is designed well like it was in DAoC then small groups of 8 players can make a huge impact in the overall results.

Sure, but if, like you said, getting kills is the most efficient way to get Alliance points - then the most efficient way is to go with the zerg and spam AE. Since I highly doubt that, I rather believe that you get more points by capping keeps, eliminate certain NPCs and completing other targets.

[Zanag]

Generally in this type of testing for games, not all the beta tests use the same client or the same forums.

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By the way if anyone is interested this links shows all the skills/abilities in the game based on what we know. It includes Emperor skill lines (under Alliance War):

-snipped link-

As you can see, the person that holds the title of Emperor will be a overpowered beast.

You do realize that Eldersouls is known for leaking content, right? Yep some of those skill lines on there are NDA-breaking.

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There might be a cap for how much people can join a single campaign but there wont be a cap for general population for a faction.

False, there will be a hard cap for each faction in each Campaign.

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And how exactly will they implement that system? That was my original question ... how will they stop one faction from either being completely dominant in PvP or have huge queues ?

They have explained this, if your faction is capped in Cyrodiil when you try to log in, yes you can sit there and wait for the queue to end, OR they will allow you to switch to another campaign for free while you wait for your campaign to have free space. So you can at least still PvP even though you aren't in your home campaign.

[Sharuko]

Because Faction B is much more popular than Faction A (see Republic/Sith in SWTOR, or Alliance/Horde in WoW, etc. ) and a lot more people from Faction B sign up for campaign than from Faction A. There might be a cap for how much people can join a single campaign but there wont be a cap for general population for a faction.

Overall in games like WoW even though there is a slight edge on one side, it isn't as bad as people claim. On PvP servers in WoW for example it is 58% Horde and 42% Alliance.

http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html

The problem is in these games there are servers, and in these servers there are some that have 90% Alliance population and some with 90% Horde population. The thing with the ESO system is that they keep changing the caps and bringing in more players if necessary.

And how exactly will they implement that system? That was my original question ... how will they stop one faction from either being completely dominant in PvP or have huge queues ?

As I said, you will be assigned to a campaign and will always have access to that campaign. There will be campaigns in which one faction is dominant, it will happen. No one excepts 100% balance. But this system is probably the best system for large scale PvP ever created.

Sure, but if, like you said, getting kills is the most efficient way to get Alliance points - then the most efficient way is to go with the zerg and spam AE. Since I highly doubt that, I rather believe that you get more points by capping keeps, eliminate certain NPCs and completing other targets.

Giving most points for keeps is a terrible system. All it does it promote keep flipping. You take a keep and there is zero incentive to defend it, so you leave and get the next one. It becomes a merry go round which we have seen happen in some games. Giving most points for players encourages PvP and since the map is huge if they do it right, there will be multiple big groups and small groups. It really depends on how they give credit for players killed.

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You do realize that Eldersouls is known for leaking content, right? Yep some of those skill lines on there are NDA-breaking.

Weird I saw it posted on the ESO Subreddit which enforces NDA, but I removed it just incase.

They have explained this, if your faction is capped in Cyrodiil when you try to log in, yes you can sit there and wait for the queue to end, OR they will allow you to switch to another campaign for free while you wait for your campaign to have free space. So you can at least still PvP even though you aren't in your home campaign.

Really? I was pretty certain they said if you are assigned to a campaign you will always have access to it.