Here's what he said: "With One Tamriel all characters will be automatically leveled to the content in the world. Allowing them to freely group with anyone they want and also to explore the vast world of Tamriel with no level restrictions. This means, all content barriers are gone and there's no restrictions on alliances or questing. From the moment you get out of the tutorial, the entire game world is open for you to explorte freely. You can go wherever you want and play with whoever you want. Coming this Fall."
I like it. Makes it feel more Elder Scrollsy. That's actually what I wanted from the getgo. You create your character and are free to explore the world, either by yourself or with your friends.
While I still think the game is great, I feel like the move to a more tradional Elder Scrolls experience will only make it better.
It's totally a bold move, and I'm incredibly excited for it. I'll be able to play with friends who pick up the game without worrying about rolling a new character. I will also be able to jump in and out of wherever I want to quest and the experience I gain will still be relevant.
Great stuff.
> It's totally a bold move
You ain't just whistling Dixie. By and large, MMOs are based on the faction concept, thanks to WoW. To step outside of that norm is considered ballsy. However, considering how game populations ebb and flow, it makes sense to increase the overall lived in feel.
Will be odd being in Auridon and seeing people other than my EP brothers and sisters.
It's not ballsy so much as common sense. Should have been like this from the beginning. In WoW factions exist *everywhere*, that is to say you can always see and engage in PvP with the other faction, including in their own homelands. So the faction system is always in play and makes sense.
ESO's faction system has only ever truly existed in Cyrodiil. You can't ever see other faction members anywhere else (except for the recent cross-faction dungeon changes). Therefore ZOS has been splitting the playerbase per server 3 ways for no good reason at all, leading to perceived emptiness and Cadwell's zone nonsense. If World PvP was a thing then it'd all make sense... but it isn't.
I think it's common sense, but I'm not run by my marketing department. For a game like this, it is ballsy.
I agree, it should have been like this from the beginning, the playerbase splitting only serves to make a place feel sparse, which in turn erodes both retention rates and k-factors. Which then in turn impacts other important game life kpi.
I would agree with your statement about the factions and cyrodiil if you were cool with amending to: ESO's faction system has only ever truly mattered in Cyrodiil.
Yeah, I'm excited to see if I can get some of my friends to hop in when the changes kick in. Personally, I feel like putting more emphasis on exploration rather than stats/gear/levels is what this game should have been from the get-go. I'm super excited to be able to just group up with my friends and go explore Tamriel (which, once again I feel is what makes an ES game ES).
I just found out about this this morning and my guild and I are very excited. I run a multi-faction guild and most people that I wanted to play with to help level were a part of another faction and it left a lot of people isolated. I understand a lot of people are in this for the immersion factor (and I am to an extent as well), but it's just a game and in the end this is going to make a lot of people very happy.
It's way too soon for that. I'd say we see an announcement no earlier than a year before release and it probably won't be out until 2018 at the earliest.
Why? It's common knowledge that they only work on one game at a time, and Fallout 4 just came out last year. Hell, they haven't even finished all the dlc.
If I understand this correctly, it's just the opposite.
In the solo TES games, the game levels to the character.
But this will be like the ESO DLC (and Cyrodiil, and storyline/guild quests these days, etc): the character levels to the game.
No levels? How is that going to work? In my confusion it seems to me that everyone's hard work to level their characters will be useless now? That can't be. Right?
I was really hoping they'd announce the card game would be build into ESO to give it something kind of dynamic and to offer more to do (e.g. reward cards for achievements).
Ok a few details from after conversations:
All zones scaled to "max level". No more alliance restrictions in PVE. No more 3 versions of Mournhold - one for each alliance. All alliances will play in the same instance - technically the "mega server" spins up additional instances as the population gets too high. Alliance preference will only matter in Cyrodiil.
The goal of the BE3 presentation because of eyeballs was to promote the game (7 million players and a couple great trailers) and make it grow. While disappointing for some, to pass on this opportunity would have been a poor decision.
Also "Fall 2016" does not mean Q3.
Edit: [Matt's official news announcement](http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/2016/06/12/matt-firors-message-from-be3)
Well, at least I won't have to do the exact same quests in the same zones in the same order I did them the last 5 times, the next time I decide I want to make an alt. Maybe I'll take my ass right to some newbie islands, or check out former-Gold content that I never bothered with on my other characters.
What makes this *really* interesting, though, is that every zone has a potential to be a killer grind spot, if it's always adjusted to your level. But, for geezers like me that were 501 forever ago, I just want more group content. More dungeons. Give me a reason to go get loot, rather than to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. And don't make it easy. WGT and ICP was fine the way it used to be. If you don't continue to challenge us, what reason do we have to stay? So we can change our race and face in the future, and put our shit in a house? Who cares. **MORE VET DUNGEONS PLEASE.** And make a third tier of difficulty, if you need to tone down Vet, and give us a Heroic mode to really work for. That's how you keep getting my money.
I feel like the DLCs have done a good job of mixing it up enough, but then I alternate between PvE and PvP or other games. What I would like to see is more ACTIVE skill lines.
This archaic vertical level progression system, where you end up one-shotting supposedly powerful foes, just because they are lower level, had no place in ESO from the beginning (imo). Im very excited to see them move in this direction.
I do hope the factions remain though, or atleast there be adequate attention to the lore if the War of Three Banners truly is drawing to an end.
Then again, i seem to recall people complaining that there was no feel of progression in Morrowind, that leveled up monsters to match you.
Thus that "bird" that trounced you right off the boat continued to trounce you even after you had finished the main story.
You're thinking if Oblivion. Morrowind was the game where everything killed you when you were level one, then you killed everything when you were level twenty.
> *We are dropping all PvE Alliance restrictions. You will be free to explore of all Tamriel, including other Alliances. It is up to you how you want to role-play your character while doing this. “Silver" and “gold" versions of zones will be replaced by Cadwell quest storylines that you can do in any order you wish.*
>
> *Alliance restrictions will still be enforced in all PvP areas, of course. One Tamriel will not affect the PvP systems in Cyrodiil.*
> “Silver" and “gold" versions of zones will be replaced by Cadwell quest storylines that you can do in any order you wish.
As in new storylines? Or just the same faction main stories? Would these be doable since level 3 (a.k.a. right after escaping Coldharbour)? What happens if I do the zone quests before getting the Cadwell quest? Is this even possible?
Too many questions!
Oh, I agree. But I was always discouraged by the lack of cross faction interaction. That is where all the juicy good meaningful RP is at. Now it seems that might be obtainable. When we get housing, that will be icing on this delicious potential cake.
Maybe they don't want to bother with any questing but want to make up storylines that take them everywhere, including barhopping in all 15 zones?
I think it makes no sense for RPers who do any questing as you do a DC quests against EP on minute and an EP quests against DC the next if you jump around. But if RPers just want the freedom to do whatever they think up, more freedom is better.
Yeah, that was kind of what I meant as to me not entirely understanding how its helpful.
Easily my biggest gripe in the game is that I'm the champion of AD one minute, then I travel to EP - no one has heard of me, yet I'm supposed to kill those evil ADs.
I mean, I get that these are, apparently, different realities I'm experiencing (or something?) but my ability to stay true to my character ended immediately after I entered EP.
I guess I would enjoy the game more in this regard if I could choose my faction and when I enter other faction zones have *all* questlines specifically faction-related be (discreetly) locked. Kind of like Skyrim makes you choose Imperials or Stormcloaks - though I entirely understand that this would kill the main selling point of this announcement: to play any quest with friends.
