How I dreamed The Elder Scrolls Online would be

maskmurda

From years of speculation, it has finally come. And after reading alot of post online and reading currently provided information, I can't help but feel now weary about the game. I remember years ago where a thread was made about how Elder Scrolls will never be an MMO, I replied, The Elder Scrolls will be an amazing MMO so long as they change certain features / mechanics to accomidate a large scale player base and it would be on of the best games ever as long as they kept the core mechanics in place. After playing almost every game of the series I have thought of how the game would play out. But after what I see is coming so far, I can't help that everything they are doing is wrong. I just wanted to share with you guys my take on the game, versus how it may be delivered in 2013. Since it is still to far away for us to actually get a good idea of how it will play out, most people already have drawn pretty conclusive ideas of the games faults.

 

FIrst, Dungeons. I always viewed dungeons working in ESO as a dungeon crawler with a randomized map to provide uniqueness and freshness to the game. In most Elder Scrolls games, the dungeons scattered around the world offer diffrent treasures and stories for the one player. I thought that since it's an MMO, dozens of dungeons may not work that well with the community. So instead of having 50+ dungeons I would say have about 20, with randomized maps and randomized boss events with various loot tables scaled to the number of players and level in the dungeon. So that if you can't find friends to play with, you still get that experience. But your rewarded for more players you are with. I believe that with difficulty scaling and randomized maps, players can't just farm one area for loot or items and still get that freshness of exploration.

 

Classes. The biggest part next to content. I feel that the class system should be a combination of Oblivion and Skyrim with certain twist. Give players the choice of picking major traits to define their avatar, but limit the number of bonuses they can invest in to will limit power and scale player progression accordingly by limiting how many points can be invested in a trait. This gives players that freedom they love in TES with balance for PvP and PvE. For a player to level up, they level up that trait as they do in game, with each trait point taking longer to level up and more trait points required to level up, like in Skyrim. Alow players to swap out traits(For example, Archery and Sneak for Destruction and One handed attacks). Provide debuffs//negatives for trait combinations(for example, Wearing Heavy armor will reduce casting speed for spells and movement speed by x) to prevent power abuse. 2 major traits, 1 armor trait, and 2 trade skills.

 

Trade skills. Each player gets a pool of trade skills to choose from that fall under a category, Weapons craft, Armorsmith, and Trade(Speech and Bartering). Players gather raw materials in the world and craft items. Soul gems provide the power pool for an item, and is use to grade and scale power. Players can invest gold in a store and generate revenue(depending on Trade skills). Allow the player community to create stores and develope trade agreements to allow a player driven economy, with a tax system. Players only get a certain percentage of an investement or bonus from Trade to prevent players from dominating a market limited by a game specific mechanic(I.E. players have to pay taxes and trade agreements and have huge gold sinks to prevent significant monopoly).

 

Combat. Combat can be achieved just like any TES game. Now to limit combat, limit the influences that change combat. Players can't jump and run that fast while in combat. Players receive penalties for wearing armor and weapons(mitigated by traits), in PvE vs monsters, they will be given huger tells for incoming attacks and their hit boxes and attack range will be large enough to punish players for not being attentive during combat, but short enough to give players time to react of they need to evade damage. Arrows and projectives can be avoided by simply moving, but to combat this Ranged(archery based) players will be given aoe and spread shots to make up for this penalty, along with slows to make up for this still requiring timing and aim. Large melee weapons will cleave, short range weapons will have a smaller hit box but have higher armor peneatration to make up for this. Spells will receive the same treatement as Ranged(archery based) attacks, but for channel spells, like flames,  they receive no bonus as they are channeled and will hit for less because they have a higher hit chance. Missle speed for Ranged will vary based on power. allowing weaker ones to have a creater hit chance, and stronger ones to require more skill to land.

 

I'm have alot more ideas, but for the sake of having a huuuuuuuuuge post, I'll just stop at the 3 biggest concerns. I know these interpretations can be changed or probably don't fit right, but this is how I always viewed the game. I feel this game can be done right, and this is my interpretation of how it should be and how I expected it to be. But I guess, we can only dream. I know the game will do decent because some people will just buy it blindly without expecting much because it's an Elder Scrolls game, and I fear thats why it may not live up to our expectations. For a game released in 2013, I would expect more and take back my "this game may do well" because of what I now know .

 

Thanks for reading.

SEANMCAD

here is mine at least a short version.

So I was in Skyrim and I had just cleared out a small castle up in some mountains at night. That is when I flashed back to my Darkfall days.

'come on guys they are coming get to your posts we have to protect this ground'

 

So basically, Skryim add assets that can be seiged and controlled, repopulate the map of morrowind and Obvilon with models that is currently hidden in Skyrim

 

done.

 

Mike-McQueen

Well, some dreams turn into nightmares.

Done.

dooney

I dreamt it would be an veeeeeery improved version of Darkfall. 

CujoSWAoA

I think its impossible to make an Elder Scrolls MMO "right" unless the tech can support a world so vast and enormous that the odds of running into clusters of annoying Players is extremely miniscule.

And thats not possible. 

Make a Skyrim Online where you have vast clusters of annoying ass players would ruin the entire worldly immersion of the Elder Scrolls.

So its really not surprising to me that they said screw it and just put out a WoW clone.

Lucioon

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

I think its impossible to make an Elder Scrolls MMO "right" unless the tech can support a world so vast and enormous that the odds of running into clusters of annoying Players is extremely miniscule.

And thats not possible. 

Make a Skyrim Online where you have vast clusters of annoying ass players would ruin the entire worldly immersion of the Elder Scrolls.

So its really not surprising to me that they said screw it and just put out a WoW clone.

I think it has been proven that many of the aspects that TESO didn't want to include in their game has already been implemented in other MMO in the past. Its not impossible, everything that was described by OP is possible because its been done not in the TES setting, but done similar enough that could be duplicated.

BTW MMO means running into clusters of annoying players, if you don't want to run into another player, you won't be playing MMO.

Besides with instances, having 20 randomized dungeons is totally possible.

Mephster

Just got my Game Informer magazine today. All I could do is just cry in my H20 when reading it. So I can sympathize with what the op is trying to say. 

Entinerint

I dreamt it would take the best parts of Darkfall and Mortal Online and wrap them in the Elder Scrolls world and lore.  AND I dreamt that your race would define your faction!!!  WTF?!  Why am I born into this war!?!  I just want to live a peaceful life as a farmer!!!

/agree with OP, my dreams have been utterly shattered.  I too had a grand design but all is lost now, with only a year to go until release...

coprhead6

Everything is speculation at this point.  I'm quite confident after the most recent interview that Besthesda would never release a game that did not attract its own players.