Zenimax Ask us Anything Reddit Answers

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Reddit Here’s a compilation of the questions asked by the reddit community, and the Zenimax Online replies from the May 1st AMA session.

The staff taking part in the AMA session: (click to move to the correct section)

Jessica Folsom Answers (English Community Manager)

Do you play on the live servers?

We sure do! We never reveal that we’re ZOS employees though. 😉 We’re in player guilds and often group up and play alongside many of you. We’re always tickled when we see a name in-game that we recognize from the forums or fan communities.

Any plans on housing in the future?

We really want to do player housing, but we want to do it right. We don’t have a time-frame to share yet.

Will you add more items to the Bethesda Store? (ESO purse/earrings, sweater for my dog… :D)

Yes, we’ll continue to add more items to the Bethesda merchandise store! Can’t guarantee there will be dog sweaters, but we do have some really cool stuff coming soon.

Please tell me we’ll be seeing more of Naryu Virian in the future, I’ve fallen in love with that girl!

We do have more plans for the ashen-skinned mischief maker!

My wife and I just wrapped up the main questline for Glenumbra last night and we really liked Darien (You first see him when your taking on Faulchu), any chance he could be come more of a regular NPC? Really liked his sarcastic dry humor.

You will see more of him… 😉

Do you guys still have plans to add additional rank slots for guilds? A lot of guilds find it difficult to organize their hierarchy with only three ranks and a guild master rank. Is there a rough time frame for this?

We do have plans to increase the amount of guild rank slots, and make what they’re called customizable. We don’t have a time frame, but it is something we’d like to get in this year, along with some other player guild improvements.

Why isn’t there more interaction with players on the official forums, such as offering help for common problems, answering common questions, explaining why certain decisions are made, providing helpful hints, acknowledging feedback and inquiries, hosting AMA sessions there, etc?

We respond as much as we’re able, between creating all the content that goes up on elderscrollsonline.com, our social media channels, and making sure issues and feedback get to the dev team. Could we do more? Always, and we do strive to. One of the easiest ways to see where we’re posting is to check the dev tracker: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/tracker

When is batswarm going to be fixed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucmjldufa6U

It’s planned for a near future patch. It’ll be in the patch notes when we do make adjustments to the skill.

Regarding the prevention of Gold Farmers has there been any thought to banning the known IP address ranges from the countries where the offenders are coming from?

Banning by select IPs is not as effective as it might sound; it’s actually a very temporary solution, and you can end up hurting real players in the process (military who are abroad, for example.) The professional gold sellers and botters have ways to get around IP bans (virtual machines, proxies, etc.) We are employing other more permanent ways to combat gold sellers and botters, and are continuing to aggressively ramp up our efforts to keep them out of ESO.

Matt Firor Answers (Game Director)

Well, I think I speak for the entire console community when I ask this. Where the heck is the console information? You have kept us in the dark for a while and we would like some sort of news. We honestly don’t care what kind, just give us something. The tiniest thing would be nice, even if you plan on delaying the game, at least TELL us or something. Because then, at least we can stop checking your websites every thirty minutes for some console information.

We’re working hard on the console versions of ESO now – expect to see more information about this in the very near future.

So I have heard that you guys all play the game in your offtime as well. I was wondering what class/race you guys prefer to use, and with what weapon?

Every time we post publicly what class/alliance we play, we get a lot of commentary about favoritism – but I think it’s safe to say at this point that I’ve personally played just about every class and most of the races at some point in the alpha/beta/live process. My main right now (as I put in the announcement everyone saw this morning) is a dual-wield/medium armor Nightblade. Not saying which alliance, though…

Can we PLEASE get Guar mounts? I would love to ride on the back of my favorite creature while striking fear in my enemy’s eyes as they see me and my new best friend trotting onto the battlefield!

We are definitely planning on this, but no promises on timeline.

Something that is a struggle for most MMOs is the pace/cadence of release of new content. I recall Rift to be impressively fast with feature/content patches, and GW2 has a very impressive New Content every 2 weeks cycle.
On the other hand, MMOs like WoW (although it has arguably improved slightly in recent times) and FFXIV have a really long time between content patches.
Can you PLEASE give us an idea of what ESO’s cadence is going to be moving forward? 🙂

Right now, we’re concentrating on weekly patches to fix issues and get the service stable – and of course we are also getting Update 1 (with Craglorn) ready to go live soon. After the dust settles, we’re planning on an update every 4-6 weeks. They all won’t be as big as the first one (with a complete zone and tons of other stuff), but they’ll all have a mix of new content and fixes/balance tweaks.

So thrilled to be part of this game, especially because it’s led by Matt Firor (DAoC forever!). Thanks for all your hard work, guys. My questions are simple. (Leaving the complex ones to theorycrafters.)
1) I’m all about immersion. Little things take me out of the game. That’s what happens when you’re an artist, I suppose. Currently our weapons disappear when we mount up on horseback. Will that be fixed anytime soon? Is it in the upcoming update? (When they disappear, currently we can make them reappear if we re-equip the weapon while on horseback.)
2) How soon should we expect the guild customization/personalization features like crests, tabards, et al? I should hope sooner than later, so guilds can better establish themselves before they fall apart. It’s not easy building a guild presence without visual identifiers.

Thanks for the shout-out! With the size and attach locations of our weapons, we considered it far less immersion breaking to take the weapons away than to have them intersecting with the horse’s geometry, which would have almost certainly happened.
As with all of the items I listed in this morning’s update, there’s no specific timeline for the guild tabards crests, but they are in the “sooner” end of the list.

1) Do you still plan to implement a true fullscreen option, and if so do you have a rough idea when it will happen?

2) You mentioned in the road ahead that you are working on moving the EU servers. You don’t mention a time frame, but do you have any hints you could give us? It’s one of the biggest issues I’ve seen talked about by EU players recently, particularly in light of the dreadful lag/latency problems (which may or may not be caused by the location of the datacentre right now, but people will always speculate and assume that it doesn’t help).

