Month: August 2013

Elder Scrolls Online setting

Let me begin by stating that there are some differences between the single-player Elder Scroll games and that of the mmo game. There are classes in the online game, which disappoints me a little but it seems that the system is still pretty flexible so you can fine-tune your character so he’s not rigidly locked into the standard trinity of tank-healer-dps.
Now as to the reasons why we should be looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online. First, the character customization is extremely detailed. There are nine different races to choose from and then you’re on to your appearance. Players will have multiple sliders so they can adjust everything from arm length to chest size and even the slope of your forehead.

Another thing I’m looking forward to in Elder Scrolls Online is just playing on the continent of Tamriel. The setting and lore of this realm has been extensively detailed through the years and feels both lived in and alive. The books that you could read in earlier games are being brought over to the mmo. Players will definitely need to keep an eye out for them because many books give bonuses to skills when read. Locked chests are also found in the game and players will have the choice to pick the lock (similar to the mini-game players will be familiar with) or forcing the chest open.

Elder Scrolls Online combat

My last, and biggest, reason for looking forward to Elder Scrolls Online is how quests are handled. There aren’t any quest hubs where players grab quests, run out to do them, return to the hub, and then endlessly repeat. Players get rewarded for exploring the world (which I love to do) as they will come across npcs or events that will grant them quests, which can reveal new areas of the world for the player to venture into.

All in all, Elder Scrolls Online has a lot of features that gets me pumped waiting to get my hands on it. A close approximation of the combat style from the earlier games mixed in with an uncluttered UI, along with a richly detailed world where players get rewarded for exploring, makes ESO a must-try. One final nugget of goodness is that there are plenty of items lying around the world that you can loot. I intend on stealing everything that isn’t nailed down like I normally do in an Elder Scrolls game. Sweet, sweet looting.

It is quite a bold move, considering the trend of MMOs like Star Wars:The Old Republic, Tera and Rift giving up on the subscription model in favor of the free to play options early this year. Matt Firor, General Manager of Zinmax Online explained that “The Elder Scrolls games are all about allowing the player to go where they want, be who they want, and do what they want. We feel that putting pay gates between the player and content at any point in game ruins that feeling of freedom, and just having one small monthly fee for 100% access to the game fits the IP and the game much better than a system where you have to pay for features and access as you play.”

As for the PS4 version of TESO, Firor stated that there would be few differences between the PC version and console version. “Graphics, engine, content, etc., are all the same.” And “the only differences you can expect between the PC and console versions is playing with a controller and player-to-player communication (no keyboard).”

Players will be able to enjoy an ultimate play for the first 30 days with the base purchase of the game. After the first month, if they want to continue to play, they have to pay a flat fee which is about $14.99/€12.99/￡8.99 a month. Discounts or other payment methods will be discussed later. In addition, the game will keep a 4 to 6 week update cadence once it is launched.

Unfortunately, the launch date and whether the open beta will be exclusive for the PS4 still remain unknown.

The Elder Scrolls Online director Matt Firor has explained to Eurogamer why Zenimax Online Studios has decided to charge a monthly subscription for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game at a time when most observers consider the business model outdated.

Zenimax raised eyebrows this week when it announced that it will charge ￡8.99 / $14.99 a month to play TESO when it launches in the spring of 2014 – that’s across PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Before explaining the decision, Firor insisted: “this isn’t a referendum on free-to-play.”

“I play those games all the time,” he said. “This isn’t like: those aren’t valid.”

The decision was made for two reasons, Firor said: to ensure monetisation would fit appropriately within the established Elder Scrolls experience, and to fund post-release content.

“When you’re in an Elder Scrolls game, you’re in a world,” he said, explaining the former point. “We don’t want players to hit monetisation fees when they’re in the world.

“It’s like, I go into a dungeon, if I don’t have access to the dungeon it pops up a window: you don’t have access to this, go buy 50 credits. We didn’t want that experience. That’s not an Elder Scrolls experience.

