Games The Elder Scrolls MMO

[LordjOX]

Nah, batswarm has always been capped at 6 it seems. Problem is how the ultimate reduction is calculcated with stage 4 vampirism and item sets that give ultimate cost reduction. They need to adress this.

Been away from the game a week but it seems this batswarm problem has become worse.

And here is ZOS solution it seems:
http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/24h8dv/welcome_to_the_zos_aua/ch74t74

Yeah, we are aware of the issues vampires in PvP. One bug fix and two balance changes are in the pipe, and should get to you guys next week. The changes are:

• Fixed the bug where multiple Bat Swarms can be stacked on the same Vampire.
• Reduced the movement speed bonus durring mist form to 30% (which makes it equivalent to the "Boundless storm" morph of Lightning form)
• Reduced the Vampire ability cost reduction to 7% per stage

We'll continue to monitor Vampires in pvp after these changes hit as well.

(ongoing ama btw)

 

[Poag]

http://tamrielfoundry.com/2014/05/matt-firor-road-ahead/

Adventurers will explore the ruins of Craglorn in the upcoming patch!

Today, on the Elder Scrolls Online official site, Matt Firor shared an interesting post detailing the “road ahead” for ESO. The Game Director shared some thoughts on the launch of the game so far, his take on certain challenges which ZOS has been working hard to overcome, and some solutions that are in the works to improve the ESO game experience for all of it’s players. You should definitely read the full post, but for some highlights and reactions to it’s contents, read on!

Current Challenges
Firor candidly admits that ZeniMax have been working hard to reduce the prevalence of bots and gold sellers in ESO, and he acknowledges that exposure to these types of players reduces the enjoyment level you experience in the game. He encourages all players to take a proactive stand to keep Tamriel clean against these pests!

You may have seen Customer Support GMs in the game over the last week actively banning bots in dungeons. We’re also doing a lot of work behind the scenes to keep the game honest and will continue to do so. Please keep helping us by reporting botting and spamming activity in-game.

I think it’s a noble goal, and it’s been great to see the bot-killer GMs rotating through zones banning accounts which are in violation of ESO‘s terms of service. It may be an unpopular viewpoint, but I think a certain amount of botting activity is an indication that your game has a healthy economy. As long as ZeniMax stays on top of things and takes swift action against botters, I hope that they keep paying for copies of ESO each time they are banned. The important thing is that such users don’t diminish the enjoyment actual players experience from the game, so I applaud ZeniMax’ reaction here.

Firor also mentioned some of the game-blocking bugs which were unfortunately prevalent during the first weeks of launch. It seems like the major blockers have been resolved, and although certain side quests are still bugged, players still leveling their characters should encounter fewer issues. Matt also discusses some of the major changes coming in the large Craglorn update (1.1).

I also admire Firor’s candidness when discussing the critic reception which has been received by The Elder Scrolls Online, saying:

As those who follow ESO closely know, a wide range of reviews have been posted for the game, with scores ranging from 90s to 50s. ESO generates strong emotions in gamers—both positive and negative. While I obviously don’t agree with the more negative articles, the reviews are out there, and we read them to determine if there are legitimate complaints that we should address. We are gratified by the many positive fan comments—the love that those fans express for ESO motivates us to keep working to make this the best MMO ever. Some of the negativity in reviews comes from bugs. As you can see, we’re hard at work addressing them and will keep rolling out fixes. The important thing for you, the community, to know is that we’re looking at ALL the feedback (from critics and from players), we’re addressing any shortcomings, and we’ll continue to do so. This game will get better and better every week.

I think as gamers, it’s easy to lose track of the big picture in favor of short-term doomsaying, but MMOs are games that (in an ideal world) are built to last for years, not days. I hope that ZeniMax remains motivated to continue their improvement of the game and to extend their commitment to ESO‘s players as a premium subscription service. As tangible evidence of that commitment, as an apology for the downtime and issues experienced during the first 30 days of launch, ZeniMax is crediting every ESO subscriber account with five free days of gametime, allowing players to experience more bug-free game time and see more in-depth previews of the hard work ZOS has put into Craglorn before committing to paying a further subscription fee. I think this is a politically savvy and magnanimous gesture from ZeniMax. I suspect that most players won’t be as appreciative of this as they should be, but I think allowing players to see tangible evidence of game improvements occurring before being solicited for a subscription fee is the best choice for the game.