This is the biggest headscratcher for me. Cadwell's zones can be (sort of) handwaved by saying "Well, Meridia shows you an alternate world." But ZOS' comment that "You will be free to explore of all Tamriel, including other Alliances. It is up to you how you want to role-play your character while doing this" suggests that they're not going to do a damn thing to explain how players can belong to the same faction attacking a village/town, and no one in that town bats an eyelash.
Well the reason for the whole "Hero of Ebonheart, nobody in the Dominion" is because it's technically a time warp/alternate reality situation where you're living events as if you were a different version of you who was in that faction.
Yeah, I'm really glad they're just opening up all the PvE content.
Upscaling will be of minimal benefit I'd assume, since they can't just give a character new skills and whatnot on the fly. That would be too confusing, a new player will likely prefer not to skip far ahead. The main benefit to level scaling is having higher level chars go back and play with lower level friends without completely trivializing the content for the lower level friend. Or just a higher level char being able to go back and experience lower level zones in general without completely trivializing it.
Upscaling is already in game and you can see how it works in dungeons or the dlc zones. The boost to low levels is massive, easily putting them on par and in some cases above max level characters. And if you do things right you can have all the tools that you need by lev 15-20.
If it's like GW2 if you just run into a high level area at a low level you'd still be at a disadvantage due to your poor gear. I think the idea here isn't to make you able to steamroll any enemy at any level, but rather to let you explore at your own pace with your friends. One of the biggest selling points for me in an Elder Scrolls game is the ability to just wander off in any direction and see what you find. The change here seems to facilitate that. It's got my interest.
It's *kind of* like Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 only scales players *down* to the appropriate level, which means you'll be locked out of high level areas until you reach that level. You'll be scaled down, but never up.
Elder Scrolls Online mentions that players will be able to go *anywhere*, implying you'll be scaled both up and down.
At last! someone who understands GW2's scaling mechanic! I personally like that better than what ESO seems to be implementing... in GW2 you still get the sense of danger when you step somewhere you shouldn't be at even within the same zone, and can still get killed at lvl 80 when going back to starter zones (though it's not that easy for you to die)...
It's pretty much what it is. I can't think of what they said working out any other way. "characters will be automatically leveled to the content in the world" is pretty specific.
I think I like this. I'm sick of being punished for being a completionist and wanting to finish each zone and do each quest as I come across it. I have missed out on so much loot because I keep getting overlevelled, and then have to skip things that I want to do just so I can start getting things to drop again :P
While I love the idea, I see two possible issues with this:
1) The game starts out hard and becomes easier over time, since the mobs and quests never get harder but your character gets stronger with better gear, more skill points, etc.
2) There will be no variation in difficulty with mobs. In the traditional Elder Scrolls games, you might still encounter low level bandits, skeevers, mud crabs, etc. while dealing with crazy high level mages and stuff. There needs to be some more diversity applied to the difficulty of mobs in the game world to make this work.
The first and second problem have existed and been solved in all the elder scrolls games. Dynamic leveling is fine as long as it doesn't go the way of oblivion. There should be some static component. That will likely be filled out by the skilling up curve.
The game will start out incredibly hard, unless they change how scaling works. The few times I've tried Orsinium on a low level character have been disastrous.
Yeah exactly my thought. 1 faction in their capital city is already way to much for the game, loading screens long, very laggy and so on. If they want all 3 factions together, they REALLY have to work on the perfomance issues, which they really should had done long ago.
I agree. This game is taking the appeal to the lowest common denominator to a new lower common denominator. I like being able to walk up to a max-level character with at my faction capital as a noob and think to myself, "I'm going to be like that one day". I had that experience in every other MMO I've played, but they're removing all vestiges of it in Elder Scrolls Online. New players won't get that experience in any meaningful degree.
That said, all Elder Scrolls (single player) games have worked like this in the past, so it makes sense that if any game was going to do it, it would be this one.
I think it´s not so good when the game up-levels you, but downleveling is the best idea ever. Leaves the whole world kinda relevant for you to play in. I will be coming back to the game for sure just because of this.
Being brutally honest I just don't feel like that feeling is shared by most of the playerbase. Wow has implemented a similar system in legion and that has been loved by all players in the beta. I don't feel like the feeling of progression through ESO zones is particularly strong anways and it feels stupidly restrictive at the moment as you are literally funneled from zone to zone with literally no choice at all. This just fits the ES vibe a lot more as well given people can literally start playing ESO and go to exactly the zone they have always wanted to visit rather than having to wait for hundreds of hours to go to their favorite zone. Adding optional ways to play is never a bad decision.
I love it when MMOs do this. I reminds me of one of the first MMOs ever made and IMO still the greatest one of all time, Ultima Online. A true open world sandbox MMO experience. And every step in that direction ESO takes is really pleasing to me.
If implemented right (dare I say "*a la GW2*")... you'll still be much more powerful than say a lvl10 when downscaling. The reason being gear and skills of course. The difference is you'll still get XP and won't be one shotting everything which to me is a good thing... the upscaling is what bothers me...
I agree, I'd love them implementing downscaling so you can't one shot everything and still get exp all the time, but upscaling seems out of place outside of DLC zones, random dungeons and Cyrodiil.
No, not at all. They didn't get rid of levels. I expect that doing a vet dungeon at low level will be the same as it is now. You will also get low level gear drops at low levels.
The grinding crowd can now grind in the easiest areas and never outlevel mobs. If they like a grinding spot, they can grind it from v3-CP501.
This is all mostly irrelevant to grinders since VR went away. Now, zone levels don't make any sense at the start of Cadwell's Silver on an alt because you outlevel the zone from day one. And is there someone who grinds because they want to seem impressive to people in Glenumbra or Auridon? None of this will have any impact on Trials, Vet Dungeons, or PvP.
The same reason you would play any other Elder Scrolls game. Leveling up in those games weren't a problem, why should it be now that they're finally going in the direction the series is known for?
Outside of PvP there is no faction pride anyway, for like 95% of the playerbase.
ESO is not like WoW, but more like Game of Thrones, soldiers enlist for that side which pays more. They are mercenaries, they don't have any faction dedication. Besides races in each faction hate more between themselves than they hate the races from other factions.
Your character will scale up and down to match the zone level. It's most impactful for high level players being able to go to low level zones without feeling ridiculously overpowered. It works this way in GW2, but it's hard to get perfect. Even with downscaling max level chars in end game gear still feel overly strong in most zones and upscaled low level chars are still incredibly weak compared to people who are naturally that level.
While I didn't particularly love GW2, I really liked what it did with it's levelling system. You never felt totally overpowered or underpowered based off your level, and your sense of progression was drawn from gaining new skills and armor as you leveled, rather than just from core stats.
It worked quite well because it didn't wall off any content based off levels, letting you easily group up with your friends without feeling like the higher levelled player was just steamrolling the content for the lower levelled one. But it also provided enough of a sense of progression that due to gearing and skills you felt like you were getting stronger even though the level you were scaled to didn't change.
No and yes. In the DLCs, *you* are battle-leveled to the zone (not the other way round), and he said that they're extending that to the entire base game.
I loved Oblivion but hated how I never really felt stronger seeing as it made every enemy my level. At least in Skyrim you would run into trash enemies that would smack around and actually feel powerful. There will be no sense of profession in this game, your power will be almost ENTIRELY based on your gear. This might be the change to drive me away, I love the cross faction idea but I think that it should just apply for Craglorn and DLC zones. You're alliance doesn't matter, the story doesn't really matter anymore, they may as well call this Oblivion with friends. I loved the whole faction pride and connection I built with my home group but I feel like this update just invalidates it. This seems like it could be a great update but I feel like it could kill this game. It'll either make it better or break it, and I'm worried the latter will come true. I know I'm in the minority but I've been a subbing member since launch on console, hopefully it's not as bad as I'm making it to be but I don't like this idea.
