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General:Official Gold Road & Update 42 AUA

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The following "interview" is an Ask Me Anything. This page collects all comments with responses from the interviewee in chronological order, cutting each thread off at the last reply by them. The original source has been copied and may contain errors, spelling or otherwise, that are not individually marked with [sic].
Official Gold Road & Update 42 AUA
(link)
Medium/Format Online Forum
Date May 29th, 2024
Interviewee(s) Rich Lambert, Brian Wheeler, Mike Finnigan, Bill Slavicsek, Ed Stark, Gilliam, Kira Ross Schlitt, Gina Bruno
Interviewer(s) Reddit Users
Hosted By Reddit
ZOS_GinaBruno:

Official Gold Road & Update 42 AUA Thread - May 29 @ 1:30-3:00pm EDT

3:10pm EDT: A HUGE thank you to everyone for popping in during today's AMA! We are wrapping up now but are planning to pull many of the answers to translate into other languages for our friends in other territories. See you all in West Weald!

Thanks for joining us today for an AUA with the ESO Dev Team! We're less than a week away from Gold Road's launch on PC and we can't wait to have everyone jump in and play. To celebrate the upcoming launch on both PC and consoles, we have several members from ZOS on deck to answer your questions today:

  • Rich Lambert, Creative Director (u/ZOS_RichLambert)
  • Brian Wheeler, Lead Combat & PvP Designer (u/ZOS_BrianWheeler)
  • Mike Finnigan, Lead Encounter Designer (u/ZOS_Finn)
  • Bill Slavicsek, Lead Writer (u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek)
  • Ed Stark, Zone Lead (u/ZOS_EdStark)
  • Gilliam, Combat Designer (u/ZOS_Gilliam)
  • Kira Ross Schlitt, Project Lead (u/ZOS_KiraRS)

Please keep in mind the main focus of today's AUA will be on content from Gold Road and Update 42 – we will not be answering questions about future content at this time. Feel free to start posting your questions now, and we'll answer as many as we can beginning at 1:30pm EDT for about 90 minutes. Thank you for having us!

u/MrSloppyPants: Hello everyone from ZOS! Thank you for doing this AUA.
I wanted to ask if anyone from the team would be willing to shed some light on the server performance over the last few weeks? As has been documented in multiple posts both here and on the official forums (as well as experienced by myself and my guild), there are times when the game simply freezes for a short period of time and then when it resumes, it plays back all of the events that had taken place during the freeze all at once. Sometimes, this even results in one or more players being booted completely from the game instance and forced to restart the game
This clearly seems like some kind of blocking issue, either at the network level or at a thread level within the game loop itself. There is also lag in many areas of the game especially when you are with a group. Crypt of Hearts I is one dungeon where I see this 100% of the time during the fight with the twins.
This has gotten significantly worse in the past month or so and it would be nice to hear that the team is not only aware of the issues, but is actively working to correct them.
Anyway, thank you for your time, I appreciate it.
u/ZOS_RichLambert: We are most definitely aware. It's been a rough few weeks - DDOS attacks have been a big part of perf issues, but aren't the only issue we're looking into.
u/MysticalAnon:This question ties in with gold road and every chapter... as we continue to get countless recipes & furnishing plans released with these new chapters each year WE are in dire need of a log book just like we got with the stickerbook for weapon & armour sets. is this something you guys are considering ?
u/ZOS_RichLambert: This is something that has been on our radar for awhile. It's on a list. :)
u/Dralvok:To Bill Slavisek, the Lead Writer. I'd be happy if you can answer either of these two questions or even both:

1.In Gold Road's PTS, it appears the Surilie family winemakers do not exist within Skingrad during the time of ESO. In the game Oblivion, we see that the Surilie Bros. had a Vineyard in Skingrad during the end of the Third Era and their wine is famous in Cyrodiil at that time. However, in ESO, we have provisioning ingredients called Surilie Grapes (not sure if this is related), and the provisioning recipes Surilie Syrah Wine, and Surilie Bros. White Merlot. Due to the presence of these items, I assumed they would have had an ancient family tradition of wine making already within the city, but there no NPCs nor mention of them in the book "Wines of West Weald". Are there Surilie winemakers elsewhere, or are the naming of these items instead intended to be a fun reference and anachronism?