True fullscreen is in update 1, which is currently in testing on PTS.
As for moving the EU servers, This is something that we continue to regularly evaluate and as soon as we can move on from fighting service attacks from gold farmers and fixing stability and server load issues, we’ll move the EU megaserver over to its European hosting center. There’s no exact timeline for this at the moment, but it will happen when things settle down.

So, in the recent FAQ about the future, you mentioned that Craglorn was for VR1 content and above? Is this a typo – can I do craiglorn stuff to level VR1 to VR10?
Also, how do you guys see encouragement of alts if the entire leveling process is doing all 3 faction storylines with 1 character?

It is difficult to do Craglorn content with a group of VR1 characters, but it is possible (and a fun challenge). You may want to wait a few more levels before venturing there.

My question is what are your future plans for selling items in game to other players, will there be an auction house like in wow at some point?
I read that guild kiosk will start running soon, how will it work exactly?

We don’t have plans for any more purchasable items right now (although we will do character name changes at some point).
There will be kiosks in all major cities – with a “seller” vendor NPC. Guilds will be able to bid on each kiosk, if they submit the highest bid, that guild’s store will be accessible to everyone who interacts with the NPC. Guild control of a kiosk will last for one week, after which it will be back up for bid.

2 days ago, I entered a dungeon to get a skyshard, get the achievement and get the blue drop.
As always, there were many toons surrounding the boss spawn, making it (as always) near impossible to get a hit in.
I was present for 3 kills – and then I was insta-killed, booted from the game and toon was suspended.
I put in a ticket – was told to wait 15-20 mins and log in again. I tried that, didn’t work, replied with that info. Your NEXT action was to DELETE MY ACCOUNT, REFUND MY GAME PURCHASE and CANCEL MY SUB – none of which I asked for or even implied I wanted.
It’s now day #3 – to date, NO ONE at ZOS has told me why any of this happened or when it will be resolved. I do not bot/script/boss camp or behave in any way against the ToS in-game. I am not the only one this has happened to.
Why are you insta-banning INNOCENT players, DELETING ACCOUNTS and then making them wait days (if not longer) for any type of informational response?

My sincere apologies for this – part of the risk of banning bots in game is that legitimate players sometimes get caught up in the auto-ban system. That obviously isn’t good, and I’m sure it has been terrible for you. As you have a currently open ticket, we’ll make sure that it gets the attention it needs as soon as possible.

What is being done to address the customer support problems which leave many, many players frustrated by the response delays, the useless auto-replies and the lack of any real solutions and follow-ups to their customer support and help requests?

As in the launch of most games of this type – and especially given the huge impact of the Black Market gold farmers in game – our CS department has had their hands full. That’s not an excuse, but it is what’s happening, although it is getting better. We will definitely work to make sure that CS is focusing as much on helping players as they are on identifying and reducing the impact of bots and spammers. We will work hard to make sure that the CS experience continues to improve.

Why is there so much emphasis and development time spent on new content when massive numbers of bugs and issues exist in the current content? Shouldn’t you fix the current broken stuff before giving us new broken stuff?

That is a very good question, and something we should talk more about – the team that works on new content isn’t the same as the one that is working on fixes – but if you notice, Update 1 (which features Craglorn), also has a huge list of fixes and polish/tweaks. So even though you’re seeing a lot about Craglorn, that update contains far more than just that.
Also, we have weekly updates that generally go out on Tuesdays that have bug fixes. So, two separate tracks of fixes that are happening.

Hey Thanks for scheduling this Q&A today I am a committed fan/player and love the game. My biggest concern is grouping mechanics (i.e. different phases with friends and guild mates). Do you have a timeline yet for this improvement. Also what about a group need/greed loot option thus allowing for shared loot for the party. Thanks

We don’t know exactly when group phasing fixes will get to the live servers, but believe me, I know how annoying it can be. It is one of our higher priorities right now.

Hey Guys.
First of all I like the game, but I am not entirely sold out. There are couple things that prevent me from subbing for a long period.

1) balance. What’s your approach to balance? Is it based on PvE or PvP? The reason why I am asking is I see DKs soloing qusts/bosses that are not meant to be soloable which other classes can’t really do.

2) What are your long term plans to keep PvE player in the game?

1) Balance is something that happens on an on-going basis, especially as the game matures and more and more players get to high level.
2) Long term we want to be sure we have content that players want to do long-term, with the understanding that there are many different types of PvE players. First, as a solo player, you can of course level to 50 solo, and can get through much of the first “other Alliance” that you explore at Veteran Rank. With a friend or two, you can get through all Veteran-rank Alliances. For dungeons, we have the regular instanced dungeons, many of which have Veteran versions that you can come back and do with a four-person group. We’ll be adding more Veteran dungeons over time. And of course we have Craglorn which will be adding more Veteran rank group content, including zone exploration, instanced dungeons, and the new 12-man Trials.

Do you plan to add a Level Mentoring system to allow players to manually scale their level down to play on equal footing with their lower-level friends?

This is something we’ve been working on – we’re evaluating it now, and hope to have more info about it at some point soon. It’s part of the overall “let players find each other more easily” initiative.

Are you guys aware of the bugs surrounding large groups crashing everyone in the group? (If they have more than 12 members in different zones, especially if guild-mates are in that group)

We fixed a large-group crash bug about two weeks after launch, and have heard about this new one, but haven’t been able to replicate it – I’ll follow up and see what’s going on.