Future Improvements
The dangerous Celestial Mage, in Craglorn’s Aetherian Archive.

Matt also teased a number of features and future improvements that are already being worked on by the ZeniMax developers, including:

• A system that allows grouped players to see each other even when they’re in different phases
• A justice system—steal from and kill NPCs and deal with the consequences if you are caught
• Migration of European Megaserver to our European datacenter.
• Field of View (FOV) adjustment
• Armor dyeing and tinting
• Two new Veteran Dungeons: Crypt of Hearts and City of Ash
• New region of Craglorn with a new Trial (the Serpent)
• Increased ability to pick up items in the world
• Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storyline and quests.
• Spellcrafting
• Horse Racing
• Dragonstar Arena—similar to Trials, but built for a group of four
• Improvements to fishing
• Crafting system improvements
• Improved Looking for Group system
• Better NPC facial animations
• Guild functionality updates: guild store interface updates, customizable guild insignias, tabards, and guild ranks, and Guild Kiosks—guild stores open to everyone that are available to the highest-bidding guild.
• Auto-leveling dungeons that level to your group leader
• Awards when you repeat dungeons
• Imperial City PvP dungeon

There’s some pretty notable things on this list that are really exciting to think about. Obviously the “justice system” has been something players have looked forward to for a long time as a post-launch update, but many of these other items are equally exciting. Armor dyes, new veteran dungeons, new trials, a Spellcrafting skill, guild functionality, and a PvP dungeon are the big highlights for me, all of which have me really excited for the future of ESO.

What do you think? Do you feel like ZeniMax is communicating the right sort of things to its players? What stands out the most to you in Matt Firor’s address? Let us know what you think in the comment section below!​

 

[Poag]

Sounds like Darkness Falls coming along. I hope they following the DF line with multi entrances and a hard 'core' to pass through to get to the others.

The justice system sounds interesting. I expect alot of peopel to get killed by the guards in the first few days as they auto loot everything.

 

[Moriath]

Nah, batswarm has always been capped at 6 it seems. Problem is how the ultimate reduction is calculcated with stage 4 vampirism and item sets that give ultimate cost reduction. They need to adress this.

Been away from the game a week but it seems this batswarm problem has become worse.

And here is ZOS solution it seems:
http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/24h8dv/welcome_to_the_zos_aua/ch74t74



(ongoing ama btw)

So unlike what @miri was complaining about it's not working as intended and they are changing it.

@miri just throwing your toys in a petulant rage.

 

[miri]

Are you even level 50? Have you even spent any significant time PvP'ing in this game? Don't throw around such pathetic, trite insults when you have no idea what you're talking about. Will look to resub when these changes get implemented along with servers not being unplayably laggy and when it doesn't take over an hour to get your group loaded into the same Cyrodiil instance.

The AMA, as ever with these companies, had lots of promising 'in the future we will...'s but as it stands there is an overwhelming amount of stuff which simply makes it not worth paying for. The core of the game is great, we really enjoy/ed it and hope to come back to it but I refuse to pay £10 a month for something which isn't working as advertised.

 

[Moriath]

@miri Handbags ?

 

[Shagrat]

People shouldn't even be lvl50 ffs. That is the number 1 issue with any MMO released these days.

every fucker races to top level in the first 30 days, then spends the next god know how long bitching about lack of endgame content/balance issues blah blah blah.

 

[Raven]

Took me about 40 days /played to get my first DAOC 50, thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

 

[miri]

Yeah I agree in the sense that the games allow people to hit cap level far too early, but the whole attitude and expectation of the player base has changed so much since back then. If a game came out like DAoC was on release now, people would quit because it took too long to level. Conversely people now quit because they get to max level and content is either missing or broken (would certainly argue that TESO has more than enough end-game PvE content as it is, just the PvP is broken). Like so many other things in life, I think MMOs are a victim of their own popularity.