2.Is the "Here-Seen" from the Gold Road's "Ancient Hunter's Journal" book intended to be just one of many possible origins for the Daedric Prince Hircine?

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:

1.The Surlie family exists, hence the grapes and the recipes, but they just aren't as prominent yet as they will be in the future.

2.As for the meaning of "Here-Seen," we leave that to the interpretation of the reader.

u/VerminJerky:Having played a bit of Gold Road on PTS, I wanted to ask about Ithelia. Her art style is clearly very different from other humanoid ESO characters, and her design is unique. What prompted these changes, is different technology being utilized, and what were the inspirations behind her design? (Her jewelry, outfit, body markings, physical appearance, etc.)
u/ZOS_Finn:Good question!

Because of the nature of what we wanted form Ithelia she needed a whole new "rig" to accommodate the wings, etc. Whenever we do that, we try and "borrow" animations from other models and rigs but it doesn't always work. Not only that, we also potentially made improvements to the process so incorporating that in new models is great.

Ithelia was such a unique model and there are actually three different ones so making sure those all work between the models was big.

TLDR: yes, Ithelia used new rigs and tech :)

u/redditrylii:Hey there u/ZOS_KiraRS

I'm a housing nerd, and Gold Road, with its vineyards has inspired a lot of winery and tavern type housing themes. Has anyone ever proposed a bard houseguest with collectible sheet music?

Hunting down leads for songs of yesteryear, collecting sung tales from achievements. I would play the bejeesus out of that content.

u/ZOS_KiraRS: We heart the housing nerds here! Am happy to pass the idea along to the team :D
u/Jstaley98: Hey everyone. Thanks for doing this!

What other plans you have for Necromancer in the near future?

u/ZOS_Gilliam:Greetings!

We're investigating updates to a handful of abilities for the Necro class atm; trying to give a hand to the Ghostly Embrace morph of Grave Grasp, a little bit of love to Intensive Mender morph of Spirit Mender, and looking at ways to remove the in Combat stipulation of Sacrificial Bones and Grave Lord's Sacrifice.

u/Incultawolf: Could major brutality/sorcery be added to the skeletal minion, and have the while slotted on either bar effect like arcanist?
u/ZOS_Gilliam:We originally avoided adding too many "buffs" to the class, and went with more debuff options since it felt more thematically appropriate that the class enfeebled their foes rather than empowering themselves and allies - but I think some concessions could be made for the more impactful ones like Brutality/Sorcery/Prophecy/Savagery.
u/Cooperharley: Are there any plans to add permanent necro companions akin to the sorcerer's pets or the warden's bear?
u/ZOS_Gilliam: There are no plans at this time to add permanent pets to the Necromancer kit.
u/Ok_Yogurtcloset_8663:

1.The Gold Road zone contains a variety of creatures that are normally found in other zones, like Vvardenfell (Kagouti), N. Elsweyr (Fell Runner), Gold Coast (Minotaur) and many more. I haven't done the quests yet, but I wonder if there's a reason why the creatures are not just from the surrounding zones as that would make more sense lore-wise?

2.I love the new creatures created for the chapter (the wildburn Lynx, the mirrormoor creatures etc.). When you plan new chapters is there a limit as to how many new creatures you can make for each zone?

u/ZOS_Finn:Thanks!

1.The Kagouti was a bit of a mistake and crossed wires that we rectified on PTS. The other creatures are very much a discussion with lore to find what makes sense to add.

2.We do have a limit to the number of new monsters we can create for a zone. There is a process where we get together with the monster team, lore, art and zone designers to build a pallet to use throughout the biomes and zones we will use. Sometimes, we are able to squeeze in adaptations of established monsters (wildburn for instance) to use in the zone as well and that is very much driven by lore.

u/fmelogeek:Do the writers team keep in mind future iterations of the main game when planning a new expansion? I mean, when TES 6 arrives sometime in the future we should see some nods to the past as shown in ESO?
u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek: The ESO writers and content designers definitely keep in mind lore and the games set in the future, especially when we're dealing with those areas in our game. As for what will happen in the single-player games, we're not directly involved in their creation as we are two separate teams.
u/Yourfavoritedummy:Good day!! First off, I would like to say a big congratulations to the team at ZOS, and thank you for bringing ESO to the best state it's ever been in! I'm so grateful for the frequent events and updates that have minimized grinding. I feel like I can enjoy the fun parts of the game again and that it's been very rewarding to play and experience the world of tamriel!