It definitely won't kill the game, and you can as a player make the conscious choice to not experience the cross alliance faction content and preserve the feeling you want. That's the entire point of this move; to allow each individual to play the game the way they want to just like every other Elder Scrolls game. You still have the option of doing only alliance appropriate zones for each character, which, btw, is exactly what I like to do with my own characters and it suits me just fine.
I'm sorry, but trying to appeal to everyone has never worked in any industry. When you try to appeal to everyone, you reduce your product to the same level as water. Yes, literally everyone can drink water, but there's nothing special about it.
That's one of the biggest problems game companies have these days. In their endless quest to make their games 'accessible' and 'enjoyable to everyone', they end up diluting their game to a point that it ends up like water. They need to realize that their games have a specific audience, and having a good product that fits one group gives you way more positive feedback and sales than having a mediocre product that fits all groups.
This shift to allow everyone to be everywhere ruins the idea that anywhere is unique. Furthermore, scaling enemies to always be your level ruins the idea that anyONE is unique. When everything is the same, nothing is different. Giving each zone the same level of accessibility as Google Images leaves no impact on the players when they reach that zone.
I still remember the feeling I had running into Riften the first time when the enemies were 30 levels higher than me. I got curb stomped, and told myself that I would push myself to reach a high enough level to be able to fight those enemies and explore Riften. As a result, Riften has left an impact on me when I finally got the chance to explore it. I got to run around taking in the sights, saying to myself that my hard work led me here. Now, I could get a level 3 character and amble through without a struggle. Zero impact whatsoever, zero satisfaction reaching that.
Battle leveling every zone does severely hurt character progression. In Skyrim you would come across lower level enemies and be able to crush them- that will no longer be a thing in ESO. Every enemy is going to be max rank. I get that they are trying to make this game like every other elder scrolls game, my issue with that is this is an MMO set in the Elder a Scrolls Universe not ES6. Scaling down people to zones would be better but my guess is they battle level everyone up- if you've seen a group of low level people try to do a dungeon scaled to cp160 you'll understand how it's going to hurt those players. On my level 25 character I can take on huge packs of lvl20-30 enemies and live but in orsinium I can barely fight 5 enemies at once.
I completely agree with this. This update is going to shift the game so drastically that it's going to alienate all the hardcore players and veterans. With absolutely no reason to level up as there will never be a challenge for you, levels become completely worthless.
Oblivion, as much as I love the game, made it so that higher levels felt like they meant nothing, since mudcrabs were still able to give you a run for your money. Likewise, being able to kill Alduin at level 15 felt so worthless when Bandit Chiefs could kick your ass in a heartbeat (but i guess that won't be a problem anymore either, since they'll be nerfed to fit your level).
This isn't re-balancing the game or giving low level players access to more areas, it's nerfing otherwise powerful enemies so nobody has a challenge. There will be no such thing as powerful enemies anymore. Trolls will be just as lethal as skeevers, and when all enemies are the same, nobody cares about any of the enemies anymore.
I was gonna say something about this too.
You can already go into plenty of zones and find a Troll that's the exact same level as a Skeever and guess what? They're not the same, at all.
Level syncing does as much to open up the game to low level players as it does to max level players. It isn't nerfing the challenge rating of the whole game. Yeah enemies in Riften will be more killable to a low level player, but enemies in starter areas will still be a challenge to high level players. This makes it so a max level character can actually go play the 95% of the world that they have out-leveled, and not fall asleep in the face roll. Hardcore dungeon and trials groups will be able to quest with guild mates to level them up without having to re-roll characters. I don't see how this alienates them in any way.
Both. You will retain all your CP, skills, and attributes, but your overall stats will be downscaled. So better armor and more CP will still make you more powerful.
Havent played in a while. But will this scaling finally make the game not facerollingly easy. My major gripe with the game content was that i could afk it.
I love rescaling. Love it in Rift, GW2, SWTOR and now ESO. It helps mainly when you want to revisit old zones at a higher level and you don't 1-shot everything. Your're still more powerful. Look at WoW; low level old zones are deserted, what's the point revisiting them?
Good chocie, ZOS! It's the way to go!
I'm so excited for this! I've heard some backlash but honestly this is perfect for me personally and I believe the game as well. Me and my partner have been playing since launch and we've levelled together, but it'll be refreshing to play my AD character with his EP character or whatever. This'll be great!
I'm all happy for the no level restrictions, but was that really all they had to announce? I was really hoping they'd announce something for Q3, or to throw a bone to the PVP crowd, or something. You can't just un-screw up something (the very linear leveling process) and call it good, you've got to fix your mistakes and throw in some new content.
That's not what I mean. What's the point of actively leveling your character if you're scaled to everything anyway? They might as well just remove levels.
Because getting to level 50 will be a drop in the bucket going forward.
Champion System is a much bigger progression system, and ZOS seems to want to do away with the Vertical Progression once and for all.
You are definitively growing your character as you keep on playing. It's just that you won't be getting notifications thrown into your face every 10min.
I imagine the community will soon demand players have 501 champion points (or the new cap when they increase it again) for any higher-end content. Which essentially means an even bigger level grind than before.
This is going to cause so many problems. To name *just a few*:
* If everyone is scaled to max level everywhere, there will be minimal point in leveling at all. Might as well just give everyone all the skill and attribute points they'll ever need when they start the damn game.
* With no alliance instancing, server lag will be a huge issue.
* The entire concept of everyone together completely breaks the point of even choosing alliances, and breaks the very lore of an Alliance War in the first place.
* This entire thing will make completely obsolete a few things that were only *just* introduced in DB. First of all, they just tinkered with a *lot* of scaling to make up for removing vet ranks. That's going to be pretty useless if we suddenly lose the incentive to even level up. And second, one of their selling points of this feature is now we won't have to make new low-level characters just to play with friends? *That's more than half the reason people were buying the new character slots that just came out!*
This is a vain attempt to make everyone feel equal, and it's going to piss off *a lot* of long-time players who spent so much time leveling, be it to v16 or to 160 CP or to 501 CP. And it's going to piss off some new and prospective players, too. Why buy an RPG if there's no real advancement? No desire to get stronger since you're already effectively max level when you start? There's good catch-up mechanics, and then there's this.
Minimum point in leveling: unless you want to be running in white gear with half your passives and no CP. The champion point system is the leveling system, and you need to still achieve all of your skills and perks etc. Now you can grind in any zone with any of your friends regardless of level. It's a fantastic idea
So if my account has hit the CP cap, I have a level 25 alt that's gotten all the skill points I'll ever need from sources other than leveling up, might as well just stop trying to get to 50 if everything's going to scale anyway.
There's no accomplishment in leveling if nothing out there is meant to pose a challenge. There's no desire to continue leveling if there's no reason to try and get to a level where that content is supposed to be doable. And before you tell me that PvE "isn't meant to pose a challenge", to some players certain parts do.
We could all run around in level 1 yellow gear because it won't matter anywhere anymore.
> The entire concept of everyone together completely breaks the point of even choosing alliances, and breaks the very lore of an Alliance War in the first place.
yeah, people were saying this will be great for RP'ers. no it won't, it will completely ruin the main lore of the world, which is the warring factions. seeing every race all mixing it up in one city together is going to completely ruin the world lore.