 

[Soazak]

I don't think it's specifically the availability of end game content that's the issue. I think it's more about broken stuff than missing stuff. Not just at end game either, the amount of blocked quests at lower levels is pretty bad. For a game aiming to be AAA and the amount of money put into it you expect a game to be released fully functional. I know people go on about WoW/daoc had bugs at release etc, but times are different now, with MMOs being mainstream players expect a fully finished product, and tbh even though I'm quite accepting of bugs I think they're right, if you're paying for the service you expect it to be finished, it's not 2005 any more where you can just put out an alpha/beta and expect people to accept it.

Had some friends stuck at level 50 for over a week because the quest to get to VR1 was bugged, they've quit now.

 

[pikeh]

another one bites the dust, then? Saw this one coming a mile off.

 

[Poag]

Hardly, the most vocal among us for a certain type of game as stopped playing...the rest of us continue playing quite happily...

 

[Soazak]

another one bites the dust, then? Saw this one coming a mile off.

Nah, it is actually a very good game, but some of the bugs are frustrating, in that they take so long to be fixed.

It better (for me) than anything else on the market right now, I'll probably play until at least CU

 

[Shagrat]

im still really enjoying it. the pvp's alright at the moment, and some of the pve content is really nice.

I particularly like the Lady Laurent quests that keep popping up, helping some rich treasure hunter women, with a servant called stibbons.

 

[LordjOX]

New patch 1.0.7 removes vampire batswarm stacking, reduces vampire ultimate cost reduction and reduces mist form movement speed:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/91966/patch-notes-v1-0-7#latest

Rolls out on EU tomorrow

Oh and dinged VR10 yesterday. I recommend grinding VR6-10 in the Veteran Wayrest Sewers dungeon if you are tired with quests. About 300-400k VP per run (primarily from boss kills)

 

[Moriath]

I knew they would balance the op ness. They seem to be on the ball tbh. It's only a week or so since people been complaining about it and now it's changed. @miri see it's not working as intended

 

[Gwadien]

every fucker races to top level in the first 30 days, then spends the next god know how long bitching about lack of endgame content/balance issues blah blah blah.

Equally, if they're going to make getting to 50 so easily, they have to have the content there at the end.

 

[Hawkwind]

Had some friends stuck at level 50 for over a week because the quest to get to VR1 was bugged, they've quit now.

I had that stupid staircase quest bug where the last brazier could not be lit, despite jumping to my death over 50 times. Frustrating as hell and lasted for over a week. Actually made me start leveling an alt DK. Then by chance I logged on early one morning and it worked first time, by that time my alt was in high 30's

Regards the PVP issues, I have never played an MMO where there was no stupidly OP ability or bug that made certain setups almost unplayable against. Banshee wall bug anyone! It's been out a month, have some patience and let them fix it.

The only thing they could have done better was to put Vamps on notice that if they are caught abusing the known bug/game mechanic they have their chars rolled back or something.

Now they are actively banning bots I am a lot happier with the game.

 

[miri]

I've played a lot of MMOs and seen a lot of broken shit be abused, but I've never seen something like the Vamp ult. Vamps were solo'ing literally 50+ people, that had to be addressed immediately. Not patched 2-3 weeks after people farmed millions of APs abusing it.

 

[Raven]

You must have missed warlocks in DAOC then

That shit was broken for a year at least...I reckon a few weeks and it is fixed is pretty good in comparison.

 

[Moriath]

Hunters still are broken I think. From the outset they never really got fixed. Not in an op way hehe.

 

[Moriath]

I think everyone has rose tinted glasses of their favourite mmo and disregard the bits that were broken or took ages to fix. And therefore demand perfection from the new ones they go into. Which is never going to happen. Even wow is still balancing classes after god knows how many years.

