Elder Scrolls Online Game-Play Designer and cool guy Joe Blackburn from ZeniMax studios, was kind enough to stop by and give us a sneak peak in Patch 1.6 and new Champion System changes.  Tales of Tamriel podcast and my site were thrilled that ESO allowed us to get some early information and can’t wait to play Patch 1.6 on the Public Test Service in January (tentative).  So check out the YouTube video and let me know what you think.

http://youtu.be/3_SuEeVYEX4

 

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Transcribed Interview With ZeniMax about Patch 1.6

This was recorded on December 17, 2014 on Skype.  You’ll notice I put time stamps at the front of responses in case you want to see a specific quest and or answer.  Additionally, anything with [example] was added for context purposes.  Joe Blackburn is the person at ZeniMax who we’re interview so let’s get to it!

6:24 Question: Can you tell us about who you are and what’s your role at ZOS?

Answer: My role at ZeniMax is I’m a game-play designer and main focus is on converting everything right now for our big update six making sure all of the abilities are balanced and fun to use.

Class Changes in Update

8:00 Question from Aggelos:  …Resource management is a bit of a weak spot for Templars. Unlike some other classes that get a good bit of reductions to skill costs via passives or active abilities (see Dragonknight Standard for instance) but the only real resource return is through Restoring Spirit which reduces cost by 4%. Any plans to change or give new ways to regain resources?

Answer: For sure, one of the things we are really doing in update six is the removal of soft caps when we go to the champion system.  So things like magicka recovery or max magicka is stackable to  your hearts content.  And we have a bunch of ways that you can as your class get some new magicka recovery specifically in new Templar [skill] lines.  We looked at some of those values and said oh they might not be high enough or not scaling properly and I think Templar’s are generally going to be happy where their magicka is at in update six.

8:54 Question from Thais: Other classes are becoming more and more balanced but Templar still lacks fairly heavily in the DPS department. What changes do you have in store to change that?

Answer: I think we’ve said this a lot before, one of our really big goals for update six is no matter what class you pick, you feel like you can be a competent tank, DPS [damage per second or damage dealer] or healer and Templar always been strong in heals and they’ve got pretty good tanking capabilities but have always sort of lacked in the DPS standpoint.  So I think we’re approaching this from two ways, for physical DPS, we’ve converted a number of morphs for skills to scale off stamina and weapon power. So if you want to be a dual wield Templar you can take something like Biting Jabs and go in there and it’ll scale off all your stats that you’re already investing into. And then for our magicka friends, Dawn’s Wrath [skill line] just needed a lot of love.  There were some abilities in there that weren’t quiet cutting it compared to the other weapon lines like Destro [Destruction] staff and some things that Dragonknights (DKs) had to offer that Templar couldn’t keep up with. So you’re going to see some changes to abilities and also see some brand new abilities that are in place of abilities that weren’t very strong in update five.  So yeah Templar should be very excited we’ve got a lot coming down the pike for you.  It’s going to be a whole new experience.

10:44 Question from Deltia: Do you have plans on changing reflective scales? And what are the overall class changes going to look like for the Dragonknight?

Answer: There were a few things we really weren’t happy with with the Dragonknight in terms of their sheer power.  We do like to bring almost everything up when we can but as you touched things like Reflective Scales were just a little out of whack and we didn’t want everyone having something equivalent to Reflective Scales that would make Cyrodiil and some of our hard PvE [Player vs. Environment] content just a little bit trivial. So I think we’ve talked about this on the [Official Elder Scrolls] forums but a big Reflective Scale change coming in is a cap on the reflects that you can do for a period of time. So if you’re are getting absolutely bombarded in Cyrodiil you are not going to be reflecting 20 projectiles there’s going to be a limit there on the exact amount of projectiles that you can reflect.

Another big one for Dragonknight’s was Dragonknight Standard is great everyone loves like planting down a standard and being awesome for a long time, but we felt it was a little too cheap compared to other ultimates that are able to perform for that same role.  The cost of Dragonknight Standard is going to go up a little bit.  But we also felt that Dragonknight had some abilities that weren’t really interesting and they weren’t shining as well as they could have.  We felt like Molten Weapons was really this thing that you put on your bar and you use sort of every minute and forgot about it. So we’ve made molten weapons a lot more active in update six so it’s something you want to use for more of a short duration window and you get to see its benefits right out there in your face.