Nick Konkle Answers (Lead Gameplay Designer)

To expound on this question, werewolf line is currently not viable because:
1. Does less dps than my DK in normal form, particularly when I’m weaving my skills and light attacks with animation canceling
2. Extremely High cost of Ultimate, and lackluster form when you eventually get it.
3. Interruptable ultimate cast so after waiting so long to get 1000 ultimate, you cast it and it gets interrupted, total let down.
4. Long cast time of ultimate, letting everyone CC+dps you down, considering you want to be around people in order to fear them
5. AFAIK no way to prematurly end your WW form, so if you want to heal yourself or your buddies with your healing staff instead of being a low dps machine, you can’t
6. When you “cure” yourself from WW you don’t get your skillpoints back, which adds insult to injury
7. Vampires being OP and broken right now, but I assume that will be fixed

Ok, manged to get in by borrowing Jess Folsom’s laptop. Please excuse any typos since I’m not so familiar with this keyboard. Also, if I give an answer you don’t like, that’s Jess’ laptop’s fault as well. I’m going to try to work my way through the backlog of questions here as quick as possible, so I might be a bit brief with the first few answers. I’ll try to circle back for follow ups as quick as possible.
Yes, we believe werewolf is under-performing right now. Expect a few buffs to help offset this. In the short run, we’re reducing the ultimate cost of the transformation itself. We’re also looking at a few other changes as well to offset some of the other points you bring up (which I think are quite valid).

So, Spellcrafting. I’m incredibly excited about this! What can you tell us about your plans?

I know! I can’t tell you how excited I am to have it in game as well. I don’t want to give ALL the spoilers just yet…but I’ll maybe I’ll drop one or two.
First one for you, since your thread was the first one I saw: In crafting spells, you’ll be rediscovering the traditional Elder Scrolls schools of magic (alteration, destruction, etc).

Are you aware the vampire issue in AvA right now? It is literally destroying the PvP experience.

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

Can we expect a Frost based skill line in the near future? Perhaps an “Ice Drake” tree for DragonKnghts :P.

There are several new frost spells that can be learned via the upcoming spell crafting system.

First off, love the game. I’ve been putting every spare minute I get into playing this, I’ve been looking forward to this game since I first heard about it like 2 yrs ago. That said, good luck on this AMA, and know that whatever the griefers say, you guys have made a huge impact on the MMO community at large already.
My questions is: Are we ever going to be able to repair our own gear? I feel that as a max rank blacksmith I should be able to repair my armor (that I made) without spending the 2,500 gold every other dungeon run (even when Idon’t die).

To expand on this further (since I didn’t find anyone that asked about this directly), durability damage is a bit higher than we would like it to be in group situations like dungeons, the upcoming craglorn zone, and Trial content. In Patch 1.1, you’ll take significantly less damage in group situations (whether or not you have officially formed a party)

Is there any workings being done on a leader chevron that stands out of the others so theres a sense of direction in general AND in pvp? As it is now, having someone scream follow me and not being distingiushed is not really helping. Also thanks for an awesome game and many years to come of it.

Yes. That feature should hit for patch 1.2

1. With the vr rank being raised, will there be new gear?
2. Will we be able to craft items at these higher levels?
3. Will we need to spend more skill points to create this higher lwvel gear?
4. Can we expect more vr ranks in the future?
5. If you anwsered yes to #4, please go back to #1?

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Nothing beyond what you need to craft VR10 gear
4. Yes
5. When we introduce a new material (in a later patch), you will need to spend a skill point to use that. Each other answer is “yes” again.

Currently, heavy armor is only really useful to tanks in a PVE setting. Is this a design decision or is heavy armor going to get some love for the other two roles ? I get that there’s the issue of everyone running around in heavy armor, but the bonuses apart from tanking stuff are extremely minor compared to the other two types.

There are some changes to heavy armor coming that will make you generate ultimate more quickly when playing defensively. This should help give it more utility in PvP

Any news on a possible change / nerf for Standard of Might for Dragon Knights?
It is currently very strong, and way over the top in a lot of aoe situations where it basically can have a near 100% uptime due to ultimate refuelling so fast. This gives a DK sustain through battle roar and damage and damage reduction through standard to solo stuff they are clearly not meant to.
Signed a veteran 8 DK 😛 (Even I can see this mess is too strong)

Definitely aware of the issue. Don’t have specific details for you right now, but we are currently discussing several possible adjustments

It seems like 90% of my pvp server is running the same 2 classes, dk and sorc. Most vr10’s are steamrolling everyone using Talons with batswarm spam with cost reduction in the vampire line, causing them to fight at a ratio of 1 to 30 without taking any damage. Will this be adressed? its making pvp unbearable.

Definitely aware of the issue with vampires (I posted the adjustments we are planning to make in the short term in an early thread).
Dark talons is currently bugged and can hit more targets than intended. We’re also discussing improving players’ ability to counter immobilize effects, but I don’t have details for you on that just yet.
We are also setting up the Elder Scroll so that Bolt Escape cannot be used by its carrier.
That is a subset of the changes we are planning for PvP balance concerns, but hopefully this address some of the more common concerns I’ve seen

Is there any plans to add more utility to the Nightblade class? I feel that this class is somewhat weaker than others in the sense that it has little versatility and anything this class can do, other classes can do just as well if not better. I love my V1 Nightblade, but I fear we just don’t match up to the other classes right now.

Yes. For patch 1.2, we are looking especially at helping to add flexibility to builds with some buffs to the lesser used abilities. For the nightblade, this includes abilities such as Master Assassin, Path of Darkness, Incapacitate, and more. I’m really looking forward to getting that patch out to everyone: I think you’ll be really excited about the changes.

I almost forgot! Fix Vamp ability Poison Mist! It only ticks 3 times when it should tick 8! Video here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2I8YIvTEGE Thanks!

I will look into this today. Thanks for the heads up!

Is the zombie ultimate “Cheese” getting fixed?

I’m guessing this is actually about the “Vampire” ultimate cheese, in which case, yes. I’ll re-post what my response to a different thread.

• Fixed the bug where multiple Bat Swarms can be stacked on the same Vampire.
• Reduced the movement speed bonus during 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
And we’ll continue to monitor the situation after these changes go live

Brian Wheeler Answers (Lead PvP Designer)

How do you guys like the pacing of AvA? Is it what it should be? Are keeps flipping faster than intended?