 

[miri]

Dunno @Raven, I certainly remember Warlocks being OP but I don't remember them being able to farm 50+ people solo. Something being OP and flat out broken like this is different to me at least. The parallel I would draw is that when people were duping millions of gold in TESO they brought the servers down and fixed it pretty swiftly (within like 24h), whereas people were abusing Vamp to farm millions of AP and it wasn't addressed at all in any proactive manner. It's being patched, yes, but it way too late imo.

Having rose tinted glasses is certainly true to a point - there was a lot wrong with DAoC back in the day for sure, Warlocks as mentioned and if you go back to the beginning things like spammable CC with no DR/immunity and even smite Clerics for a while. However I know for a fact that a lot of issues with TESO - such as Vamps, the gold dupe and the XP bug people used to get to VR10 at release - were reported in beta and they simply weren't fixed. Instead we get VR12 content a month into the game's release when 90% of the population isn't even VR10 yet.

Don't get me wrong, I want TESO to succeed and I do like the game but I find it very hard to justify paying for a product which is being managed in this way.

 

[Hawkwind]

Dunno @Raven, I certainly remember Warlocks being OP but I don't remember them being able to farm 50+ people solo. Something being OP and flat out broken like this is different to me at least. The parallel I would draw is that when people were duping millions of gold in TESO they brought the servers down and fixed it pretty swiftly (within like 24h), whereas people were abusing Vamp to farm millions of AP and it wasn't addressed at all in any proactive manner. It's being patched, yes, but it way too late imo.

Having rose tinted glasses is certainly true to a point - there was a lot wrong with DAoC back in the day for sure, Warlocks as mentioned and if you go back to the beginning things like spammable CC with no DR/immunity and even smite Clerics for a while. However I know for a fact that a lot of issues with TESO - such as Vamps, the gold dupe and the XP bug people used to get to VR10 at release - were reported in beta and they simply weren't fixed. Instead we get VR12 content a month into the game's release when 90% of the population isn't even VR10 yet.

Don't get me wrong, I want TESO to succeed and I do like the game but I find it very hard to justify paying for a product which is being managed in this way.

The duping thing had to be hot fixed or the economy of the game would have be ruined. Regarding Vamps I would prefer they get the fix right, test it and test it and make sure then roll it out. What they missed out on was warning the abusers they could be banned if they abused the exploit. That would have stopped a lot of right then. Those found using it should still have their AP zeroed imo.

 

[LordjOX]

Yeah there are some players on Auriels Bow close to 10m AP that have used either vampire batswarm abuse or collusion- get a level 10 DK alt and get people over the walls to snag elder scrolls and troll with them that way.

 

[Hawkwind]

Was trying to get the vamp thing this morning on an alt and found bots camping every spawn. Two to three of them at each site. Luckily I lured a close by world boss over to the bots and they tried to gank it whilst I ran out of range Seems it is now the farmers selling bites and stopping everyone else getting it. Reported them all but will be interesting to see if they ban them quick now.

This was around 5 am GMT!

 

[Cirventhor]

Gone for a 3-month subscription now, should last me until CU alpha in august.

 

[LordjOX]

Yeah, bots are still rampant. Instead of teleporting around they now walk around like players, except straight lines from node to node. They also kill mobs on the way. Very hard to detect through automated systems.

The new thing now is a non combat quest in Coldharbour. They create a new char, get to Coldharbour through some glitch, do the quest, mule the cash, delete char and repeat. Endless queue of bots going to that NPC

Not bothered at all in the veteran zones, but understand it can be annoying for new players.

Also stacking batswarm fix was lovely. Our guildgroup went from lots of whine every evening to no whine at all. Just fun times in Cyrodiil
I recommend this addon for RvR leaders: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info345-RvRToolsENFRGER.html
The auto invite is awesome!

 

[Urgat]

Some pvp on my NB...


View: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YgBWqBjIB6s

 

[Chosen]

Started playing this game about a week ago now, and I have to say even though it's only been PvEing up til now I actually seem to enjoy this game! Can't wait to Reach 50 and get some VRs before PvPing With HB