12:57 Question from Deltia: Speaking of Igneous Weapons or the other morph Obsidian [actually Molten Armaments] or whatever now I heard some information about morphs changing to kind of being based on stamina and or magicka you can kind of pick or split.  Have you thought about changing the morphs to maybe it increases spell power or time morph increases weapon damage?

Answer: For sure! We have an interesting challenge in update six with removing stat caps [referred to as soft caps]. One thing we really didn’t want to happen was to sort of this explosion where everyone felt like they had to put four abilities on their bar that all buff the same stat and then one primary attack. So what we’ve done in update six is we’ve sort of grouped buffs together.  If you have an ability that really increases your attack power, we call this like Major Brutality and so this will give you that specific buff that and so there might be a couple abilities will give you that buff so you don’t want to put all of them on your bar because you’d just be replacing that buff constantly.  And so after we did that we went through specific abilities and say okay so you’re going to give this really great attack power buff whereas this other morph gives a powerful spell power buff or spell critical buff and so a lot of the ways you’re going to build your bar is by figuring out which one of these buffs do you want to run with and how can you make that class exactly the way you want to.

14:34 Question from Deltia:  What did you call it again [buffs] Brutality?

Answer: So yeah we have a bunch of different names for all these buffs and you’ll see them in the tool tip and you’ll see oh Spiked Armor is going to give you Major Resolve and Major Ward that increases your armor and spell resistance so you know when you see another ability that gives you those buffs, oh I don’t to use that ability I’ve already got one ability that does that.

15:00 Question for Aggelos: Plans for stealth? As of right now the stealth on Nightblades seems rather “useless” and a potion of invisibility seems to be the preferred choice for stealth since if you sneeze in the direction of a stealthed Nightblade it breaks the stealth. Any plans to make stealth for Nightblades a little more robust any changes to it?

Answer: So one of our big issues with Nightblade stealth is I think the real ability people are talking about here is Shadow Cloak.  What happens when you press Shadow Cloak? We are constantly and have been over the past couple of months for this update, looking at into bugs and ways to remove your Shadow Cloak when you’re not supposed to be removed from Shadow Cloak. We want that ability to feel like it is a potential escape or it is something which you can just drop out of visibility real quick and get a stealth attack off.  The concern there is that ability also has the potential to swing to be probably the best ability in the game.  If it does everything that people sort of want it to do; you’d be completely invisible and completely untargetable and press it and just be at any point I’m invisible and doing stealth attacks so it’s a very trick balance point there with Nightblades, but we do understand that you want to play that stealth archetype and you want to feel like I’m the guy who really specializes in getting in and out of stealth and being a sneaky guy we are constantly aware of that. We are definitely making some changes to specifically Shadow Cloak so it works better and you feel like oh I really am a stealth not just getting brought out in melee…There are a lot of conditions right now that are probably brining you out Shadow Cloak before you wanted to.  We are looking into this and we’ve hope most of it fixed for update six.

17:20 Question from Thais: There’s only one thing that I feel needs to be address, and that is the pet class for Sorcerer.  Are there any plans to change it?  And will there be any changes to the ultimate?

Answer: One thing we really recognized when we went and looked at the classes was that we had these pets with the sorcerer but no one really felt like they were really useful.  They weren’t making meaningful contribution to your damage they weren’t quiet as tanky as you wanted them to be.  They were always falling over in PvE situations.  So I think two of the big changes that we’ve made are A pets just do more damage and B pets take a lot lets damage from AoEs.  So if your pet isn’t smart enough to move out of the fire, he’ll be okay or she’ll be okay shooting lightning bolts from far away.  The other thing we wanted to do is really add some interesting synergy with your pets.  So in update six there’s a new morph of Daedric Curse called Daedric Pray and what this does is you put it on a target and that target takes increased damage from pets and has a really great synergy with the morph Conjured Ward where you put Wards on your pets and they do more damage.  We are seeing right now great success with pet builds.  Actually, internally they are way too powerful right now, so we are monitoring that.  We definitely want by the time update six comes up that you can play the pet person.  I can have these buddies walking around without (sound cuts out).

Skill Lines

19:20 Question from Deltia: As a min/maxer, are there any plans to add a training or like a test dummy?

Answer: It’s something that we’re always concerned about as we see videos sometimes people claiming they have this crazy build that does all this damage and demonstrate it on by shooting a Giant in the Rift or something for three seconds.  We’ve got a lot on our plate right now but it’s definitely something we are looking into.

20:30 Question from Deltia: Are you looking into revamping Werewolf and or Vampire [skill lines]?