My question is, will treasure maps and surveys get reworked in the future? As of now, they are a giant timesink with how frequently they drop and the little payout they offer, and my current life schedule only allows me to deal with the surveys and maps if I sacrifice the game time hours that I have. Which is very unrewarded to spend hours to deal with them clogging my inventory up, even with ESO plus and having no time to engage with other more fun aspects of the game.

However, I'm very happy with ESO and the teams work in minimizing unnecessary grind and time sinks. It's been a lot easier to get friends and family on board playing with me now that the game has been more respectful of player's time compared to the earlier years. Again, THANK YOU to the team at ZOS!!! I've made so many memories with this game and I'm so happy to see that it's been moving in a positive direction! Have the best day ever my friends!

u/ZOS_RichLambert:short answer -- we're not happy with either atm. They are on a list to get looked at.
u/Fizl99:I'm excited to get to Gold Road when it comes out on console, and particularly playing the trial with the whole team unaware of any mechanics etc (so hard to avoid the spoilers!!). They often come with some fun achievements and titles to go with them. How do the team come up with the names and titles for achievements beyond the standard conquerer and challenger? Are any of the new titles a firm favorite with the team?
u/ZOS_Finn:Good question!

This is a hand-in-hand process usually with the designers and the writers. The designers will come up with the wacky ways we envision players being able to complete encounters and then assigning a rough internal name. These internal names do NOT make it to live but they give a basis for the writers to go on. We have a lot of creativity in naming these achievements which isn't always present in other parts of the game so its a great chance for the writers to really run with it and have fun.

u/Northener1907:Is there any chance to give more quests old companions? It feels kinda sad to not get any content for them after they released because i believe they are really good characters.
u/ZOS_RichLambert:We agree! It's a difficult line to walk though -- we don't have unlimited time or resources and any time the team spends on doing this, takes away from anything new.
u/Erickson9160:Werewolf players are limited to the basic 5 Werewolf abilities, and they don't have any cosmetic customization that applies in-form. Scribing would give Werewolf more skill choices by offering Grimoires for the Werewolf skill line, while Skill Styling would give Werewolf more cosmetic customization (like changing the fur color of the Werewolf Transformation Ultimate skill).

Here's a thread which showcases a few ideas for potential Werewolf Grimoires: [1]

And here's a similar thread for ideas for potential Werewolf Transformation Skill Styles: [2]

Will Werewolf eventually get their own Grimoires and Skill Styles to use?

u/ZOS_KiraRS:Hey, I love this kind of feedback! Thank you so much for sharing it (and I've definitely noticed you're not the only one hoping for more for the werewolves among us ;)

Our usual practice when releasing a new feature is to see how the community responds/uses it, and then adjust our future plans to support that when possible. There's a ton of possibilities about how we can expand both Scribing and Skill Styling in the future if we see that the community is enjoying it!

u/Leading-Feed-5538:Will update 42 include some ways to ease our inventory (e.g. stack treasure maps, a bag for housing items like crafting items with ESO+, mark companion gear for trash ...) and the long-awaited Hybrid Potion/Food?
u/ZOS_RichLambert:Not for 42... but there's a bunch of stuff on the backlog in the QoL (quality of life) category. (...and before you ask, yes stackable treasure maps is on the list)
u/carrotjuice5624562:The Ithelia model brings with it some AMAZING long hair - can we get this as a hairstyle in the crown store? It's too nice to not have......
u/ZOS_RichLambert:noted!
u/Incultawolf:With the upcoming scribing system, are there any plans to include werewolf abilities in this? I noticed that werewolf/vampire skill trees got left out. A lot of players would love to have access to new play styles for these types of builds. Specifically a lot of players have been asking for the ability to sneak while in werewolf form, since not being able to do so locks you out of a lot of content the game has available, and prevents you from using certain sets and mythics.

[3]

Would also love to see the styling system be included for werewolf and vampire scion transformation skins. Thanks! :]

u/ZOS_KiraRS:Intriguing idea re: vampire scion tranformation skills! In case ya missed it, I answered a similar question here: [4]
u/destindil:Questions for:

Ed Stark, Zone Lead

Honestly man, you zone designers are fucking artists. Pardon the french. Much like Finn, you guys do some of the most amazing work. Whoever designed Glimmertarn and Summerset deserves a raise.