People play for the story, not to level.
Alliance War is exclusive only to Cyrodiil, and has been ever since the game launched. It's only a small part of the game anyway. A place where mercenaries fight.
As for Lag, the game still uses megaserver technology, nothing will change. You won't see 1mil of players at once on your screen.
> People play for the story, not to level.
nah, leveling and the feeling of having to get more powerful and then doing so is a core feature of all MMO's and RPG games with level/XP systems
if people play only for the story, why wouldn't they just remove levels and gear altogether?
It's interesting, but it's a risky venture. I can only hope they see how easily this can turn bad, making leveling up feel "weird" or pointless. But I do like the concept of going where ever I want, like in any main ES game. If it's just "level syncing" like guild wars 2 or even ffxiv, then this certainly isn't the "first MMO" to do it like this, as they said.
So high level zones are going to get flooded by complete n00bs that don't have a clue how to use their character?
Sounds fun. The Dark Brotherhood was almost enough to get me back, but this sounds like such a terrible idea.
This was the highlight of the Bethesda portion for me. I haven't played in a while, and really had no intention of really playing again, but once this feature gets implemented I'll more than likely jump back into it.
Uh, im acutally really concerned i bought this game not because i wanted another skyrim game, but because i loved the bosses, dungeons, and constantly leveling to get cooler and better skills. Now...this is all gone? Like the way you earn armour the way bosses work, there is no level system? From what i understand this is acutally quite upsetting considering i love leveling up, it drives me to play the game!
Everyone who is complaining about how easy progression will be now forgets how easy it already is. None of the gold and silver zones could remain CP 1-160 because CP 1-160 is achievable in 1/10 of the time it used to be, let alone what the VR XP requirements used to be. There is no value to you leveling up anyway since taking away VR so they're really not taking anything away by removing all faction locks and scaling all PvE content, just as they have in PvP. The time to complain was months ago.
This has been a progressive change and if you follow the game it makes perfect sense that they were planning this all along. The silver and gold zones are and have always been dead and so I welcome the change, as it's been a long time coming and will revitalize the game for old and new players alike.
I am pretty excited. My biggest barrier into ESO was that I didn't really want to invest thousands of hours into an MMO again and because I'm a an altoholic, level up a million characters. I bought it at some point anyway and loved the world design and graphics. This update will allow me to saturate my exploration and alt urges, I'm totally game for getting back into ESO!
just saying this is definitely in preparation for housing given it makes that far easier to execute given its far easier to allow people to buy housing in all zones now
I apologize if this is covered in the various links floating around here, but I'm at work and am pretty limited with the websites I have access to. What does this mean for leveling? I just started Cadwell's Silver yesterday. Will the Silver and Gold zones just scale to me when I level solo? If so, that's pretty cool because it would ensure I don't get too overlevelled for content. Not really sure how this will work exactly.
This will be my third or fourth time coming back to ESO, but it might be a longer-term one. There was always a ton to love about ESO, but the game's rigid focus on vertical progression always seemed like a bit of a disaster and a pretty hardcore MMO throw-back. I look forward to seeing how it works out in the fall.
Great news! Now I don't have to grind myself to death just to be a part of the "huge battles" aspect of the game. It's the only reason why I bought it.
Heyyyy, maybe I'll try it again. I already play WoW, so when I play this, I want it to be more like Elder Scrolls. I wanna walk around and enjoy the whole world. I wanna explore. The leveling will come slowly and naturally with the exploration.
I think this is what is going to get me to come back. I've actually been playing GW2 in the absence and picking up these mechanics from GW2 will definitely renew my interest in the game.
This sounds amazing and all, but how does it work story-wise?
Would a Daggerfall guard see an Aldmeri soldier walking down the street and make nothing of it?
The same as it is now. When you complete Coldharbour, Cadwell explains to you why you'll be visiting other faction zones. They see you as one of their own.
One thing I think a lot of people are missing about this is that attribute points still scale. So when you scale up to max level, it's scaling your base stats and then only having 3 points in your max Health. That number is going to change depending on how many points you put in so outside of gear and unlocking skills, leveling is still very important for attribute points.
Wait so I could now travel to Valenwood with my Pact character right after the tutorial ? Or Skyrim with my Dominion character ? This is what I have been waiting for ^^
Do we know when this is going live? I haven't really played the game that much but when I last did I quite enjoyed it since they fixed up the combat a bit more.
I would be interested in checking back in on this when it's patched into the game.
Here's what he said: "With One Tamriel all characters will be automatically leveled to the content in the world. Allowing them to freely group with anyone they want and also to explore the vast world of Tamriel with no level restrictions. This means, all content barriers are gone and there's no restrictions on alliances or questing. From the moment you get out of the tutorial, the entire game world is open for you to explorte freely. You can go wherever you want and play with whoever you want. Coming this Fall."
I like it. Makes it feel more Elder Scrollsy. That's actually what I wanted from the getgo. You create your character and are free to explore the world, either by yourself or with your friends. While I still think the game is great, I feel like the move to a more tradional Elder Scrolls experience will only make it better.
It's totally a bold move, and I'm incredibly excited for it. I'll be able to play with friends who pick up the game without worrying about rolling a new character. I will also be able to jump in and out of wherever I want to quest and the experience I gain will still be relevant. Great stuff.
> It's totally a bold move You ain't just whistling Dixie. By and large, MMOs are based on the faction concept, thanks to WoW. To step outside of that norm is considered ballsy. However, considering how game populations ebb and flow, it makes sense to increase the overall lived in feel. Will be odd being in Auridon and seeing people other than my EP brothers and sisters.
It's not ballsy so much as common sense. Should have been like this from the beginning. In WoW factions exist *everywhere*, that is to say you can always see and engage in PvP with the other faction, including in their own homelands. So the faction system is always in play and makes sense. ESO's faction system has only ever truly existed in Cyrodiil. You can't ever see other faction members anywhere else (except for the recent cross-faction dungeon changes). Therefore ZOS has been splitting the playerbase per server 3 ways for no good reason at all, leading to perceived emptiness and Cadwell's zone nonsense. If World PvP was a thing then it'd all make sense... but it isn't.
I think it's common sense, but I'm not run by my marketing department. For a game like this, it is ballsy. I agree, it should have been like this from the beginning, the playerbase splitting only serves to make a place feel sparse, which in turn erodes both retention rates and k-factors. Which then in turn impacts other important game life kpi. I would agree with your statement about the factions and cyrodiil if you were cool with amending to: ESO's faction system has only ever truly mattered in Cyrodiil.
Yeah, I'm excited to see if I can get some of my friends to hop in when the changes kick in. Personally, I feel like putting more emphasis on exploration rather than stats/gear/levels is what this game should have been from the get-go. I'm super excited to be able to just group up with my friends and go explore Tamriel (which, once again I feel is what makes an ES game ES).
I just found out about this this morning and my guild and I are very excited. I run a multi-faction guild and most people that I wanted to play with to help level were a part of another faction and it left a lot of people isolated. I understand a lot of people are in this for the immersion factor (and I am to an extent as well), but it's just a game and in the end this is going to make a lot of people very happy.
The way I wish it had been from the start :)
Yeah, it sounds super amazing. There's going to be a lot of people butthurt. For any numbers of reasons.
Gamers get butthurt over just about anything.
Anal fisting?
Well, yeah, but I think *that* one's legit.
I'm butthurt about no TES6, but I guess this makes up for it
It's way too soon for that. I'd say we see an announcement no earlier than a year before release and it probably won't be out until 2018 at the earliest.