Pacing of the war has been as expected in some campaigns and not in others. We’re aware of the issues of population and scoring imbalances and working on adjustments in future patches. All that being said, the keeps are getting a bump in difficulty in the first patch which may slow down the rate of their individual capture times.

Do you have any plans for small scale PvP or even duels? Something like 20v20 or even 40v40 or even smaller? I am a more casual player, I love hoping into the game and doing a couple of quests or even a dungeon and logging out. But PvP in Cyrodiil although fun, can take some time to setup and even find PvP.
So small scale PvP could be an amazing complement to the PvE content in the game for the more casual player, and will give us a variety of fun things to do while leveling up.
Thanks guys and gals.

There are no plans at this time for smaller scale pvp zones/dueling. That’s not to say there never will be any as the great thing about ESO is that it gets patches all the time and new content can be PVE and/or PVP themed. For now we’re focusing on Cyrodiil and adjusting as needed based on live feedback.

Is there any plans for some kind of small scale pvp? Like something I can do alone, or with a small team. Sabotage, distraction, just something besides like quests, skyshards, and other more PVE aspects in Cyrodil.
For almost twelve days now AD has had my PVP campaign on lockdown. And we can’t really get anything back, because they have a much bigger population and I feel that everyone in Ebonheart and The Covenant gave up. So i’d just like to see something Keep/Resource oriented content that can be achieved by small strike teams to atleast disrupt the enemy.
And some small scale warfare would be a nice break up from the zergfest.

Small teams have been proven as very effective at taking out resources and remember if you take out all three resources at a keep it cuts off the transit. Another tactic is getting a bunch of siege weapons and swiss cheesing a keep and not actually taking it over….just making the enemies spend all their alliance points to repair it. Remember warfare isn’t just about killing but also economic. Another tactic if you’re blood thirsty is to light up a keep wall with the same siege, everyone hide, then jump people that come out and try to light up your weapons. Those are just a few examples but there are things you can do to disrupt larger population Alliances if you’re patient and sneaky.

Do you have any plans for Battlegrounds in this game? Blizzard recently stated it is their most popular activity and it will fit perfectly in ESO.

We have no plans for BG’s or small scale PVP at the moment as we’re focusing on Cyrodiil for now. That’s not to say we won’t be adding them ever, but for now we want to make sure Cyrodiil is going well.

Do you realize the guesting mode on AvA cut all server pride, and people move on another server when thing’s are getting too hard (Generally Auriel’s bow, the main campaign)
If you want people to care of AvA, to defend castle and play the points, you should make guesting a lot more difficult to use. Also, the Vampire abuse, specially the bats ulti, is making people leaving Ava in mass.
I play a lot in AvA and work for the community, and see thoses things by myself.
Do you know thoses two problems, and will you fix it? very dangerous for your great RvR mode i think.

It is interesting seeing the difference between US Cyrodiil populations and behaviors vs. European populations. In the US, a lot of players are using the guest pass to join any fight they can find in the higher population campaigns. In the EU server however, players are continually sticking with their home campaigns. The guest pass timers and cost for switching campaigns is on our radar and we’re monitoring it daily to make sure we don’t negatively impact how players are playing.

Will you change the merchants in Cyrodiil to allow them to accept payment in gold and not just in Alliance points? Also, where can I buy VR level glyphs in Cyrodiil? The mystic merchants do not offer them.

Currently there are no plans to change the AP merchants to take gold except for the few siege weapons. VR glyphs are on the radar and will be adjusted soon though.

Are you guys aware of the PVP infinite loading screens, and small hangs when people join/leave groups? The joining/leaving hanging/crashing seems to happen if a member of the group has gone into a different zone (e.g. PVE whilst rest of group in Cyrodiil).

We are aware of these small hitches and client issues when in larger groups and looking into fixing them as soon as we can =)

Can we expect any neat additions to PVP sieges? Maybe opening portals, raising ladders against the castle wall, or the bridge the Daggerfall guy used in the Alliances trailer?

For now there are no plans for new siege weapons or ammo types.

There is a lot of confusion about the horses stamina mechanic. Apparently the unlimited sprinting is no bug but intended. This makes investing into stamina look inferior to speed though. Do you care to explain how it exactly works and how it is intended to be used?

Stamina for horses not only controls when you can sprint on the horse, but also determines if you’ll get knocked off while riding your horse. When that stamina bar goes down to 0 and you get hit, you get knocked off immediately.

I regularly PvP with a group of 4 friends and we simply can’t take over a resource (farm, lumberyard, etc.) by ourselves.
You would think a group of 4 could contribute in some way other than following the huge zergfest in Cyrodiil, but there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do. Do you all have any plans to allow a group of 4 be able to do anything in Cyrodiil be themselves?
We did some skyshard hunting and questing but that, frankly, got boring after a while.

We’ve seen groups of 2-3 take over Resources easily but if you’re lower level it can be difficult without the use of Siege weapons. If you’re using a meatbag catapult it’s a LOT of help as it reduces the healing effectiveness of the menders. Besides resources though, you can head to the ends of enemy transit lines and camp people leaving the keeps, or even more sneaky, find the zergs and pick off the members in the back.

Can players who highly prefer PvP be given opportunities to level and progress in skills at the same rate as PvE players can?

For the first patch we’re doubling the amount of XP that players are worth. We will be watching this data closely to see if another increase is necessary.

The biggest question for GUILD STORES is when will we be able to finally access them in Cyrodil? The idea was to be able to access the guild stores of the keep owners, but currently it just tells you “You are not a part of this guild.
Sadly, that makes the whole ‘Own a keep, get a store” thing useless and destroys what could have been awesome economy wise.

You can access guild stores in Cyrodiil right now at the entry location bankers however we are aware of the aspect that you can’t access them at Keeps and working on it.