How much of Skingrad was taken from TES 4? Are you guys able to import or reuse any assets?

Kira Ross Schlitt, Project Lead

Thanks for the new system! I'm super excited about it and it seems like a fresh idea.

1.Do you see this system growing to the point where we can have end-game viable builds with no class skills? I've always loved the class system, but I would love to have that flexibility.

2.Will the amount of the earnable skill styles increase as time goes on, and if so, how proportionate will that be to the monetized ones?

u/ZOS_EdStark:Thank you. I really love what the team has done on the various zones. Since I'm a lead, I don't actually work on every zone personally (well, at least not AS a lead), so it's cool to see what other people do.

I really enjoyed Summerset, too, and it's the zone I probably had the least to do with!

As for Skingrad, both Jeremy Sera and I, as well as CJ and a number of the artists, got into Oblivion and played through the area before we ever started working on Gold Road. We absolutely use what's gone before as inspiration, and we totally did that with Skingrad.

I remember sitting in a meeting with Jeremy, Dan Eibling, and Chris Boyler talking about what we wanted to do specifically with Skingrad. It has such an interesting layout we had to make sure to include a lot of its features

u/ZOS_KiraRS:Alas, I'm no fortune teller who can see the future, but there are quite a few examples of systems that have been expanded on since their initial launch, with Antiquities and Tribute being just two examples.

So if you love Scribing and Skill Styling, keep using those abilities and letting us know what you like about them and what you want to see more of!

I will also add that Class Skills are one of the things that make ESO special, and we're not really looking to replace those in entirety, but rather offer options and flexibility that make your build feel more unique to you and your vision.

u/destindil:If I can get a wolf or fox for my Warden's Wild Guardian, I'll be a happy camper!
u/ZOS_KiraRS:Noted! ;)
u/recremen:Yes hello this is Khajiit. Men'Do was wondering if there is connection between the sudden plant growth he has heard about along the Gold Road, and the jungle he has heard went missing-gone-go-poof. Perhaps some secrets to discover? This one waits with baited breath for his passport paperwork to finish, so he can investigate on his own!
u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Good luck with your investigations!
u/homohaxan:Can you give us the name of the AMAZING voice actor for Tolvise Doran who performs from Necrom's Journey's End Inn? I stop by to listen to her sing Mushroom Towers at least once a day. Her voice is amazing.
u/ZOS_GinaBruno:That would be the talented Baraka May!
u/decairn:When will the always in combat bug be fixed? Please, and the entire game population thanks you.
u/ZOS_RichLambert:We actually just had a game jam session and one of the teams devoted their entire project to tackling this long standing bug...
u/Competitive-Wafer655:⭐Exact parameters in the sliders when creating characters.⭐

Best regards, I take this opportunity to express my idea that will benefit many players on all platforms with an improvement in the interface for creating our character in The elder scrolls online.

This new interface could be implemented in the accessibility settings bar as an optional preset or

It could also be implemented as an improvement in the appearance change tab as shown in the following examples made in an image.

Thank you very much for listening to our requests bethesda,Zenimax Online.✔ [5]

u/ZOS_RichLambert:Will pass this on to the UI team. I dig it!
u/Izanarys:Can we expect to see an updated (or removal) to the 'allowed sets' on the Non CP Cyrodiil campaign with the extra item sets coming along with Update 42?
u/ZOS_BrianWheeler:/nosetap and noted....
u/Zadama:Hey! u/ZOS_EdStark, this one's for you.

Could you give us a brief overview of how zones are designed? I'd love to know the process and what work goes into creating the world that we know and love.

Also - what are the design tools like that you use in-house? How do zone designers produce the playable world?

u/ZOS_EdStark:Sure, but I'm glad you said "brief."

Basically, Rich Lambert, Matt Firor, and Bill Slavicsek get together and talk about themes and locations we haven't explored in ESO yet. Sometimes the location drives the theme, sometimes the other way around. After they get a stakeholder-level idea--like a few lines or a short paragraph--together,

Bill goes off and writes up another very short pitch for the zone story. He works hand-in-hand with Jeremy Sera, our Content Director, to get that all put together.