Answer: I think we are relatively happy with the overall skills and abilities that both those lines have.  I think it’s with those specifically just need some number tweaks.  The Werewolf passive specifically that you get for just having the ultimate slotted feel a lot like another flawless dawnbreaker when you’re not really using the ult for its power, you’re using it for the benefits it has and it’s something we are definitely aware of and looking into.  We want players to go into Werewolf to do it because they want to be a Werewolf and not because it just lets them be a better human than everyone else.

21:33 Question from Aggelos: Are there plans to add some sort of execute ability for all classes?

Answer: For sure.  The two classes you talked about specifically there is a morph of the new Molten Weapons [Earthen Heart skill line] that allows you to do more damage to enemies with low health.  It’s a good burst there and Templars are getting a completely new skill in the Dawn’s Wrath line that is a sort of a beam style execute.  And you can beam some people to death.

22:47 Question:  Are there any plans for weapon skill ultimates?

Answer: We are internally and externally know that there is a huge desire for weapon ultimates.  It is something that we are always interested in but do not expect them with 1.6. It is something we are looking at how we can get those in the game because we know people want to play that more martial guy that less magicky and right now our ultimates feel sort of high magicka and you want to play the guy with the axe.

23:35 Question from Deltia: Are you thinking about making crafting more beneficial for your character in terms of performance [like Medicine Use passive with increases potion time]?

Answer: So Medicine Use is an extremely interesting passive.  I think we like players to go into crafting because they like crafting and Medicine Use is sort of an outlier there. It feels like the only thing in crafting right now were you want to go get it for your (sound cut out) performance.  We don’t have any plans to change that right now, but I would expect for us to evaluate those other lines and say do these need something for combat or do we not desire to have those sort of combat perks in crafting?  Cause right now, it is the one line where people feel like oh I am getting some kind of benefit out of this crafting thing.  Compared to all the others which don’t have anything else like that.

24:50 Question from Aggelos: Any plans for an Undaunted type ultimate?

Answer: That is exactly where we are with weapon ultimates too.  We do feel like at sort of the higher end content like AvA ultimates come out and feel really powerful but people feel like they have to go do maybe content that they don’t enjoy to be able to succeed at the content they do enjoy.  So we definitely think there’s a gap there that we could eventually have a really cool Undaunted ultimate that really helps you in that sort of dungeon PvE content.

25:30 Question from Thais: Are there going to be any changes to the class line ultimates?

Answer: Sure. That was a huge part of our balance.  You can see some of that.  We’ve made one ultimates change in update five which was to Death Stroke. Which sort of was a more clunky ability that was used for high burst in PvP but more than often was this weird thing where you didn’t know how much ultimate you had and you were pressing it and you needed an addon to see how much damage it was going to do so we retooled that and said let’s make this ability where you want to use it every time it’s up and we evaluated every ability in the game for this update.  So there’s not one ability that we did not sit down and talk about is there where it needs to be? And so the ultimates got hit.  I think specifically when we talk about pet builds and Sorc builds, the Atronatch had one of the worst synergies in the game where it comes up there and ask you if you want to power up the Atronatch and you never want to press it and you sort of always accidentally end up pressing it.  In update six that synergy still exists, but it is instance and buffs not only the Atronatch’s damage but your damage.  So we see people running over to the Atronatch trying to steal that from other players.

27:14 Question from Deltia: What you thought about changing armor in terms of survivability?

Answer: Another really big change we’re making in 1.6 is the way armor and spell resistance work.  When we had a system with soft caps in place in 1.5, there a lot of really easy ways no matter what armor type you were wearing to crank those values up so you were getting maximum benefit from them.  Now your armor value is a lot more derived from the actual armor that you’re wearing.  Also coupled with this, is now your armor not only gives you armor but armor and spell resistance.  So if you’re wearing light armor you get a small amount of armor and spell resistance and you still have that passive in light armor that still gives you that increase in spell resistance.  But if you’re in medium armor you get more armor and more spell resistance and heavy armor you get the most armor and the most spell resistance.  We also have a pretty cool ability in Dual Wield [skill line] that allows you to take less damage from Area of Effect (AoE) attacks.  So AoEs you pop that and you feel a little more tanky for a little while.

29:40 Question from Aggelos: Can you give us a preview to the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild [skill lines]?