The guild I’m in is a PvP guild and we’ve fought our way through some serious bugs that has dragged down our motivation every night to play, are there any news on fixes coming to any of these bugs?
• Loading screen to Cyrodiil, most nights about half of my guildies only get in to Cyrodiil on the 3rd-4th try, and we have to stand in queue between that. For some it worked to delete a file in the ESO folder, for many it didn’t however.
• Suddenly unable to move (happened personally as most 7 times in 2 hours, you have to die to an enemy so you can respawn and then it’s fixed). Related to the Sorc teleport spell, might be when I’m slowed and I use the teleport skill I get stuck, not sure. It only ever happens when I’m in a large fight.
• Game crashes or freezes for some seconds when raid/party members go offline/online when in a large party. Same issue if one person joins the raid who isn’t in the campaign yet or who’s visiting another campaign. We simply have to wait with invites for everyone until they’re in Cyrodiil, not as annoying as the other bugs, but still.
• FPS drops to 5 after getting pulled by a DK (happened 3x personally), have to restart client. Not too common so not a huge issue.
• “Skybug”, suddenly your ingame screen gets a blueish sky color. Happened to me maybe 5 times since launch. No option but to restart the client. Don’t know why it happens. This bug isn’t restricted to AvA however, have also had it happen in PvE.
• Get knocked down on the ground and your character stays there. You can move at regular speed but you’re still knocked down so you can’t use any spells or dodge etc. Related to the Fire Rune spell. You usually get to stand up again automatically after 30-60 seconds or until the next Fire Rune hits you.
• All your armor passive bonuses don’t count and you have to relog 1+ times to fix it. No idea what’s causing this.
• Destroyed enemy doors/walls stay up for you alone so you can’t enter while other allies can walk through. Relogging usually solves this.
• Siege that you place is unusable. Might be a placing/terrain issue, not a too annoying bug but hey, still has to be fixed eventually.
And then we come to the final big thing, AoE-cap.. You’ve heard it before, but take a look at one Guild (VoTF) fighting another Guild (GD) in AvA. These two guilds were two of the best guilds in Guild Wars 2 and they know how battles will be played out in the future in AvA, and at the moment with this AoE-cap, these are the boring fights we will get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hyK9tLzG5o

A lot of these issues are being dug into as we type! For the loading screen issues we have seen it may deal with UI mods as the hanging is on the Client moreso than anything else. Other Large party issues like freezing/hitching we’re looking into as well to get fixed as soon as we can.
The other issues with needing to relog are also on the radar and getting looked into as well.

Since I’ve already seen that you don’t plan to add any form of small scale PvP like dueling or arenas, I’ll ask a different question.
Will you be doing anything to encourage small scale PvP in Cyrodiil at least?
The repeatable quests in the towns (Bruma, Vlastrus, ect.) were originally hot spots for ganking and small scale PvP. Since these converted to daily quests, the towns seem to have dried up significantly.
Specifically, is there any chance you will increase the return of XP and Veteran Points for these quests, thus making them more attractive and encouraging more frequent visits to these towns?

We’ve been monitoring the amount of XP earned from Cyrodiil towns, quests as well as XP from players and for the first patch we’re doubling the amount of XP earned from player kills, and we increased the XP from the Kill quests. We are also looking at adding more Kill quests for encouraging PVP hunting of enemy players. However Vlastarus is a hotspot if you’re looking at caves with books…and people hunting books….

Cyrodiil’s large scale PvP and keep sieges are great, but there is an awful lot of empty space and arguably a lacking of content one can do with a small group. Have you guys considered adding more “filler” pvp content to Cyrodiil? Such as rare spawn bosses that “announce” themselves to all players within an area before appearing. Or a mine that if held by your faction for X minutes opens up a bunch of ore nodes only your faction can access. Etc. It could add a lot to the game for players who like smaller skirmishes and the “world pvp” feel.

One thing we have to keep in mind when adding new monsters into Cyrodiil is the amount of stress it adds to the server for tracking it’s positions/movement/combat etc. There is room to grow out there however and we are looking into adding more things in Cyrodiil over time.

Are you planning to add any new content to PVP, such as the Endless Dungeon that was in DAoC? Or to do something with the Imperial City…soonish? 😉

Imperial City is such a pretty sight with that huge anchor above it and broken bridges…

Hi ZOS! Can you please highlight your plans for PVP and campaign balance? Specifically, are there any issues you are aware of currently (cough vampires!)

We are adding a population underdog bonus in the first patch that will give the lesser populated alliances in a campaign triple the points for owning objectives in Cyrodiil as well as 10% more Alliance points. We’re also investigating additional campaign durations and rules that may limit campaign access based on levels.

I’m level 33 and I don’t look forward to level 50 because I don’t want to do the other factions quests. It feels like it invalidates the entire reason to choose a faction if I have to do the story for all of them anyways. It’d be like telling WoW’s Horde players that they have to start and finish all the Alliance quests to get to max level. Also it means that any alts I make will have to play through the same quests twice or even three times.
Please tell me you are coming out with alternative ways to level past level 50.

Cyrodiil is a great place to level and kill the enemy! In the first patch we’re increasing the monster levels in that zone so you can also earn Veteran Ranks =)

The Cyrodiil city quests give an absurdly low amount of VP compared to the VR level quests in the VR zones. Can these quests be modified to give more VP, especially now that Cyrodiil enemies are being bumped up to VR5 as of the 1.1 patch?

We will look into the VP awards from those quests!

1) Do you guys play the game

2) What level are your characters

3) What faction do you like the best from a questing/ lore perspective

1 – As often as I can!

2 – A bunch below 10 but the highest is 26 for now.

3 – I may be biased, but Cyrodiil is the most fun for me since it has lots of different quest stories all over the zone along with the killing of enemies.