Once that's approved, they disseminate that to the Zone Lead and the Art Director--in the case of Gold Road, that's me and that's CJ Grebb. We start filling out the idea with a LOT of details. Pitches and ideas go back and forth until, eventually, we have several dozen pages (Gold Road was 100+) of a Zone Design Document. That has a complete overview of the zone we'll pitch to the rest of the team.And then things get fun. The individual designers of all types--Content, Fiction, Encounter, World-building, etc.--all put together their ideas on the individual bits of content and responsibilities they're assigned.

They work together to plan and build out the entire zone. Hundreds of folks, all working together, with the Leads all giving them feedback, helping them iterate, and polish it all to get it to PTS and eventually release.

Wow, that may not seem brief but it's as short as I can manage :-)

u/Sianic12:Do you plan on making PvP sets more easily available in the future? Right now, they cannot be farmed in the way other sets can, because almost all drop sources are not curated but entirely random. With over 40 sets in Cyrodiil that are not included in Rewards of the Worthy, getting specific pieces of these sets can be incredibly difficult and comes down to sheer luck. And that really sucks.

It is possible to drop Jewelry from Dark Anchors and Feet & Waist pieces from Delve bosses (both of which are curated) so why is there no way to actively farm the other pieces? Why do we have to resort to cassettes that are not curated? Frankly, it feels like an oversight to me. And it gets even worse for Imperial City sets, because there is no way of farming them other than the random drops from cassettes. I had high hopes when I read that Trove Scamps drop IC set pieces, but it turns out that these drops aren't curated either, so it's not even worth it to hunt them.

I'm currently trying to complete my set collection and Cyrodiil and the Imperial City are by far the biggest road blocks to that goal. And it feels kind of unfair to PvP players too... because it seems like they don't benefit at all from the curated drops. They're missing a whole QoL feature. Why is that? I'm aware that 99% of PvP sourced sets aren't meta and most people don't care about them, but the idea behind them was originally to provide sets primarily used in PvP, so my point still stands.

u/ZOS_BrianWheeler:A few updates ago (Update 39) there were changes to sourcing in Cyrodiil where a pass was done to make gear more easily attainable outside of specific pieces. This also included a pass on Delve drops, Merchant containers, and Daily quests from towns. We also try to keep updating PVP sets on the regular now at least twice a year for RFTW, and rotate out old sets to purchasable. There are discussions on going about itemization and PVP (and curation), and when those result in patch notes and changes, we'll post them for sure!
u/Siergain:To Bill Slavicsek, the Lead Writer. I wanted to ask more about the inspirations for the Scribing system's story and the writing of characters linked to it - Ulfsild, the Nord-Reachfolk archmage, and Bosmeri Knight of the Order of the Lamp, Nahlia.
u/ZOS_KiraRS:Kira jumping in here!

We were really excited about the opportunity to spend more time with the Votaries of the Order of the Lamp, and with the focus on the Bosmer happening in Gold Road overall, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to give a very relatable look with Nahlia.

We originally started with this concept of a misfit group of adventurers and some 'surprising' characters in the form of the Luminaries, and it grew organically from there. We also wanted to bring back a character who we'd only seen briefly and give more insight into the character of Ulfsild as she only had two lines in the original Mages Guild storyline. I'll also add that Jason Barnes, our lead Content designer on this, was obsessed with getting a Fox into the storyline, and I'm super happy how that turned out! :D

u/M1shaaa:Hi! I have a few companion-related questions. Firstly, why are the companions releasing in Q4 instead of with the chapter? Will players need to own Gold Road or some other DLC to unlock the companions, or will they be available with the base game?

Secondly, are there any plans to add more content to the older companions? Bastian and Mirri both only have two quests and don't have their letters as furnishings. They also don't have as much companion dialogue, which I think contributes majorly to many people's dislike of Bastian in particular (which as a Bastian stan I find simply unacceptable!). If he had some shorter lines mixed in with the long winded philosophizing about cities that'd be cool :)

u/ZOS_RichLambert:I touched on some of this in another question - basically it boils down to time and resources. For the companions being moved to U44, it just came down to available time. We decided to push the companions out to U44 so that they could get the level of polish they needed.
u/No_Ad3927:To Bill Slavisek the Lead Writer, a few questions in regards to some new Tales of Tribute depictions introduced in Gold Road if you are privy to any of this.

1.Morihaus finally gets a proper depiction as a winged Minotaur clad in armor, another winged Minotaur by the name of Domihaus can be seen in the Eso Horns of the Reach dlc, given the similar naming conventions, and appearance of these two individuals is it reasonable to assume there's a deep connection between these two bull-men?