Answer: We evaluated those lines just like the rest.  I think early we talked the sort of buff categories that are going in.  We put a lot of buffs in both of those lines.  Like Entropy and Evil Hunter sort of have new ways they can interact with your builds.  Then we looked at a bunch of abilities and said, how can I want to use Circle of Protection when there’s not Daedra around.  Is there a spot for that? So there’s cool ways to bring these abilities in and use them like you’ve haven’t used them before.  Specifically talking about Meteor, that got a pass just like the rest of the ultimates.  So we are seeing a lot of shooting star right now and it feels like a really cool ultimate that sort of has its own niche in the game.

Part of our class ultimates feel like you have to be up close and personal.  So things like Meteor and Soul Strike we wanted to make sure those were valid options if you wanted to play a bow Nightblade and wanted to use an ultimate from range.  Another big change we made in ultimates is being able to crit off or your highest either physical crit or spell crit. So a couple of patches ago we added the ability that they would scale based off if you were a magicka user or a stamina user. Which the higher stat was, but they were still criting off of spell crit.  Now if your physical critical is higher, they we say no, no, no lets us this physical crit and get some huge meteor dropping on people’s heads.

One of the big changes is the way your abilities crit is a little bit obtuse to the players.  It’s hard for them to tell how does this thing scale? Where’s it getting damage values from? And the biggest change we’ve made is if you look at an ability cost stamina that is going to scale off your maximum stamina, your weapon damage and crit based off physical crit.  If it cost magicka, it will scale off of spell power, max magicka and spell crit every time.  So you can look at an ability and say I know exactly what stats I want to invest into to make the most out of this ability.

Changes Coming in Patch 1.6

33:16 Question from Thais: Are Veteran Ranks remaining [in patch 1.6]?

Answer: For 1.6, we are doing sort of phase one of the champion system and VR ranks are still in in 1.6.  You’re going to be able to gain champion ranks no matter what Veteran level you are.  But you will still be progressing in both of those systems unless you’ve already hit VR 14.

35:05 Question from Deltia: How are you going to maintain balance from people who can play all the time like me vs. some like Aggelos who plays 10-20 hours a week?

Answer: I’m not sure we want to talk about that.  We are still tweaking some of those values internally.  But we want you to feel like you aren’t at a huge disadvantage is some has been playing for 2000 hours, you know Alliance Rank 35 and you’re like oh no that guy is way more powerful than me.  It’s something we are very much aware of and we want to reward you for being in the game and enjoying the game but we don’t want to create this huge unbalanced where players feel like they can’t play with their friends anymore.

36:00 Follow-up Question from Deltia: Do you think this will make end-game more accessible?

Answer: I think accessibility is a long term goal of the champion system.  We’ve really want to feel like you can play with your friends at any time and you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time just because you’re playing a dungeon or a trial with someone else that may not be as invested or has invested as much time in the game as you are.  That’s such a huge concern for us here.  We always want you to be able to play with your friends. We are hopefully moving more and more towards that goal.

37:28 Question from Aggelos: Is there any plan to make it where phasing is based on probably who’s the group leader?

Answer: That’s some of the feedback we’ve gotten since we launched the game.  Some of these are really cool quest where you can change the landscape but it made group, evening if you were doing it at the same time, really difficult. We actually have a whole content team here that was striked with the task to go through all the things that put people in different phases and see how they can make that experience better. So it’s definitely something we are super vigilant about and when new content we always think about how this will play in the group.

39:30 Question from Thais: I noticed on the UI screen for collectables, that there weren’t any spots for Trophies. Are they going to have a place?

Answer: So the system team has been rolling out that whole system.  With all of the collectable system that has categories for different things. Not exactly sure what’s coming in phase one but I know from using it, it feels a lot better having those things that you get for completing a public dungeon or an item clogging up your precious inventory space.  We have a big list of things we want to get out of your inventory in the collectable system and if there not getting moved out in update six I know it’s on the radar and we want to get that moved out.

40:45 Question from Deltia: Is it [animation canceling or weaving] intended or are you looking at removing it?

Answer: Animination canceling is a consequence of trying to get our abilities to feel incredible reactive like you can use them whenever you want.  We never want you to feel like I’m trying to press this ability but I can’t.  So that allows some highly skilled players to be able press abilities faster than other players and know exactly the millisecond they can press the next ability and they are playing at a really highly efficient rate.  We don’t necessarily want to change the game that players are use to and players enjoy.  So players can feel like I’m really good at this system and I can really min max it.  But we do want to add some opportunities for players that maybe don’t enjoy that or aren’t as great at hitting the ability at the right time or have high latency [lag] so they can be successful.  So we’ve been looking at builds that you can build where if you’re in a high latency environment, animation canceling isn’t that important to you.  Or you’re getting your primary DPS not from just weaving in those light attacks but from your abilities and sort of how you’re using your ability or the order you’re using your abilities not necessarily how fast you’re using them.