“We wanted to do monetisation outside of the game. So, if I pay for a month at a time, I have 100 per cent of the game. I don’t have to worry about paying one more cent. I’ll never run into a pay gate and I’ll be in the world.”

At a glance, there are far fewer problems when dealing with PvE content compared to PvP content. WildStar’s PvE options are a bit better established, and besides, all you need to do is provide the enemies and a reason to fight them. It’s not as if you have to deal with all of the differences that you find in PvP, after all. Toss out some dungeons, give players a daily hub, and everything will work out perfectly, right?

The answer is no. Not even a little bit.

Just as you need a variety of different things in PvP to serve a multitude of playstyles, you need a variety of different opportunities for PvE players. It’s still a header that covers a broad field of different playstyles and preferences, and that means there are a lot of different things that the game needs to offer. Bearing in mind that we’re talking about the level cap here, let’s take a look at what areas the game needs to support.

A group of Chua is not coordinated. That’s… sort of the idea.Casual group content

Much as casual PvP is important, casual PvE is important too. Yes, that’s true even at the endgame because everyone deserves the option of trying something new. Maybe you’re not normally into PvE content; maybe you prefer soloing or maybe you’re just not in the mood for a hardcore progression challenge. Whatever the case, the game should have something for players to do in a group that doesn’t require absolute precision.

What we’ve been told so far about the game’s group content involves a whole lot of challenging encounters, not casual runs with friends. That’s all well and good, but we need dungeon content that provides opportunities for a bit more group entertainment and a bit less crushing challenge. There’s no reason you can’t have both.

There are players out there right now who would happily spend money on WildStar but don’t know how or when. Obviously you can’t spend money on WildStar right now; the game isn’t out yet and won’t be until spring 2014, we’ve just learned, so there’s nothing to spend money on yet. But even when it does get released, how will anyone be able to tell the people at Carbine Studios to shut up and take our money?

Wonder no longer because the game’s business model has finally been revealed to the world. No more lying awake wondering how you’ll be able to pay for the game (something you really shouldn’t be lying awake wondering about anyhow). So is it buy-to-play? Free-to-play? Subscription-based? Yes. It’s all three at the same time, if you look at it from the right angles.

How does it manage that? Well, you have to understand how C.R.E.D.D. works — starting with what in the world it is.

C.R.E.D.D. is an acronym for “Certificate of Research, Exploration, Destruction, and Development,” which nicely summarizes the game’s four paths. It will also be available for purchase for $19.99 when the game launches and can be redeemed for a month’s worth of subscription time. That might seem like a bit of a ripoff when you consider that a monthly subscription is $14.99 (with discounts available for longer purchases, as with most games), until you realize that you don’t have to use C.R.E.D.D. yourself.

Exploration with an eye to money worked out well for Columbus, after a fashion.At launch, WildStar will feature an exchange similar to the Gem Exchange in Guild Wars 2, allowing players to sell C.R.E.D.D. for in-game money. While the game does require a monthly subscription, it’s entirely valid for players to earn a lot of money in the game, buy CREDD, and then continue playing without a single further expense. This makes it more like a buy-to-play game than a normal subscription model, even though you do need a subscription.

Now we know what WildStar’s business model is, and it’s not any of the options I had predicted. That’s to be expected, but it also means that we have to evaluate it very differently than if it had fallen into a tried-and-true pattern. You don’t know how a new business model will work until you see it in action, and we haven’t seen this in action yet.

Not available at retail! MISB!EVE Online has been offering PLEX as a subscription option for a while now. You can buy PLEX, store them in-game, and trade them for money in the game or use them to increase your subscription time. The exchange rate of real money to the game world is entirely a function of the PLEX value on the open market. At a glance it seems like the same business model that WildStar is using, but there are a couple of key differences.

The reality is that WildStar is a buy-to-play, subscription, and free-to-play title all at the same time, and that’s without even dipping our toes into the muddy water of microtransactions. There’s exactly one item to be bought in the cash shop, and it serves exactly one purpose, but it also opens up a complicated economic interplay that we’ve seen in only one other game. And I don’t think we can just draw on that one game for comparison because they’re just not the same.