Can you promise me the “Imperial City PvP dungeon” will be as unique and interesting as you can make it, and not just another warsong gulch. I am really anticipating what you are gonna do with it, as it is probably one of the points in this game where you can really let your innovation shine uniquely. Cant wait to see how it turns out. But please dont make it underwhelming. 😀 JK love you

There are currently no plans for making Battlegrounds 😉

Gina Bruno Answers (English Assistant Community Manager)

Can I kill the banker NPCs? Please…

Do you know the old saying?

how about having an option to turn off npc voices when you already heard them talk once.. or at least be able to mute the bankers

or what it’s worth, we are planning to change this slightly so once you open your bank, it will cut off the VO from the banker.

So I have heard that you guys all play the game in your offtime as well. I was wondering what class/race you guys prefer to use, and with what weapon?

I’m currently playing around with tanky-mage. That’s all I’m saying. 😉

I have some questions for the mod team alright.
1. Is the company considering building up teams for bug hunting, bot hunting/exploitation, and better customer ticket services? Your Q&A cannot handle MMO issues that well, and doesn’t seem to even know how to fully check through issues brought up in the tickets before closing them. (Not to say the GM’s are bad, just the ticket handlers need some extra training.)
2. When are we getting a forum ignore system put into vanilla boards for the TESO community?
3. Will there be a possibility of a general discussion category being added in each language in the future?
4. Werewolf, and Vampire trait trees are very broken right now, packleader drops too soon after being used, and vampire bat swarm is spamable, will we see fixes, and changes to the werewolf and vampire trait trees in the near future? (Please make sure they test these thoroughly before implimenting the changes…it would be nice to know it’s solidly quality checked and double checked for any bugs or issues.)
5. I’m curious about the packet loss issues with some internet providers. Has the company tried to contact the different ISP’s to find out what is causing the packet loss from customers, to the game servers? Blizzard did something like that ages ago to repair issues with Cox Cable, and Time Warner Cable, and still doesn’t hurt to work a relationship with them to ensure the best services.
6. Would there be a possibility of toggle chat bubbles? I’ve been using a chat mod thus far that does something similar and honestly, I like it. It’s skinned with the ui design and doesn’t break my immersion in the game at all.

Hey Qerrathien, to answer a couple of your questions –
• There is a possibility of adding a general discussion category on the forums, and it’s something we’re discussing internally to implement in the future. It would likely be a place where you can discuss ESO in general.
• An ignore feature on the forums is also something we’re looking into, and hope to have that available for everyone pretty soon.
• Chat bubbles is something we’re actively working on, and are actually testing them internally now. As Paul said earlier in this AMA, we hope to enable this soon.

Does Ginataur prefer apples, hay or oats?

Honeycrisp apples, nom! 😀

Is there any possibility that the time between vampire stages will be increased? Just curious, because I know there have been some complaints in that area.

There are currently no plans, but that doesn’t mean the door is completely closed.

May I ask about SLI support for Nvidia graphic cards? Is it days, weeks or months away? Thanks!

That should be available when the first major update is released (the one with Craglorn).

First of all than you for creating such an awesome game I love every single one of you.
This question is a little off topic but what the heck. I am in banking and have lot of banking experience. Do you have any financial positions that I apply for ?
Just so you know I am in Seattle if I have an opportunity to work with you I will wayshrine with in moments nitice.
Once again thank you for eso.

We do have an accounting position available at the moment. Take a look at jobs.zenimax.com and filter by Admin – that’s where you’ll find any financial positions.

Do you guys post on the forums under non-ZOS names as well? I have a sneaking suspicion about a poster or two.

No, ZOS employees will always have a ZOS tag on our forums.

Paul Sage Answers (Creative Director)

1. When we get to VR10, could you then give us the option to have every zone scaled to VR10? I’ve found myself overleveled several times and had to skip big parts of the zones, but I want to experience all the content, and it’s not fun to do it when I outlevel it. A lot of people are also very eager to hit the level cap, and cannot enjoy the quests in veteran zones, since it feels like a grind to get to VR10. So please give us the opportunity to choose ourselves when/if we want to do the VR quests, so the game becomes less linear.

2. What are your plans for content aimed specifically towards Elder Scrolls (single-)players? You are releasing endgame content for hardcore MMO players with Craglorn, but are there any plans for something catered towards those who want to experience the immersion and possibilities of the singleplayer games? Something similar to housing? Or are there plans for some smaller metagames within the game?

1. This is something we are considering right now. We like the idea of playing at the difficulty level you choose.

2. Our plan for updates is that it will be varied in what sorts of gameplay is offered. For instance, just today we just talked about justice system a little, dyes, spellcrafting, etc. So updates will definitely be varied in what they offer.

Hey there and thanks for starting up an AMA again! Can you go into any more detail on the upcoming justice system and how it will work with regards to hostile npc’s etc?
Thanks!

We have a prototype right now. The very rough idea, and things might change, is that players will steal things from NPCs incurring a bounty if the theft is witnessed. (Same with killing NPCs.) Guards will give you the chance to pay the bounty before they attack. However, you could be killed on sight if your bounty is too high. We are also looking at ways for players to be “guards”. Obviously we want to take the best aspects of social interplay and put it into the system. That’s probably all I can tell you for now.

My questions is: Are we ever going to be able to repair our own gear? I feel that as a max rank blacksmith I should be able to repair my armor (that I made) without spending the 2,500 gold every other dungeon run (even when Idon’t die).

Right now there are no plans to change how armor is repaired. This might be something we look at in the future.

Are you aware of the demand for optional (toggle on/off) chat bubbles that players have been asking for since July of last year? Do you plan on listening to the players and adding back the optional chat bubble feature?

Yes. We have chat bubbles working internally. So we want to enable them soon, and testing will dictate which update they arrive in.

So, the question is: From the road ahead may 1st “Guild functionality updates: guild store interface updates,” does this include a search function?!

