The Elder Scrolls Online Interviews
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The Elder Scrolls Online game director Matt Firor took some time during E3 to tackle questions about their plans for "One Tamriel", the Shadows of the Hist update, housing DLC, and more, which in turn has presented us with the opportunity to read through two new interviews. The first comes from IGN and is relatively quick:
Firor says that Zenimax is aiming to release multiple, smaller DLC packs to cater to players who return to the game intermittently, creating something akin to 'episodes' for the game:
"It’s interesting to see what happens when you take away the subscription model away," Firor explained. "You don’t see a hardcore playstyle - like playing for six months and then quitting - we don’t see that. We have a lot of players who will play for two or three weeks because they want to get through a zone and then stop. Then they come back two months later for another month, because there’s no pressure to play all of it at once.
"Our DLC packs cater to that, because they’re smaller, bite-size chunks of story and associated quests."
While the other is at MMORPG.com and is a bit more meaty:
MMORPG: Explain why you all decided to go the route of One Tamriel? How long in planning has this been?
MF: After PC launch, we sat down as a group and made a list of the feedback we were getting about the game. Most of the comments we got from the community (and the dev team) was that the game was too segmented and too “narrow” – many ESO players wanted more options, more open ended systems, and more sense of choice. We already had a really good quest system with top-notch dialog, and a great PvP setup in Cyrodiil, so we didn’t change those at all, but concentrated on adding features that make those core game systems more fun. If you look at the features we added since PC launch, you’ll see a running theme: the Champion System, Justice System, veteran dungeons, Trials, removing Veteran ranks, armor dyeing, open ended thieving and assassination quests – all of these make the game broader and give players other things to concentrate on than just questing and leveling.
And of course, One Tamriel is the last large system left on that list. We have been steadily building towards it, with all of our DLC being level-balanced, and now is the perfect time to level-balance the entire game world.