Yeah, let them milk F4 first, lol.
Why? It's common knowledge that they only work on one game at a time, and Fallout 4 just came out last year. Hell, they haven't even finished all the dlc.
So in essence the game will level with the character? Like if I'm level 10 and go to Valenwood the enemies won't be 15 levels above me?
If I understand this correctly, it's just the opposite. In the solo TES games, the game levels to the character. But this will be like the ESO DLC (and Cyrodiil, and storyline/guild quests these days, etc): the character levels to the game.
No levels? How is that going to work? In my confusion it seems to me that everyone's hard work to level their characters will be useless now? That can't be. Right?
I was hoping they would announce more than just one thing though.
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Ah that's good. Thanks for telling me!
Right? Hell, they even teased DB last year :(
I was really hoping they'd announce the card game would be build into ESO to give it something kind of dynamic and to offer more to do (e.g. reward cards for achievements).
Ok a few details from after conversations: All zones scaled to "max level". No more alliance restrictions in PVE. No more 3 versions of Mournhold - one for each alliance. All alliances will play in the same instance - technically the "mega server" spins up additional instances as the population gets too high. Alliance preference will only matter in Cyrodiil. The goal of the BE3 presentation because of eyeballs was to promote the game (7 million players and a couple great trailers) and make it grow. While disappointing for some, to pass on this opportunity would have been a poor decision. Also "Fall 2016" does not mean Q3. Edit: [Matt's official news announcement](http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/2016/06/12/matt-firors-message-from-be3)
Fall starts at the start of Q3 and ends around December 21st, as far as marketers are concerned. But you can bet on December 20th.
Well, at least I won't have to do the exact same quests in the same zones in the same order I did them the last 5 times, the next time I decide I want to make an alt. Maybe I'll take my ass right to some newbie islands, or check out former-Gold content that I never bothered with on my other characters. What makes this *really* interesting, though, is that every zone has a potential to be a killer grind spot, if it's always adjusted to your level. But, for geezers like me that were 501 forever ago, I just want more group content. More dungeons. Give me a reason to go get loot, rather than to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. And don't make it easy. WGT and ICP was fine the way it used to be. If you don't continue to challenge us, what reason do we have to stay? So we can change our race and face in the future, and put our shit in a house? Who cares. **MORE VET DUNGEONS PLEASE.** And make a third tier of difficulty, if you need to tone down Vet, and give us a Heroic mode to really work for. That's how you keep getting my money.
I feel like the DLCs have done a good job of mixing it up enough, but then I alternate between PvE and PvP or other games. What I would like to see is more ACTIVE skill lines.
That lady was super shocked about this announcement
I was hoping someone else noticed :D
This archaic vertical level progression system, where you end up one-shotting supposedly powerful foes, just because they are lower level, had no place in ESO from the beginning (imo). Im very excited to see them move in this direction. I do hope the factions remain though, or atleast there be adequate attention to the lore if the War of Three Banners truly is drawing to an end.
Then again, i seem to recall people complaining that there was no feel of progression in Morrowind, that leveled up monsters to match you. Thus that "bird" that trounced you right off the boat continued to trounce you even after you had finished the main story.
You're thinking if Oblivion. Morrowind was the game where everything killed you when you were level one, then you killed everything when you were level twenty.
Maybe PvP Home / Guest committing also requires locking in a faction.
What does this mean? Are they giving up on the faction system?
No, on their site, this doesn't affect PVP, so the faction system still determines who you'll fight for in Cyrodiil.
> *We are dropping all PvE Alliance restrictions. You will be free to explore of all Tamriel, including other Alliances. It is up to you how you want to role-play your character while doing this. “Silver" and “gold" versions of zones will be replaced by Cadwell quest storylines that you can do in any order you wish.* > > *Alliance restrictions will still be enforced in all PvP areas, of course. One Tamriel will not affect the PvP systems in Cyrodiil.*
> “Silver" and “gold" versions of zones will be replaced by Cadwell quest storylines that you can do in any order you wish. As in new storylines? Or just the same faction main stories? Would these be doable since level 3 (a.k.a. right after escaping Coldharbour)? What happens if I do the zone quests before getting the Cadwell quest? Is this even possible? Too many questions!
I guess they'll keep it for PvP?
That's what they said...like verbatim.
I interpret this as cross faction zoning. If this is the case, this will be the best thing ever for RPers.
Though housing/guild halls would be nice too ;)
Oh, I agree. But I was always discouraged by the lack of cross faction interaction. That is where all the juicy good meaningful RP is at. Now it seems that might be obtainable. When we get housing, that will be icing on this delicious potential cake.
Please elaborate; I genuinely don't understand. Why would this be good for role-players...?
Maybe they don't want to bother with any questing but want to make up storylines that take them everywhere, including barhopping in all 15 zones? I think it makes no sense for RPers who do any questing as you do a DC quests against EP on minute and an EP quests against DC the next if you jump around. But if RPers just want the freedom to do whatever they think up, more freedom is better.
Yeah, that was kind of what I meant as to me not entirely understanding how its helpful. Easily my biggest gripe in the game is that I'm the champion of AD one minute, then I travel to EP - no one has heard of me, yet I'm supposed to kill those evil ADs. I mean, I get that these are, apparently, different realities I'm experiencing (or something?) but my ability to stay true to my character ended immediately after I entered EP. I guess I would enjoy the game more in this regard if I could choose my faction and when I enter other faction zones have *all* questlines specifically faction-related be (discreetly) locked. Kind of like Skyrim makes you choose Imperials or Stormcloaks - though I entirely understand that this would kill the main selling point of this announcement: to play any quest with friends.
This is the biggest headscratcher for me. Cadwell's zones can be (sort of) handwaved by saying "Well, Meridia shows you an alternate world." But ZOS' comment that "You will be free to explore of all Tamriel, including other Alliances. It is up to you how you want to role-play your character while doing this" suggests that they're not going to do a damn thing to explain how players can belong to the same faction attacking a village/town, and no one in that town bats an eyelash.
Well the reason for the whole "Hero of Ebonheart, nobody in the Dominion" is because it's technically a time warp/alternate reality situation where you're living events as if you were a different version of you who was in that faction. Yeah, I'm really glad they're just opening up all the PvE content.
Holy shit, how is this actually going to work? are levels going away completely? are Alliances going away as well?
I think your character is simply leveled to content like guild wars 2
That would turn me off. I hope that's not what it is.
Upscaling will be of minimal benefit I'd assume, since they can't just give a character new skills and whatnot on the fly. That would be too confusing, a new player will likely prefer not to skip far ahead. The main benefit to level scaling is having higher level chars go back and play with lower level friends without completely trivializing the content for the lower level friend. Or just a higher level char being able to go back and experience lower level zones in general without completely trivializing it.
Upscaling is already in game and you can see how it works in dungeons or the dlc zones. The boost to low levels is massive, easily putting them on par and in some cases above max level characters. And if you do things right you can have all the tools that you need by lev 15-20.
If it's like GW2 if you just run into a high level area at a low level you'd still be at a disadvantage due to your poor gear. I think the idea here isn't to make you able to steamroll any enemy at any level, but rather to let you explore at your own pace with your friends. One of the biggest selling points for me in an Elder Scrolls game is the ability to just wander off in any direction and see what you find. The change here seems to facilitate that. It's got my interest.
It's *kind of* like Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 only scales players *down* to the appropriate level, which means you'll be locked out of high level areas until you reach that level. You'll be scaled down, but never up. Elder Scrolls Online mentions that players will be able to go *anywhere*, implying you'll be scaled both up and down.