Search features can be very expensive and cause delays. However, we absolutely have plans to update the guild store so it is much easier to find what you want to find.

So I have heard that you guys all play the game in your offtime as well. I was wondering what class/race you guys prefer to use, and with what weapon?

I currently play a Breton Sorc One-Hand / Shield. Started in DC this playthrough. I have a few alts to play with other friends.

What is the current stage in development that some of the promised features such as the Dark brother hood and Thieves guild? also can we can time frame we can expect to see the content?

We aren’t trying to be evasive, but time frames, timelines are extremely hard to predict. Internal testing, external testing and other factors can delay features. So we probably aren’t going to release timelines unless they are very close.

Thank you so much for doing this again!!! PLEASE keep doing these about once a month. It really shows how much you care about the community and our constructive feedback.
1. What was the toughest design decision you feel you had to make in favor of “ESO fans” over “MMO fans” and why did you feel you had to pick that way?

2. What was the toughest design decision you feel you had to make in favor of “MMO fans” over “ESO fans” and why did you feel you had to pick that way?

3. Can we please have a way to manage our Inventory, private Bank, and Guild Bank all on the screen at once? I have plenty of screen real estate, and it’s a pain in the ass every time my inventory is full to move everything around. I should be able to drag and drop (I have a mouse, it’s on PC) items between these. Or, if I highlight an item, I could hit E to move it to Inventory, R to move it to private Bank, F to move it to Guild Bank, or X to delete it.

4. Is there supposed to be music during the Aranias quest line in Greenshade? If you didn’t intend to have music in this section, I think it was a very interesting design choice that somehow made the entire area that much more an intense emotional experience. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE the music!

5. What are the plans to alter the number of Alliance Campaigns, if any, and why?

6. And a fun one: Are Gaenor’s ancestors going to make an appearance? I want to get sweet, sweet revenge on the dolts who raised that money-grubber. For those who don’t know who he is, he’s from Morrowind’s Tribunal expansion in Mournhold.

1. I don’t know that there was one we had to make, but I think the hardest is keeping the UI and controls familiar to ESO players. Certainly, encouraging add-ons has helped players add their own mandatory features for the UI.

2. Again, not something we had to do, but classes were something that was really controversial. So many arguments for and against.

3. I know what you are saying here. We’re looking at this in our UI group as we know people want to compare easier.

4. I’ll pass this along. 🙂

5. Actually, we’re more interested in altering the times the campaigns last, and the types of campaigns.

6. In the words of River Song – SPOILERS!

Are there any plans to give non-vampire non-werevevoles a unique skill line? Because currently except for pve tanking there is no reason not be a vampire (and many reason to be one)

We plan to add lots of skill lines, but it is hard to say we are adding a skill line for something people are not. However, if you mean like a werewolf hunter or vampire hunter line, that is something that is more associated with the Fighters Guild.

I love the variety of clothing/armor/weapons in the game, but I can’t easily tell what motif/type (Bosmer, Dunmer, etc) a given item is when I find it.
Have you thought of adding the racial type to the item popup window?

Yes. Definitely agree with this.

Are you hype for Cleganebowl?

U w0t m8?

Craglorn: for VR10 players only or can we level there as an alternative, in addition to Cyrodiil and veteran dungeons, to 50+ and 50++ content? And thanks for making this a Mac game too, its awesome!

You can enter Craglorn at VR1 and gain Veteran Ranks there.

1. Many people (myself included) have expressed a desire for alternatives to questing for progression in the game through dungeons and PvP, especially in Veteran Ranks where many players would rather play through the other zones’ content on alts than quest through it all again on a single character. You seem to be recognizing and improving this by increasing mob/PvP xp in VR, and in the future adding incentives to run dungeons multiple times. Can you give any more insight on your thoughts/philosophy on this subject, or any other future plans?

2. Are there any plans for different types of PvP in the future? Even though most people seem to be thoroughly enjoying Cyrodill, I think many would like options for other forms of PvP. Again, any insight here into the thoughts of the dev team or future plans would be appreciated.

1. We have an active desire to improve the reasons why people would want to repeat dungeons, and we are working on this. Honestly, we are always in favor of players getting XP through many different means and playing the way they want.

2. We have talked about different rulesets for campaigns as well as having a dungeon experience which has PvP enabled.

1. Content Release Trivialization: As we tend to play slower due to exploring everything, is content becoming trivialized due to leveling/crafting slower then the avg person something that we need need to be concerned about?

2. XP Buff-I have heard a rumer that XP gains are going to be buffed. Can you please confirm this? If so, can you explain why? I know five people besides my wife and I who play and the consensus is that the XP rate is perfect, works very well for enjoying the journey, why would you change that?

3. Content Release Schedule-Another concern we have is how quickly is content going to be coming out? While I absolutely do not want a Blizzard style release schedule of no new content for up to a year, my concern is new content coming out every 30-45 days, as that can become overwhelming. Can you confirm what the avg time between releases is targeted at?

1. Well, you can outlevel areas because there is room left for players so they don’t have to do all of the quests in an area. Also players can get XP from running dungeons, PVP, etc.

2. We aren’t changing the XP gains in PvE any time soon, but we are looking at PvP XP gains.

3. Matt answered our ideal cadence.

Also, we’re seriously glad you’re enjoying the game. I really like hearing about couples playing together.

As a lizard-lover I must ask if you have any plans to expand the swimming capabilities (I.e. Underwater) just being able to dive under, explore, and breathe under water would be magnificent and add onto the ‘purpose’ of the antagonism passive. Which were once up for question.

Underwater isn’t in the plans for anytime soon.

So I know this isn’t on you guys but anyone have advice for dealing with a stubborn college Network Admin who refuses to open the ports required for playing?

Buy them the game.

Your team had initially promised surveys to allow more options for phasing. As a roleplayer, obviously I’m particularly interested in a Roleplay phase. Is this something you’re going to do, or are roleplayers out of luck? I sincerely hope you consider it, as the current state of affairs makes RP in this game harder and less accessible than any other MMO I’ve tried.

