Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Elder Scrolls Online: All About Dungeons
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Elder Scrolls Online team has posted the latest in their 'Ask Me Anything' series. This time, the topic is dungeons and players submitted their burning questions to the team for answering.
Q: In the previous Elder Scrolls games, we always had the ability to wander into a cave, old fort, or sunken boat to explore, plunder, and pillage. With ESO being an MMO, will we still have the ability to do this in a solo-encounter type situation where we don't run into any other players, or will we be seeing other players and having to wait for enemies/loot to spawn, or will these all only be group encounters? – by Brett S.
A: The Elder Scrolls Online is set up to be a fluid experience. As you wander the landscape you’ll encounter caves, forts, tombs, dungeons, and etc. Certain rare locales will just be for solo players, and some dungeons are meant for groups made only of people you choose to go in with. Most locales, however, will be accessible by everyone. Some might be too dangerous for you because of your current level, but you can always come back when you are more powerful if you want to complete them solo. We recommend grabbing a friend or grouping up with a stranger if it seems too tough, though, because that’s all part of the fun.
Read the rest on the Elder Scrolls Online site.
Comments
gameplay > graphics
....
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
So basicly evrthing in ESO in instanced like GW2 ?
Open world is for questing only and heavely zoned so you cannot see your (enemy factions)
World PvP is also in a instanced zone like GW2 ?
In a time and age where people love to play games like Skyrim with vast masses of open terrain and events, they choose the path of WoW / GW2......
meh seems i wont be touching it, unless its something realy realy special, might stick to skyrim and download a few mods :P
Because Skyrim had absolutely 0 instance dungeons. . . .
What instance dungeons dose Skyrim have?
The entire game of skyrim is a solo instance.
"in a solo-encounter type situation"
How exciting, instancing in a MMO that tries to create a single player experience! Based on a single player IP which bares no resemblance to the things its fan base has come to love about the IP. All that was needed to be done to make an Elders Scroll MMO is leave the open sandbox world and replace the NPC's and their roles with real people to fill them. Darkfall 1 came within the ball park that it can be done.
Most had a loading screen when you enter or leave a dungeon. Is that not an instance? If not they sure felt like instances.
I remember a fair few times If I got overwhelmed by bandits I could just run and leave the dungeon and they wouldn't follow me out. If it wasn't instanced wouldn't they follow me out of the dungeon?
Also in regards to the red in Mothanos post, why can't instances in ESO be the size of Skyrim/Cyrodil? I don't see why you can't have a huge instanced area the size of past ES games to explore in.
"Most locales, however, will be accessible by everyone. Some might be too dangerous for you because of your current level, but you can always come back when you are more powerful if you want to complete them solo. We recommend grabbing a friend or grouping up with a stranger if it seems too tough, though, because that’s all part of the fun."
If these open world "locales", including forts and dungeons that are not used as instances, are really large (full explorable dungeon size), dangerous (need a group), and play an important role in leveling (ie: it is difficult to level fast without utilizing them), then I can see this game being fun.
If these "locales" are small, generally easy, and hardly needed to level or offer little reward, then people will mostly skip them. If people can level faster with quests to kill wolves, then people will generally choose that. Not you and I, but the general population seems to always pick the fastest and easiest method through MMO's.
The big problem I see is based on what it says there, you can just skip them and come back when you are a higher level, meaning you don't need to do the open world dungeons when leveling, so people will just power-level past on whatever is the fastest method to level and then come back and clear them when they are easy to solo.
I really do not see that as an issue really. With how the reward system works in ESO, I don't think the rewards for these locales will be set, meaning each player will get different rewards. This pretty much means you will not know till you go there and do the dungeon. Course I very well could be wrong about this. *shrugs*
We are also talking about an Elder scrolls game here. It's going to have a very large Elder Scrolls player base, which are used to the non easy route.
I do hope that you're right, and that the default MMO issues do not plague this game.
Actually it's not an instance. At all. An instance means one of multiple possible copies of an area.
They way it worked in skyrim is that it's a "cell" or zone. Just because you have a loading screen doesn't mean it's an instance.
If you look at it in the toolset it's just a separate cell but never are there multiple copies. If you could figure out a way to bring antoher player into the game they would enter the same "zone" or cell as you.
Also, in oblivion the monsters would follow you out Not sure why they didn't include this in skyrim.
Also for the people who are complaining about instances, once again:
Certain rare locales will just be for solo players, and some dungeons are meant for groups made only of people you choose to go in with. Most locales, however, will be accessible by everyone.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Gotcha.
lol it's alright, I have pointed that out already. As I said though, no matter how much you point out what is said in the article they are going to complain either way.
I believe in practical application in modern MMO's, players (at least in games like WoW) use instance to describe a dungeon for just them or for just their group. I'd say all of the dungeons in skyrim fit this criteria, but only because it is a single player game and the comparison is academic and little more. All single player games could be considered an instance in that manner, because you have a copy of the game for just you out of all the copies out there. It's a loose argument to be certain, although perhaps about as strong as most of the discussions on these forums
I think comparing Skyrim to ESO is valid in some ways, but certainly not when comparing MMO features, since Skyrim has none.
What does that tell us about how fun the group content is in most games?
Give me an option to skip it and I will, therefore games must FORCE people to group up.
You could be right, but I suspect it tells us more about the state of the human mind. We naturally follow the path of least resistance, it's in our nature, and if we are offered one we take it. Not all will be like that, but I suspect many will.
I think the group content in many games is very engaging if only because you are conquering something together as a team, which presents its own challenges in and of itself, but the average player chooses to forgo that and level faster solo.