» Thu Feb 20, 2014 9:44 pm Hi guys,
This is a hypothetical question, purely for fun. I stress that I absolutely love the game based on my time in the beta.
The designer in me can't stop thinking about design, though. So here's my question.
How would you re-design ESO, or parts of it, in order for it to become a better game in your view? The only rule is that you can't go nuts - you must stay within the constraints of an MMORPG developer, and you can't chuck it all out and start from scratch. Improvement is the key word.
Personally, I'd take a good look at the entire experience of the factions, questing, and exploration. I think they could have done a lot better in this regard, and I also think that traditional MMORPG design took too much space from Elder Scrolls design here. One of the core elements of any Elder Scrolls game is being able to roam freely and do anything. In ESO, they've restricted this due to character progression and factional PvP warfare. You can currently go to other factions' provinces at level 50, but in my opinion that just feels very artificial and barely worth doing for anyone who's loyal to their faction.
Here's what I'd do to change that:
1. I'd open up all of Tamriel to all races at the start of the game.
- I call this Questing Phase 1 - the free and innocent part of character-building where we are all friends.
- You wouldn't belong to a specific faction at the beginning, and none of them will be neither hostile nor overly loyal to you at this point.
- The only restriction early on is that you couldn't visit any of the factions' capital cities.
- After doing the opening story in Coldharbor, certain personality-trait and back-story choices you did at Character Creation would come into play.
- These choices would determine at which out of dozens of possible suitable start locations across Tamriel you would be chucked after escaping Coldharbor. From there, the story with the Prophet would continue, and an introductory world quest would be handed to you on a silver platter by an NPC which approaches you, just like in current starting areas.
- After that introductory world quest, you'd be left to explore all of Tamriel at your whim, and do any quest you run into.
- Every now and then, you'd do a quest or two for a specific faction, thus getting to know them a bit better, as well as earn some reputation among them. But you are still an independent agent working for all of Tamriel.
2. I'd scale monster / character power, so that your character could theoretically do any open world quest content at any level, no matter in which province.
- Raids, dungeons, and similar content would still require a certain level of character power before you could do them, just to make sure some content stays endgame.
- Loot would also scale, so that you couldn't get amazing items at level 2.
- What good gear and a high level would achieve if, say, a low level and a high level character both fight the same enemy in the open world, is that the high level character would have a slight edge in power; have more abilities to use; and look better obviously. This ensures that getting better is worth it, but also that they can quest through the same content.
3. Upon meeting two criteria; (1) be level 40, (2) be in good standing with a faction, you can join a faction.
- This initiates Questing Phase 2.
- Once you do this, certain things change in the game world for you:
- There will be a second set of quests opening up in the world which are exclusive to your faction. These are generally more epic, more political, and increasingly about factional warfare.
- You are hostile towards players of other factions, but still neutral against neutral players without factions. You can still play with your low level friends.
- NPCs of other factions will at best be suspicious about you, at worst attack you. Key NPCs for important quests will talk to you, but they might be a little on edge.
- You may now enter your chosen faction's capital city, acquire unique rewards and gear from them, as well as represent them permanently in PvP.
- Once you're in Questing Phase 2, the world is suddenly more menacing, more suited for endgame content, and so on. This would be reflected in some dungeons opening up, more dangerous world events and bosses appearing, character / monster power scaling being slightly less favourable for you the higher your level becomes, and so on.
4. At the end of the day, this change to ESO would have meant that...
- Tamriel would be open to everybody, and no one could complain that exploration was limited or that the story was force-fed to them.
- The developers wouldn't have to worry about gimmicky endgame features like 50+ questing in other factions' provinces, because the entire world and (most) content would already be available for all.
- Faction-pride and warfare would still be in the game. Only this time around, you would be given the chance to experience each faction bit by bit; grow with them as you play, and make an informed decision.
- It wouldn't have been more work for ZOS, as the same amount of quests are already in the game, only split up in three distinct segments.
5. Regarding PvP, all would be fine.
- Before choosing a faction (at level 40), PvP would still work fine in Cyrodiil. It could be done in a number of ways, but an idea which springs to mind is either allowing people to choose which faction to temporarily represent in battle before having done the actual choice at level 40; or have the system make the choice for you based on your reputation among factions; or make it random. The absolute meat of the game would still be after level 40, where the factional warfare really kicks in. To be honest, before that point you have no real reason to care for either faction anyhow.