2.Alessia appears in badass fashion taking on an aspect of an army wrecking storm. Is this an example of Thu'um usage by Alessia, comparable to similar feats attributed to Talos and or Ysmir Wulfharth in lore?

ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:

1.Loremaster Michael Zenke handles our Tales of Tribute storytelling and lore, but it's reasonable for you to assume whatever you like about Morihaus and Domihaus.

2.That's also a reasonable assumption. Keep in mind, our style is to set up interesting stories and images so you can interpret them as you see fit.

u/Izanarys:The new scribing system gives a lot of flexibility and new options for player builds in ESO. I have a couple of questions for the combat team on this new system:

1.How does the team feel the change to allow for easier access to multiple oblivion damage sources will impact PvP combat?

2.Is the knockback mechanic on Elemental explosion working as intended with regards to it's interaction with structures in Cyrodiil?

3.Do you foresee players wanting to change their scribed skill setups whilst in Cyrodiil? The system doesn't currently interact with the build saving options available to players so will there be an area added to Cyrodiil to adjust scribing skills?

u/ZOS_Gilliam:

1.We explicitly added some sources of Oblivion Damage in the scribing system for PvP purposes, since ESO's meta has long favored tankier builds that outlast their opponents. Oblivion Damage has been shifted to be more focused on countering those types of builds by directly ignoring them (Resistances) and scaling with them (Max Health). They're more experimental in the sense that we're trying to find the perfect place where they don't feel like the only choice, while making sure they feel like they add more options to counter existing problem spaces.

2.Can you extrapolate on your question? What do you mean exactly by "working as intended in regards to"? The knockback on any scribed ability should behave like other knockbacks - just a bit stronger in the context of Elemental Explosion since it sacrifices all damage for a massive displacement.

3.We're actively discussing this situation.

u/Warfororks:As a longtime player who only recently returned to ESO after a hiatus of several years, I've missed out on a lot of story content while I'd like to dive into Gold Road at release. My question is, just how self contained is the story of Gold Road? Is there any previous content that you guys would recommend doing in order to get a better understanding of Gold Road or to get introduced to characters that might be seen again?
u/ZOS_EdStark:Welcome back! Glad to see you again!You CAN play Gold Road without playing any previous content and you'll catch up to the story pretty quickly. HOWEVER, Gold Road does conclude a major story element explored in Necrom.

If you have the time, I would recommend playing Necrom first but don't let it hold you up.One thing: In order to play the "Capper" quest that becomes available after the Gold Road zone story quest, you will have to have played and completed the Necrom zone story.

Also, as in most of our Chapters, we have some interesting, recurring characters appearing in Gold Road. There's no reason you have to play earlier content to interact with Mizzik Thunderboots, Narsis Dren, or any other recurring characters, but it's always fun to see old friends again ... or meet new ones.

u/Erickson9160:Were the Werewolf or Vampire skill lines considered when creating the Grimoires included in Gold Road?
u/ZOS_KiraRS:Many things were considered, but ultimately, we wanted to start off with the widest possible net for Scribing Grimoires, which is why we went with one for every Weapon Skill Line, and then the Fighters, Mages, Soul Magic, and Assault lines. We have definitely heard feedback that there is desire here, as you can see in my answer here [6].
u/AdmiralBumHat:Hello,

When will the Gold Road soundtrack be released? (rough estimate as 'very soon', 'summer', 'next year', ...)

I am a huge orchestral music fan, and the Necrom soundtrack was almost released a year after the expansion, which makes it unusually late compared to other chapters.

Can we expect a quicker release this time around, or do we have to make due with low quality YouTube rips for a year again?

I already played the full main quest of Gold Road (it was great) and look forward to next week to discover all the other content!

u/ZOS_RichLambert:The Necrom soundtrack was a bit more of an adventure than we hoped. The Gold Road sound track will hopefully be less of an adventure and get released much sooner. :)
u/Xandereeeeee:Hello and thank you for doing the AUA! This question is mainly for Mike Finnigan I suppose, as the Lead Encounter Designer.

As an "endgame" PvE raider since the release of Blackwood and Rockgrove myself, I have been wondering, how does the Combat Team / Encounter Team test and balance the new raids, especially their HardModes? Anything you guys could share regarding this would be much appreciated!