This was something we very much wanted to do. However, when we implemented the initial parts of it, it became obvious it would be detrimental to server performance. Like many things you really want to do as a developer, sometimes things don’t work out. That said, we are looking at other ways we can accomplish the same goal.

Rich Lambert Answers (Lead Content Designer)

Hey guys,
Q1 : When can we expect a fix for bugged quest achievements (aka Shadowfen 61/62 Achieve) as we’ve been told that it’s being looked into on the official forums a long time ago.
Q2 : Is player housing features on the agenda for future content in eso?
Thanks!

The quest achievement bugs should be fixed when the Craglorn patch goes live. (and retroactively updated to all characters that should have earned them before them)

Craglorn is tuned for VR11-12. (VR11 & 12 monsters). You can go in at VR1 it will just be hard.
As for alts, its really up to the player how they want to play. Some folks would rather play the same character all the way though, others would rather play alts. We don’t really want to force any one way to play the game.

Craglorn: for VR10 players only or can we level there as an alternative, in addition to Cyrodiil and veteran dungeons, to 50+ and 50++ content? And thanks for making this a Mac game too, its awesome!

You can go in there at VR1… it will just be hard as the monsters at VR11 & 12. 🙂

I’m wondering what the possibility of an option to turn off in-quest progress markers would be? The effect would require the player to actually read/listen to the quest text to figure out how to complete it. It would involve understanding the environment better and locating specific areas on the map by gathering clues through talking to other NPCs/people, reading books/paper, or looking at signs and other in-game clues.
This could be an option in game but I think it would provide a challenge to the quests inststead of simply opening the map and going to the blinking marker/circle. Turning off quest progress markers with this option, would also be helpul in advancing this.

There’s an option to turn off the quest bestowal pips over NPC heads, but we don’t currently have an option to turn off the breadcrumbing pins.
There mods out there that turn off the breadcrumbing pins for you though if that something you really want to do now.

So I have heard that you guys all play the game in your offtime as well. I was wondering what class/race you guys prefer to use, and with what weapon?

I am currently playing a dual wield templar somewhere in the AD. 😉

I do have a question on your guys guild kiosk that will be coming up in the future, will there be a way for a guild to offer these in various cities around the world or will it still be limited to guild members only?

Each major city in the game will have kiosk locations that guilds can bid on. Highest bidder gets their store added to that location for public consumption.

Are the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood going to have their own Skill Line, and if so, will they tie in with the Justice System you’re going to implement? More specifically the Thieves Guild?

Thieves Guild & Dark Brotherhood will indeed have their own skill lines. As for how they will tie into the Justice… we’re not quite ready to talk about that just yet.

Can we expect improvements to the grouping functionality very soon?
Creating and maintaining groups of players is extremely buggy, and has been for months.
Groups lose track of who the leader is, group members show up as offline or crash, and they need to be reformed constantly.
This is absolutely critical to many parts of the game (pvp, craglorn), and yet nothing seems to be done about it.

Fixes are in the works! The group leader bug was just recently fixed internally and hopefully we’ll get that out to the live servers soon.

Hi
Love the game and it has been the most fun in a video game I have had since 2007, so thank you for that.
One thing I am having a problem with in the game is that questing is very difficult to do with friends. Me and some buddies have tried playing this game as a group and have found it to be very difficult in staying in the same phase, or knowing what portion of a quest the other players are on etc.
My question, going forward – are new zones and new content going to be as tricky to navigate with friends as the current content is? Are you going to rely on the phasing technology to forward the storyline and NPCs?

We are definitely working now to solve a lot of the grouping issues.
For new content, we’re making sure it will be much easier to play together as a group.

Thanks for doing another AMA guys. I have truly been enjoying my time with ESO and see myself doing so for a long time to come.
I have a couple of questions.
1. I am level 32 and have yet to complete Banished Cells due to the inability to interact with the first NPC you rescue. I’ve tried with multiple groups and the various “fixes”. When will this quest be fixed?
2. I have been actively trying not to outlevel content, which I find has caused me to not enter Cyrodiil yet. Is there a possibility of turning off XP in PVP or not having it affect your PVE experience?
Thanks 🙂

No plans currently to turn off XP in PVP.
As for the Banished Cells issues you are running into, that particular quest should have been fixed in the 1.0.3 patch. Feel free to PM me with the details and I’ll look into it.

Are you planing on adding new quests to the already existing zones ???

Yep!

I’ve finished Shadowfen just two days ago, and I was kinda disappointed because of the lack of new Argonian lore. They have been my favourite race ever since the days of Morrowind, and the rather small amount of lore on them hasn’t really been expanded in ESO (“just enough to give the AD something to victimize,” I described it as)
Are you planning on going more into the depths of Argonian lore in the future, or adding more storylines exclusively about Argonians, not “AD attacking something”?

More is coming yep! (unfortunately I can’t talk about when just yet)

Stibbons.
I wish to see more of him.
Preferably, a whole expansion about Stibbons.
Are there any plans to see more of him?
I love that guy.

We all love Stibbons. He pops up all over, in the most unlikely places.
…and will continue to… forever.

What are your preferred Subway sandwiches?

Buffalo chicken… can’t forget the cookie as well!

Are there any player-made addons that you guys make use of for your own gameplay time?

Yep! There are a number I currently play with. Some of the stuff the mod authors have come up with are fantastic.

1.Will there be additional land zones for the different factions (e.g.Vvardenfell) in upcoming patches or will it mostly be adventure zones? 2. Have you guys ever considered naval combat?
Thanks!

If you mean new stuff being released… nope it won’t always be adventure zones. We want to make sure we continually release stuff for all player types.

Are there any plans for having achievements mean something in the near future, or are they specifically for the gamer completionist?

They will unlock dyes when the dye system goes in.