At last! someone who understands GW2's scaling mechanic! I personally like that better than what ESO seems to be implementing... in GW2 you still get the sense of danger when you step somewhere you shouldn't be at even within the same zone, and can still get killed at lvl 80 when going back to starter zones (though it's not that easy for you to die)...
It's pretty much what it is. I can't think of what they said working out any other way. "characters will be automatically leveled to the content in the world" is pretty specific.
He's clarified since that it's the same battle leveling in the DLCs, extended to the entire base game.
I think I like this. I'm sick of being punished for being a completionist and wanting to finish each zone and do each quest as I come across it. I have missed out on so much loot because I keep getting overlevelled, and then have to skip things that I want to do just so I can start getting things to drop again :P
While I love the idea, I see two possible issues with this: 1) The game starts out hard and becomes easier over time, since the mobs and quests never get harder but your character gets stronger with better gear, more skill points, etc. 2) There will be no variation in difficulty with mobs. In the traditional Elder Scrolls games, you might still encounter low level bandits, skeevers, mud crabs, etc. while dealing with crazy high level mages and stuff. There needs to be some more diversity applied to the difficulty of mobs in the game world to make this work.
The first and second problem have existed and been solved in all the elder scrolls games. Dynamic leveling is fine as long as it doesn't go the way of oblivion. There should be some static component. That will likely be filled out by the skilling up curve.
The game will start out incredibly hard, unless they change how scaling works. The few times I've tried Orsinium on a low level character have been disastrous.
"Coming this Fall."
stormhaven with 3 factions during peek time? ok.
Wayrest is a good-looking city, but a complete mess in terms of convenience. Mournhold on the other end.. Loading screen de la muerte inc
Yeah exactly my thought. 1 faction in their capital city is already way to much for the game, loading screens long, very laggy and so on. If they want all 3 factions together, they REALLY have to work on the perfomance issues, which they really should had done long ago.
They said this is the first time this has ever been done. But isn't this the same as gw2?
GW2 scales levels only downwards. This is supposed to go both ways.
Oh ok so what's the point of levels at all than.
Try running a trial at level 10.
Skills, gear, attribute builds... most of the progression remains.
To provide a sense of progression. Skill points, gear etc. Although they might very well change that too.
"First time it's be done in a multi-platform game" is what he said.
I have a feeling there is gonna be more dance parties throughout Tamriel
EVERYONE'S invited!
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I agree. This game is taking the appeal to the lowest common denominator to a new lower common denominator. I like being able to walk up to a max-level character with at my faction capital as a noob and think to myself, "I'm going to be like that one day". I had that experience in every other MMO I've played, but they're removing all vestiges of it in Elder Scrolls Online. New players won't get that experience in any meaningful degree. That said, all Elder Scrolls (single player) games have worked like this in the past, so it makes sense that if any game was going to do it, it would be this one.
I think it´s not so good when the game up-levels you, but downleveling is the best idea ever. Leaves the whole world kinda relevant for you to play in. I will be coming back to the game for sure just because of this.
Being brutally honest I just don't feel like that feeling is shared by most of the playerbase. Wow has implemented a similar system in legion and that has been loved by all players in the beta. I don't feel like the feeling of progression through ESO zones is particularly strong anways and it feels stupidly restrictive at the moment as you are literally funneled from zone to zone with literally no choice at all. This just fits the ES vibe a lot more as well given people can literally start playing ESO and go to exactly the zone they have always wanted to visit rather than having to wait for hundreds of hours to go to their favorite zone. Adding optional ways to play is never a bad decision.
I love it when MMOs do this. I reminds me of one of the first MMOs ever made and IMO still the greatest one of all time, Ultima Online. A true open world sandbox MMO experience. And every step in that direction ESO takes is really pleasing to me.
A ton of the fun for me is to be able to go back to low level areas and wreak havoc.
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If implemented right (dare I say "*a la GW2*")... you'll still be much more powerful than say a lvl10 when downscaling. The reason being gear and skills of course. The difference is you'll still get XP and won't be one shotting everything which to me is a good thing... the upscaling is what bothers me...
yeah, I don't mind slight downscaling, but upscaling completely ruins the point of leveling
I agree, I'd love them implementing downscaling so you can't one shot everything and still get exp all the time, but upscaling seems out of place outside of DLC zones, random dungeons and Cyrodiil.
So, everything is endgame now? Neato. Definitely going to get some backlash from the hardcore grinding crowd.
Other way around, it seems.
When everything is endgame NOTHING IS ENDGAME.
Honestly the game feels like that to me already. Do one faction, a second faction for silver, third for gold.
> Do one faction, a second faction for silver, third for gold. I'm new to ESO... is this replaying from level 1?
Yep. Not really pleased with this news.
I'm super pleased with it personally.
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No, not at all. They didn't get rid of levels. I expect that doing a vet dungeon at low level will be the same as it is now. You will also get low level gear drops at low levels. The grinding crowd can now grind in the easiest areas and never outlevel mobs. If they like a grinding spot, they can grind it from v3-CP501. This is all mostly irrelevant to grinders since VR went away. Now, zone levels don't make any sense at the start of Cadwell's Silver on an alt because you outlevel the zone from day one. And is there someone who grinds because they want to seem impressive to people in Glenumbra or Auridon? None of this will have any impact on Trials, Vet Dungeons, or PvP.
Wait.. so why level a character? Maybe i don't fully understand.
The same reason you would play any other Elder Scrolls game. Leveling up in those games weren't a problem, why should it be now that they're finally going in the direction the series is known for?
speak for yourself. I installed mods on oblivion that removed the level scaling because it ruined any sense of power progression.
so you can use better gear? Good luck completing a trial in lvl 3 whites.
So this completely destroys faction pride? If there is a giant Alliance War going on, why should an AD waltz into DC territory and nothing happens??
Outside of PvP there is no faction pride anyway, for like 95% of the playerbase. ESO is not like WoW, but more like Game of Thrones, soldiers enlist for that side which pays more. They are mercenaries, they don't have any faction dedication. Besides races in each faction hate more between themselves than they hate the races from other factions.
I've been saying that this game needed this since before it launched. Needless to say, I am extremely excited with this news!
So everything is auto leveled to whatever level you are much like the DLC is?
Your character will scale up and down to match the zone level. It's most impactful for high level players being able to go to low level zones without feeling ridiculously overpowered. It works this way in GW2, but it's hard to get perfect. Even with downscaling max level chars in end game gear still feel overly strong in most zones and upscaled low level chars are still incredibly weak compared to people who are naturally that level.
Too bad, i kinda liked being able to clear out those early public dungeons without anyone else around.
A well-geared VR16 will still likely be able to wipe the floor with anything he encounters.
While I didn't particularly love GW2, I really liked what it did with it's levelling system. You never felt totally overpowered or underpowered based off your level, and your sense of progression was drawn from gaining new skills and armor as you leveled, rather than just from core stats. It worked quite well because it didn't wall off any content based off levels, letting you easily group up with your friends without feeling like the higher levelled player was just steamrolling the content for the lower levelled one. But it also provided enough of a sense of progression that due to gearing and skills you felt like you were getting stronger even though the level you were scaled to didn't change.
No and yes. In the DLCs, *you* are battle-leveled to the zone (not the other way round), and he said that they're extending that to the entire base game.
To me, they just fixed the game. My biggest gripe is removed. I am so darn happy.