As for this Chapter - How did you guys come up with the idea for the last boss fight of Lucent Citadel? The whole concept of a long and epic journey through the raid while carrying the orb is very unique and refreshing, in a good way. So huge thumbs up to whoever came up with the idea :) Hope to see more of the similar kind of innovativeness in future!

u/ZOS_Finn:Balance Question: We typically are evaluating with the combat teams what players are capable of as well as the average and median player. We don't take into account specific classes as much as we do general numbers. This goes for Hard Modes well. Our QA group actually uses three different gear sets when testing normal/veteran/Hard Mode for Dungeons (and another three setups for trials). We look at Dungeons and Trials very differently and are allowed, design wise, much more freedom to allow players to "learn by dying" in Trials.

Boss Design: As much as I would love to take credit for this, this is 100% the absolute badass designers on the team. We have evaluation processes and several layers of checks and balances for proposals but we generally give designers the freedom to explore new and interesting ways to challenge players. We even build in prototype passes so the designers have a chance to explore new things with accompanying team playtests.

u/ItsWhoa-NotWoah:What is the point of the PTS? In other words, why are things often pushed through to live that feel unfinished? In your own dev comment about Grave Lord's Sacrifice, you stated that the ability wasn't hitting its mark, so why was it pushed through instead of allowing another PTS cycle to Test it?

From a consumer perspective, it feels really bad to have a change (that was admitted to not be up to par) be pushed through and then seemingly abandoned for months.

u/ZOS_RichLambert:PTS is super important for us. It helps out test out getting a build from internal to external servers, suss out load related issues and to get even more testing on the new stuff we've been working on and testing internally.

Most importantly, it's also a TESTING ground for ideas. The whole reason to have PTS is to test out ideas. Sometimes we want to try a thing even though we aren't 100% sure of it or don't have the perfect solution at the time. Sometimes, a short term partial change is better than waiting until a full fledged solution is avaliable.

u/Floognoodle:Hi ZOS!

I am very curious about a love we both share - crows.

Gold Road is the third time we've gotten content with talking crow(s) that have entirely separate origins from the others - now we have the talking crows in Glenumbra, Daedra Crows, & the Crow.

What is the origin for your love of these beautiful birds?

u/ZOS_KiraRS:I can't take credit for this one, although Corvids are super cool! She evolved organically from our original pitch of 'group of misfits', and that was due to the awesome work of our content/writing/lore teams!
u/Floognoodle:And if you don't mind one more question - what is the name of the species of Daedra the Blind belongs? I saw several similar humanoid Daedra on PTS but couldn't find a name anywhere.
u/ZOS_KiraRS:I asked u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek on the side for this and he gave me this answer "The Blind is a Dremora. They don't specifically say, but they're probably of the Shardborn clan."
u/Just-Fox-2468:As I've read some posts in this sub, it seems the target audience of Scribing is hardcore PvE and PvP players. Is there any merit for casual players to grind Scribing?
u/ZOS_Gilliam:Our focus with Scribing was to try and help more players gain access to more skills that felt like their own abilities, rather than trying to upend the existing "meta" of the game. Largely the system aims at helping builds gain access to abilities to plug holes in their kit or access to more diversity with personalized damage types, healing, etc to help you make your own build without the same restrictions as your class abilities may place you in. This also reinforces another large pillar the system was designed for, which is role play. Before if you wanted to lean into a specific vision or goal with your character, you needed to make a lot of choices early on that gave access to abilities to fit into that vision - with Scribing we wanted to help improve the flexibility of access to abilities you can make and use the way you want.
u/Taleof2Cities_:Hi!

Kira Ross Schlitt or Rich Lambert:

Are there any plans to make Scribing more user-friendly with the Armory?

As it stands right now for the Gold Road release, there's no way to save your Scribing skills to your build template.

u/ZOS_KiraRS:We've definitely heard this feedback and are investigating if we could potentially do this at some point in the future.
u/ZOS_RichLambert:maybe!
u/destindil:Questions for:

Rich Lambert, Creative Director

Creative direction. First off, thanks for the creative direction of the game. It's been amazing seeing the game progress over the years and what new locales and lore we get to explore. My personal favorites have been Summerset, High Isle and Galen, and Orsinium. Naturally, I'm excited about this new zone. What was the inspiration behind choosing this zone?

