ESO: Zenimax Answers Console Questions

Jun. 11, 2015

ESO: Zenimax Answers Console Questions

Today, Zenimax answered several questions from console players in a reddit “Ask Us Anything“. They say there are no immediate plans for text chat, and explain gamgertags vs playernames, amongst many other things. Here’s the summary!

Q: “Congrats on the hoard of players, but obviously prime time queue times are really high and seem to be increasing with each passing night. Can you share any plans you have to help alleviate this in the near future?”

We are working literally around the clock to resolve the log-in issues and up server capacities. I think I’ve had a total of 10 hours of sleep since console launch. We have a war room set-up as a sort of “central command” to identify issues we’re seeing and drive to fix. We’ve aggressively worked to solve log-in queuing and should have this (other than the incorrect queuing message) in a better state today. While the queuing works better now, the messaging requires a client update that we are submitting to Xbox next week. We are also working on improving megaserver capacity to get more gamers into Tamriel and will have some fixes in place this week. We aren’t happy ourselves at the issues gamers are experiencing in trying to get into the game and will continue the 24/7 push until these issues are resolved.

Please be aware, we are doing everything we can do to make this experience better for everyone. And you are correct – these problems stem from incredible demand for the game. In fact, when we first turned the servers on at game launch, it was like we experienced a DDOS attack – there was so much demand from players that it completely overwhelmed everything. We’ve been working on fixing that ever since, and are getting to the point where we are managing everything through the queue, and login errors themselves are becoming less prevalent.

I apologize for this experience, which I know isn’t awesome for those trying to get in and play. We’re working on fixing the problems as fast as we can. Thanks for hanging in there with us.

Q: ” Viewing of Gamer Tags instead of character name seems like an “out of character” choice for a game dedicated to player immersion. Was this a ZOS decision or some unknown Sony/Microsoft mandate? “

This was a hard one for us internally. As you know XBOX has standards which have to be met when using their Live network. They very much want a service which is consistent and delivers quality. For instance, if you have a friend logon to XBOX Live come online they want to make sure you are notified about it. For this reason, many of the features that are expected to be working for their services overlapped with what are normal services for ESO on the PC. Friends list, ignore lists, muting, etc. all had counterparts active on our service. If you ignored someone in our game, it was expected that you meant to ignore them on the XBOX live service. So originally we had some places where we needed to show you a XBOX gamertag to be compliant, but otherwise you could see a character name.

Even though this was possible, through testing, it became very confusing. It was also a very complex thing to keep implemented on our end, sometimes requiring a doubling up of code for what was essentially duplicated functionality. In order to eliminate the confusion for our players and reduce points of failure due to the complexity of the system we chose to simply show the XBOX gamertags. Though it does, admittedly, hurt some of the roleplaying and immersion elements, the social benefits and clarity made this decision the one we chose.

Q: “The lack of Floating Combat Text is hurting this game’s long term potential. I am a player who enjoys optimizing my character.”

We have begun exploring ways to integrate floating combat text and buff/debuffs within the HUD in a way that still keeps the spirit of the UI minimal. There’s several challenges with both of these. We’d like to make sure that the combat text feels satisfying and there’s some effort involved there when it comes to the aesthetics of it, the accuracy/data setup, and overall iteration on it. With the buff/debuff feedback, many of our effects are not as long term as other games so we’re looking into ways to give this feedback while also not making the HUD appear like a blinking casino machine. But both of these are things we have been exploring internally. No date we can give just yet. Sorry!

Q: “Play on PC right now but would like to switch to PS4 only the no chatbox thing is a dealbreaker for me. Any plans on introducing text chat on consoles?”

Text chat wasn’t added to the consoles because of a number of factors. First, many of our early tests demonstrated what we already knew: it can be cumbersome to type in a text chat with a controller, especially when time counts. This is why we decided to make sure VOIP was integrated into the game from the beginning and why we added our quick chat feature. Second, displaying text for an environment such as couch and TV requires larger fonts. Having small, almost unreadable text is very problematic. A chat window, typical on a PC, just doesn’t translate as well to a living room environment. Having a chat window that was useful, as in legible, meant it was so big it was covering up lots of other elements. These and a few other factors meant we concentrated more on VOIP and Quick Chat. They were the most reliable and best means of communication in the living room environment.

Is it possible we could have a text chat? Yes. Will we? I don’t think we can safely say one way or another. It probably is safe to say if we add a more text centric way to chat it won’t be a straight chat window.

Q: “When will we see the next patch? These invisible NPC’s are killin me”

We don’t have a date yet for the next incremental patch, but we are submitting it for certification next week. A fix for the invisible NPCs is part of the patch. As soon as we know when the patch will be, we’ll let everyone know (likely on our official forums and social media.)

Q: “It appears as though when you “game share” ESO, even by simply using different users on the same console, Imperial and Explorer’s Pack “perks” cannot be used by those players. Is this the intended behavior or a bug of sorts?”