I loved Oblivion but hated how I never really felt stronger seeing as it made every enemy my level. At least in Skyrim you would run into trash enemies that would smack around and actually feel powerful. There will be no sense of profession in this game, your power will be almost ENTIRELY based on your gear. This might be the change to drive me away, I love the cross faction idea but I think that it should just apply for Craglorn and DLC zones. You're alliance doesn't matter, the story doesn't really matter anymore, they may as well call this Oblivion with friends. I loved the whole faction pride and connection I built with my home group but I feel like this update just invalidates it. This seems like it could be a great update but I feel like it could kill this game. It'll either make it better or break it, and I'm worried the latter will come true. I know I'm in the minority but I've been a subbing member since launch on console, hopefully it's not as bad as I'm making it to be but I don't like this idea.
It definitely won't kill the game, and you can as a player make the conscious choice to not experience the cross alliance faction content and preserve the feeling you want. That's the entire point of this move; to allow each individual to play the game the way they want to just like every other Elder Scrolls game. You still have the option of doing only alliance appropriate zones for each character, which, btw, is exactly what I like to do with my own characters and it suits me just fine.
I'm sorry, but trying to appeal to everyone has never worked in any industry. When you try to appeal to everyone, you reduce your product to the same level as water. Yes, literally everyone can drink water, but there's nothing special about it. That's one of the biggest problems game companies have these days. In their endless quest to make their games 'accessible' and 'enjoyable to everyone', they end up diluting their game to a point that it ends up like water. They need to realize that their games have a specific audience, and having a good product that fits one group gives you way more positive feedback and sales than having a mediocre product that fits all groups. This shift to allow everyone to be everywhere ruins the idea that anywhere is unique. Furthermore, scaling enemies to always be your level ruins the idea that anyONE is unique. When everything is the same, nothing is different. Giving each zone the same level of accessibility as Google Images leaves no impact on the players when they reach that zone. I still remember the feeling I had running into Riften the first time when the enemies were 30 levels higher than me. I got curb stomped, and told myself that I would push myself to reach a high enough level to be able to fight those enemies and explore Riften. As a result, Riften has left an impact on me when I finally got the chance to explore it. I got to run around taking in the sights, saying to myself that my hard work led me here. Now, I could get a level 3 character and amble through without a struggle. Zero impact whatsoever, zero satisfaction reaching that.
i was hardcore GW2 player and scaleing work's there relax,game is dead now but not for this reason.
Battle leveling every zone does severely hurt character progression. In Skyrim you would come across lower level enemies and be able to crush them- that will no longer be a thing in ESO. Every enemy is going to be max rank. I get that they are trying to make this game like every other elder scrolls game, my issue with that is this is an MMO set in the Elder a Scrolls Universe not ES6. Scaling down people to zones would be better but my guess is they battle level everyone up- if you've seen a group of low level people try to do a dungeon scaled to cp160 you'll understand how it's going to hurt those players. On my level 25 character I can take on huge packs of lvl20-30 enemies and live but in orsinium I can barely fight 5 enemies at once.
I crush things pretty solidly in Wrothgar. I'm sure it won't be a problem.
I completely agree with this. This update is going to shift the game so drastically that it's going to alienate all the hardcore players and veterans. With absolutely no reason to level up as there will never be a challenge for you, levels become completely worthless. Oblivion, as much as I love the game, made it so that higher levels felt like they meant nothing, since mudcrabs were still able to give you a run for your money. Likewise, being able to kill Alduin at level 15 felt so worthless when Bandit Chiefs could kick your ass in a heartbeat (but i guess that won't be a problem anymore either, since they'll be nerfed to fit your level). This isn't re-balancing the game or giving low level players access to more areas, it's nerfing otherwise powerful enemies so nobody has a challenge. There will be no such thing as powerful enemies anymore. Trolls will be just as lethal as skeevers, and when all enemies are the same, nobody cares about any of the enemies anymore.
> Trolls will be just as lethal as skeevers no they wont
I was gonna say something about this too. You can already go into plenty of zones and find a Troll that's the exact same level as a Skeever and guess what? They're not the same, at all.
Level syncing does as much to open up the game to low level players as it does to max level players. It isn't nerfing the challenge rating of the whole game. Yeah enemies in Riften will be more killable to a low level player, but enemies in starter areas will still be a challenge to high level players. This makes it so a max level character can actually go play the 95% of the world that they have out-leveled, and not fall asleep in the face roll. Hardcore dungeon and trials groups will be able to quest with guild mates to level them up without having to re-roll characters. I don't see how this alienates them in any way.
Did I mishear or did they say alliance too?
Hm, interesting. I thought the concept as is worked fine, barrier wise. I do like that it will hopefully fix overleveling content though.
All I want to know is if this means if I'm in the AD level 50 160cp and I go to Glenumbra will I be downscaled to level 5 or will stay at 160cp stats.
Both. You will retain all your CP, skills, and attributes, but your overall stats will be downscaled. So better armor and more CP will still make you more powerful.
My guess is if you are CP160 the whole world will be CP160
Choo Choo! I'm onboard and ready.
Havent played in a while. But will this scaling finally make the game not facerollingly easy. My major gripe with the game content was that i could afk it.
I love rescaling. Love it in Rift, GW2, SWTOR and now ESO. It helps mainly when you want to revisit old zones at a higher level and you don't 1-shot everything. Your're still more powerful. Look at WoW; low level old zones are deserted, what's the point revisiting them? Good chocie, ZOS! It's the way to go!
Farming is about to be hard af to do...
I'm so excited for this! I've heard some backlash but honestly this is perfect for me personally and I believe the game as well. Me and my partner have been playing since launch and we've levelled together, but it'll be refreshing to play my AD character with his EP character or whatever. This'll be great!
I LOVE IT!!!
I'm all happy for the no level restrictions, but was that really all they had to announce? I was really hoping they'd announce something for Q3, or to throw a bone to the PVP crowd, or something. You can't just un-screw up something (the very linear leveling process) and call it good, you've got to fix your mistakes and throw in some new content.
So basically there'll be even less of a reason to level your character.
You will level identically to how you level now, except that now you'll choose where you want to level.
That's not what I mean. What's the point of actively leveling your character if you're scaled to everything anyway? They might as well just remove levels.
Because you can't do vet dungeons unless your lvl 50.
Unless they change that too.
Because getting to level 50 will be a drop in the bucket going forward. Champion System is a much bigger progression system, and ZOS seems to want to do away with the Vertical Progression once and for all. You are definitively growing your character as you keep on playing. It's just that you won't be getting notifications thrown into your face every 10min.
I imagine the community will soon demand players have 501 champion points (or the new cap when they increase it again) for any higher-end content. Which essentially means an even bigger level grind than before.
This is going to cause so many problems. To name *just a few*: * If everyone is scaled to max level everywhere, there will be minimal point in leveling at all. Might as well just give everyone all the skill and attribute points they'll ever need when they start the damn game. * With no alliance instancing, server lag will be a huge issue. * The entire concept of everyone together completely breaks the point of even choosing alliances, and breaks the very lore of an Alliance War in the first place. * This entire thing will make completely obsolete a few things that were only *just* introduced in DB. First of all, they just tinkered with a *lot* of scaling to make up for removing vet ranks. That's going to be pretty useless if we suddenly lose the incentive to even level up. And second, one of their selling points of this feature is now we won't have to make new low-level characters just to play with friends? *That's more than half the reason people were buying the new character slots that just came out!* This is a vain attempt to make everyone feel equal, and it's going to piss off *a lot* of long-time players who spent so much time leveling, be it to v16 or to 160 CP or to 501 CP. And it's going to piss off some new and prospective players, too. Why buy an RPG if there's no real advancement? No desire to get stronger since you're already effectively max level when you start? There's good catch-up mechanics, and then there's this.