Dungeon and Trials Questions

43:25 Question from Aggelos: How are you going to introduce new content that denotes that same power level [like Veteran Ranks 14 vs. a VR 1]. At VR 12 you released Crypt of Hearst and at VR 14 City of Ash.

Answer: In the future we are looking at unique UI opportunities there so you can easily tell if that monster is a lot tougher or easier. We never want you to feel like you don’t know what you’re up against.  Whatever the future may hold, I promise you should always be able to tell when you’re going to fight something the odds of your success.

45:23 Question from Thais: What type of new PvE content is in the works?

Answer: We’ve got some dungeons, we got a lot of PvE content.  I don’t think I can tell you much more than that.

45:50 Question from Aggelos: Do you guys have plans to move away or at least add a different type than timed content?

Answer: Touching on those trials that you mentioned.  One of the things that we feel we sort of feel into when we initially launched our trials was we under estimated player DPS by a high margin.  So you look at those first two trials, Hel Ra and AA some of those fights are ridiculously fast now and so we are taking that opportunity in 1.6.  There’s a new scoring system for trials coming in.  Its point based not time based.  So on top of that we were able to go look into Hel Ra and AA and make sure those fights felt substantial.   You’re never going to have a 30 second boss fight anymore.  We weren’t keen on making those trials harder per say, but every time you fought a boss it was substantial and were mechanics and you had to obey those mechanics.  That is definitely coming in 1.6 and the scoring system that comes along with that is going to have a lot more incentives for killing monsters and even completing the difficult modes of Trial bosses so if you feel like if you did that difficult mode on Warrior or AA that you’re point total is much higher than someone who just completed normal.

48:15 Questions from Deltia: Is small group content like Dragonstar Arena….are you thinking about expanding that? Or even making all the dungeons Veteran level?

Answer: We really like the way small group content feels in Elder Scrolls Online.  We think that some of our most fun encounters are with three of your friends. So we will definitely not abandon that and look for more challenging four man content and more accessible four man content in the future.

Items

49:22 Question from Deltia: Have you ever thought about making “Master” armor?

Answer: I will say that Master weapons was getting our feet wet in sort of the ability altering enchants. So we really like what we saw there and excited about doing that with more abilities and more items.

49:57 Question from Aggelos: How are you going to be introducing new items into the game that increases players power without increases “level cap?”

Answer: So that’s a fairly easy thing to do on our end.  Just sort of make more and more powerful items.  Items can scale up to infinite.  So that’s not a huge worry.  But we do want to make sure any time we add items something that feels right and the right amount of power increase for the activity you do.  So I think we’ll be okay there.

50:54 Questions from Thais: Do you have plans for amazing items such as Daedric artifacts in the game?  If so, how do you envision them being earned?

Answer: One of our more successful itemization schemes that has recently come out was the monster mask from Undaunted. We think that it goes really great when you get this cool head piece set and some of them have really cool and powerful abilities. We will definitely be doing more things like that more small sets or single items that have these really unique powers that changes the way you play or can really amplify a specific style of play.

53:00 Question from Deltia: Have you guys talked about once those [Veteran Ranks] are removed, how the gear you’ve already earned will scale?

Answer:  I can tell you the reason we are cautious about rolling out champion and not trying to rush into it, we want to make sure when we do some of the more expanded system changes we do them correctly.  We don’t want to give you a situation where you’ve put all this time investment into the game and now it’s all worthless or it just doesn’t feel right anymore.  When we keep moving forward with champion, we are going to be thinking a lot on these decisions and how they impact new players and old players.

54:31 Question from Aggelos: Traits are fantastic on items and weapons, sometimes you get a drop that is just a terrible trait [Footman’s Exploration at VR 14].  Do you guys have plans at introducing a way that high end crafters be able to change those traits out?

Answer: There’s been some discussions internally about traits.  We know that it can feel sort of weird when you finally get this piece that you’re looking forever for and it’s well-fitted [reduce sprint cost].  I think we do want keep adding more ways to customize your gear and we know people really want to customize traits and the other prong effect of that is looking at traits and saying is this trait appropriate for the game? Is it adding anything meaningful to the game?   Is there something more beneficial to have here? We always want you to feel excited about the item you’re getting.