Regarding game share, entitlements within the game such as Imperial Upgrade or Explorer’s Pack are mapped to the Gamertag account that unlock’s these entitlements. So while you can game share for others to use their accounts and play ESOTU, the entitlements don’t transfer as well. The invisible NPC’s is an issue that has been challenging for us to reproduce internally but we have a fix we believe will address this issue that is coming with the next incremental patch.

We’ve seen some reports of entitlements not working properly in some cases–particularly Imperial Upgrade and Explorer’s Pack. Also, crowns don’t always update immediately upon purchase. We’re looking into all of these. Sometimes force quitting and restarting the game solves this–sometimes not. There are a few people actively looking at this to resolve asap.

Q: “Is there any chance that racial passives will be rebalanced for some of these races to be more viable in the future?”

We don’t want to do a complete rebalancing of all racial passives until the respec feature is complete so players would be able to switch over to whatever race bonuses they like the best. However in the mean time we plan to tweak the less powerful races for the next major update.

Q: “Will you incorporate a push to talk button to eliminate music and other non essential chatter?”

We investigated push to talk during development and it didn’t feel good for a couple of reasons. The number of buttons on the game controller is limited, and dedicating one of them for push-to-talk, meant giving up functionality elsewhere. More importantly though, we found that the ability to talk while in motion was important. We wanted conversation to happen fluidly and naturally. Push to talk took that away, so we discarded that idea

It’s something we explored but there aren’t any immediate plans for this. One of the challenges we had in the console version of ESO is ensuring the breadth of interactions and actions a player could perform translated well to the gamepad. In trying various control templates and making the experience as smooth as possible, we found that having the VOIP active when speaking into the mic versus taking up a button (and sacrificing another action reserved to a button) worked best.

Q: “Are there ANY plans for cross-platform play? IE xbox one and PC?”

We have different platforms that ESOTU is played on and there are differences in how ESOTU is played on Xbox One from PC–controller, UI differences/mods, etc. At this time there are no plans for cross-platform play.

Q: “Quick question, any thoughts or news on Player Housing? I really need a place to hang my hat. Thank you.”

We all love housing too, but no news at the moment!

Q: “Now that the console version has launched, which I know was a massive undertaking. Do you guys have an idea of when we will hear about major content updates and whether they will be coming to console or pc first or at the same time etc?”

You should hear info about future content shortly after E3, which is next week. Stay tuned!

Q: “Itemization seems to be not as good as in other games, will there be more focus on intresting items in dungeons and the world in the future?”

To answer the itemization question: We have done a lot of work to make the itemization fun and exciting in the next major update. There are lots of cool unique sets for players to chase after in multiple different areas. We’re doing extensive balance work to make sure they all give competitive bonuses instead of the current paradigm where everyone just chases the few uber powerful sets. This will allow players to customize sets to their playstyle instead of just getting whatever adds the most damage.

Additionally the new content has a short term and a long term item chase as well. To go hand in hand with that the power spike on the new items is bigger, so players are more rewarded for upgrading their gear.

Q: “We already have seen how big a difference just 400 CP makes compared to 0 or even 200 (the amount most day-to-day players have) when it comes to competitiveness in PVP and on PVE leaderboards. Having tested the PTS with 1.6 and seeing just how powerful you can be with 1000 CP (let alone 3600) you are basically telling new and casual gaming they have no hope of ever being competitive if they are not willing to drop cash (or large amounts of in-game gold) to get xp pots )or drinks) to farm CP.”

We are aware of balance concerns from players with more champion points. As Phil mentioned the system was designed to help keep players closer in power level with diminishing returns and enlightenment bonus XP. In the future we can implement catchup mechanics so the first 400 champion ranks require less experience, helping get new players catch up.

In terms of XP, we’re actually buffing for some areas in the next major update. Specifically public dungeons and craglorn are being increased. Additionally we’re increasing the XP that veteran level quests give so there’s more of a parity between gains between questers and grinders. Lastly we’re reducing the amount of XP required to get a veteran rank so players can get to the max level content sooner.

Q: ” I was wondering how the workload has been for the team since release. Must be super hectic with the amount of traffic you’re getting on your servers. Are there people monitoring server activity 24/7? And finally can we get some explanation on the unexpected server maintenance from last night?”

Different parts of the team are very active at different parts of the game lifecycle. (QA is usually very active regardless of timing.) But our Network Engineers, OPs, Tech, Community and Customer Service teams are not seeing the inside of their homes any time soon.

Q: “I like the ability to choose whatever skills I want with my character. Are you guys planning on adding additional skills to classes and weapon types further down the road to allow even greater customization?”

We definitely want to continue adding more skills to the lines so players have more customization. Some of the AvA skills you see right now were add after PC release such as Vigor, Guard, and Detonate Magicka.

For the next major update you’ll see a lot of cool customization options with all the crazy new item sets. For example we’ve got one that will have you running around chasing orbs for bonus damage, or additional attacks vs targets with damage shields.

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