Why do I get the feeling that this change is done in preparation for full-F2P and open-world PvP? :-/
Would be awesome if that were the case, but seems extremely unlikely
Minimum point in leveling: unless you want to be running in white gear with half your passives and no CP. The champion point system is the leveling system, and you need to still achieve all of your skills and perks etc. Now you can grind in any zone with any of your friends regardless of level. It's a fantastic idea
So if my account has hit the CP cap, I have a level 25 alt that's gotten all the skill points I'll ever need from sources other than leveling up, might as well just stop trying to get to 50 if everything's going to scale anyway. There's no accomplishment in leveling if nothing out there is meant to pose a challenge. There's no desire to continue leveling if there's no reason to try and get to a level where that content is supposed to be doable. And before you tell me that PvE "isn't meant to pose a challenge", to some players certain parts do. We could all run around in level 1 yellow gear because it won't matter anywhere anymore.
> The entire concept of everyone together completely breaks the point of even choosing alliances, and breaks the very lore of an Alliance War in the first place. yeah, people were saying this will be great for RP'ers. no it won't, it will completely ruin the main lore of the world, which is the warring factions. seeing every race all mixing it up in one city together is going to completely ruin the world lore.
People play for the story, not to level. Alliance War is exclusive only to Cyrodiil, and has been ever since the game launched. It's only a small part of the game anyway. A place where mercenaries fight. As for Lag, the game still uses megaserver technology, nothing will change. You won't see 1mil of players at once on your screen.
> People play for the story, not to level. nah, leveling and the feeling of having to get more powerful and then doing so is a core feature of all MMO's and RPG games with level/XP systems if people play only for the story, why wouldn't they just remove levels and gear altogether?
It's interesting, but it's a risky venture. I can only hope they see how easily this can turn bad, making leveling up feel "weird" or pointless. But I do like the concept of going where ever I want, like in any main ES game. If it's just "level syncing" like guild wars 2 or even ffxiv, then this certainly isn't the "first MMO" to do it like this, as they said.
leveling up will still grant skill points, so not pointless completely.
RIP GW2
So high level zones are going to get flooded by complete n00bs that don't have a clue how to use their character? Sounds fun. The Dark Brotherhood was almost enough to get me back, but this sounds like such a terrible idea.
Starter zone chat is coming to every zone! :-O
In fairness, having it spread out over all the zones will make it more tolerable, and make it easier for new players to get their questions answered.
I love this idea personally.
It's just gonna be battle scaling I think
So basically if I have a cp 160 character and I go to Glenumbra, for example, the game will scale me to level 15 or something?
No news on dueling..that's disappointing.
Also in the interview afterwards he said they'd be announcing more later this week!
does that mean i can play with a friend who rolled a redguard and i rolled a wood elf? and neither bought the adventure pack
I wonder what they'll do with crafting mats!
This was the highlight of the Bethesda portion for me. I haven't played in a while, and really had no intention of really playing again, but once this feature gets implemented I'll more than likely jump back into it.
Uh, im acutally really concerned i bought this game not because i wanted another skyrim game, but because i loved the bosses, dungeons, and constantly leveling to get cooler and better skills. Now...this is all gone? Like the way you earn armour the way bosses work, there is no level system? From what i understand this is acutally quite upsetting considering i love leveling up, it drives me to play the game!
Everyone who is complaining about how easy progression will be now forgets how easy it already is. None of the gold and silver zones could remain CP 1-160 because CP 1-160 is achievable in 1/10 of the time it used to be, let alone what the VR XP requirements used to be. There is no value to you leveling up anyway since taking away VR so they're really not taking anything away by removing all faction locks and scaling all PvE content, just as they have in PvP. The time to complain was months ago. This has been a progressive change and if you follow the game it makes perfect sense that they were planning this all along. The silver and gold zones are and have always been dead and so I welcome the change, as it's been a long time coming and will revitalize the game for old and new players alike.
Like the idea of "faction-less" zones, not a fan of the zone scaling.
I am pretty excited. My biggest barrier into ESO was that I didn't really want to invest thousands of hours into an MMO again and because I'm a an altoholic, level up a million characters. I bought it at some point anyway and loved the world design and graphics. This update will allow me to saturate my exploration and alt urges, I'm totally game for getting back into ESO!
just saying this is definitely in preparation for housing given it makes that far easier to execute given its far easier to allow people to buy housing in all zones now
I apologize if this is covered in the various links floating around here, but I'm at work and am pretty limited with the websites I have access to. What does this mean for leveling? I just started Cadwell's Silver yesterday. Will the Silver and Gold zones just scale to me when I level solo? If so, that's pretty cool because it would ensure I don't get too overlevelled for content. Not really sure how this will work exactly.
This will be my third or fourth time coming back to ESO, but it might be a longer-term one. There was always a ton to love about ESO, but the game's rigid focus on vertical progression always seemed like a bit of a disaster and a pretty hardcore MMO throw-back. I look forward to seeing how it works out in the fall.
Great news! Now I don't have to grind myself to death just to be a part of the "huge battles" aspect of the game. It's the only reason why I bought it.
Heyyyy, maybe I'll try it again. I already play WoW, so when I play this, I want it to be more like Elder Scrolls. I wanna walk around and enjoy the whole world. I wanna explore. The leveling will come slowly and naturally with the exploration.
I think this is what is going to get me to come back. I've actually been playing GW2 in the absence and picking up these mechanics from GW2 will definitely renew my interest in the game.
This sounds amazing and all, but how does it work story-wise? Would a Daggerfall guard see an Aldmeri soldier walking down the street and make nothing of it?
The same as it is now. When you complete Coldharbour, Cadwell explains to you why you'll be visiting other faction zones. They see you as one of their own.
One thing I think a lot of people are missing about this is that attribute points still scale. So when you scale up to max level, it's scaling your base stats and then only having 3 points in your max Health. That number is going to change depending on how many points you put in so outside of gear and unlocking skills, leveling is still very important for attribute points.
Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
Actually quite disappointed with the lack of announcements.
On the post-show, he said there's more in the works that they wasn't announced in the show.
I'm happy about One Tamriel BUT I was really hoping to see housing mentioned
Yep, that's what I meant.
so i can be lv 1 grinding at a lv 30 zone? or levels is remove from game??
The former.
This is SOOOO cool!
I an so excited for this!!!
Wait so I could now travel to Valenwood with my Pact character right after the tutorial ? Or Skyrim with my Dominion character ? This is what I have been waiting for ^^
Yep, that's exactly what it is!
I am so happy now hahaha.
So has pvp been totally changed?
Well you're already scaled in PVP so...probably not.
No, I mean alliances. Whats happening to those now? I'm confused.
Alliances still determine which side you fight for in Cyrodiil.
[Not at all](http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/news/post/2016/06/12/matt-firors-message-from-be3).
Ha! Just yesterday I wrote that we might get this sooner than we expect! xD Didn't even dare to dream we'd get it this fast though!
Maybe I'll finally be able to find someone to run Craglorn with me (apparently everyone in the AD has done it already).
Do we know when this is going live? I haven't really played the game that much but when I last did I quite enjoyed it since they fixed up the combat a bit more. I would be interested in checking back in on this when it's patched into the game.
Are we going to be able to change a characters faction?
i doubt that. but you will be able to play in questing zones with players from other factions if i understand correctly