Whether it’s made up of stuns, knockdowns, sleeps, or disarms, there’s a whole part of MMO gameplay dedicated to making sure your opponents don’t get to do anything. The latest WildStar Dev Speak video notes that this is an important gameplay aspect that’s also very challenging to manage from a design perspective. After all, having the ability to disable others adds a lot of strategic depth… but absolutely nobody enjoys being beaten on by multiple opponents without being able to do anything.

So what’s the WildStar solution? Simple: Make sure that even crowd-controlled players have something to do. If you’re stunned, you can mash on a key to try and break out early as in many fighting games. Knocked down? Use a roll to get back on your feet quickly. Disarmed? Run over and grab your weapon! You can see several forms of crowd control in the video below, and while the changes might not prevent you from being stunlocked by seven people, you can at least react with something other than patience.

Matt Firor, the Elder Scrolls Online director, responded to a question about whether the MMO would include any extras like a shop or bonus points with the statement “there won’t be anything like bonus points, but we will have a shop to buy kind of fun stuff and services too like name changes and things like that.” He explained that these in-game shop offerings weren’t “part of the core game, anything included in the core game is included in the subscription price”, so those worried content may be locked away in the shop can put down your pitchforks
The Elder Scrolls Online has already defied the expectation that it would follow the free to play business model, with developer Zenimax Online Studios opting for a monthly subscription model. Now ESOHub.de (via Reddit) has revealed the Elder Scrolls Online will include an in-game item shop using real world money.

It’s a brave move by Zenimax Online: the market has been somewhat shaky in the past for subscription models. Adding an in-game shop on top of that for select services or fun stuff could provoke a consumer backlash. Hopefully we’ll hear more details on what exactly the “fun stuff” of the shop will hold, but for now you can read over exactly why the developer has opted for a subscription model in the more prominent free-to-play market of the MMO genre over here.

Over the last few days, we have shared with you brand new information about Bethesda and Zenimax Online’s The Elder Scrolls Online – which is set for release on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2014. On Aug. 22, Nick Konkle, Gameplay Designer at Zenimax, talked with Examiner about the differences between Skyrim and ESO – specifically in terms of gameplay and combat.

The most obvious difference between the two games is that one is a massive multiplayer online title and the other is not. That aside, Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls Online differ in several ways.

“The obvious starting point was we were going to put other people in the game, which is a persistent world,” Konkle said.

“I think the main differences are between the gameplay and combat. Skyrim revolves around picking the correct spell or weapon for the situation. You would pause to do this and you can’t do that on a server. You can’t have a bunch of people pausing at the same time. So the main change we made to the combat was giving you that loadout bar of your favorites.”

Aside from these changes, the development team wanted Elder Scrolls Online to feel “very similar to Skyrim both in the combat and the content.”

When asked about how the development team wanted to make The Elder Scrolls Online differ from other titles of the franchise, Konkle shared that the main thing Zenimax wanted to add was scale, other players and to deliver a true Elder Scrolls experience
Recently, MMOs have started to come close to unifying the genres with online RPGs. I think it’s exciting to be a part of moving that together because there isn’t any reason why online games shouldn’t be as great as consoles games are now. The technology is there and is catching up. I think just trying to get it to feel legitimately like an Elder Scrolls game, when so many people are playing it, was the main thing we wanted to bring,” Konkle concluded.

“Never have our choices weighed more heavily,” boasts the narrator. That’s hard to believe, considering we’re talking about an MMORPG—but hey. Awesome-looking (and sounding!) trailer. Those first-person shots really help give it that Elder Scrolls feel. And… oh, yeah. The game’s coming to next-gen consoles, too

TES Online’s game director, Matt Firor, said the team at Zenimax Online Studios was “thrilled” to bring the game to consoles, as it is “something our fans have been requesting since we first announced the title.” He went on to add that “everyone will be able to play The Elder Scrolls Online the way they want to play.”

The way we want to play, then. Sounds good to me! The Elder Scrolls Online is coming to a PC, PS4 or Xbox One near you in Spring, 2014.