Performance fixes/Server Re-architecture. It sounded like based on Matt Firor's letter from last year, the multithreading effort didn't pan out as well as expected. He had stated, "it introduced an unacceptable level of instability". He also stated that ZOS was going to "dedicate resources to keep analyzing and looking for ways to utilize multithreading to improve server performance".

Naturally, there's questions, just given how long this effort has been underway. How's that effort coming along? Looking for a more substantial explanation. Think of it from a Project Manager perspective - what's the overall scope, what are the milestones completed and remaining, risks, etc.

Providing regular (quarterly) and substantial status updates would go a long way, Even if it's not done, or has ran into challenges. Ultimately, it'll make your lives easier. If your teams are working on something, then there's something to report, you know? Looking forward to whatever explanation can be provided, thanks!

QoL. My one big QoL request is to have a separate audio slider for active quest vs. ambient dialogue. I love hearing the stories, but Curtaros not so much.

Stickerbook. Can we please get monster shoulders curated? Pretty please? Stickerbook is such a wonderful system, would love to see this included.

Bots. What can be done about these guys? I'm on PS-NA and everyday, I go to Grahtwood or other similar base game zone, I see gold sellers spamming all the time. Can we get GMs on staff to just zap them away then and there? Reporting them is a challenge, especially with the UI on consoles, because of how strangely they name themselves.

PTS. Can you explain the process behind how your teams use the PTS forums? I think there's some misaligned expectations that the feedback provided there would be acted on, or at least responded to. Is that expectation realistic? Just recently, there was the style page fiasco during the Anniversary event. The rare style pages were confirmed to be too low by the player testers, and it went live. The result was the forums once again being lit on fire. That snowballed into outage/compensation fiasco. A lot of that heat felt avoidable.

u/ZOS_RichLambert:Lots to unpack here... lets knock some of these out:

Inspiration for choosing a zone - A lot of this comes down to "how do we make this stand out from what we've already done". We always look at what we've done, so that the next thing is almost the opposite of what we just did.

Server Perf - its an ongoing challenge and something we continue to work on. (We have an entire stability team devoted to looking at server & client perf). It's tricky though - load related issues are the hardest thing to track down. They are even harder to replicate internally as well. (automated testing can only do so much to simulate actual players)

QoL audio slider - interesting suggestion, will pass it on to the team.

Monster shoulders curated - nose tap

PTS - i replied about PTS in an earlier question, but the TL:DR for that one is its a testing ground for us. We look at feedback on the forums and /bug or /feedback. We take all that feedback, add it to internal notes and then discuss if we should or shouldn't make changes based upon that feedback. We're not always going to make every change that player suggest.

u/-ireworks:When will the bug that causes every tick of Structured Entropy to take Nightblades out of stealth (and anyone in Hidden) be addressed?
u/ZOS_Gilliam:We're actually actively investigating this and trying to find a fix as soon as possible!
u/RyanIsIffy:2 part question here:

With Gold Road less then a week out, What has been the biggest hurdle for you all individually or as a team for this years chapter?

Also who do we talk to about getting Ithelia's name permanently changed to Waifu?

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Ithelia's name is perfect as is. Just ask her.

Biggest challenge for my team was creating the lore and story surrounding our Forgotten Prince. It was a challenge but also a very rewarding experience.

u/ZOS_Finn:Hey Iffy!

For the monster team, I know that Ithelia was the biggest "hurdle" for us. I say hurdle but it was more the biggest opportunity for multiple reasons. She is a new daedric prince which is cool but comes with pressure. Technically, she is actually three different monsters for each of her forms so accommodating that is quite a bit of work for the team. Added to that is the fact that she is a statue and in order to make sure the statue can actually be made on time, we need a LOT of lead time so we were working on it for quite some time.

u/ZOS_Gilliam:Scribed abilities at their core were a massive hurdle, as they required completely new ways to build them from under the hood. Between engineers across all disciplines to tackle seemingly stuff like tooltips, how these abilities line up, which Script to Grimoire permutations are valid - this was a massive hurdle that was nothing sort of a Herculean feat. Scribed abilities are also our most complicated abilities yet, akin to peering into an Elder Scroll itself (it may cause temporary blindness for the faint of heart too). Making sure these abilities functioned the way we expected took another feat only Atlas could achieve with our QA team. Asking QA to try and keep up with thousands of ability permutations was a huge ask, and they really helped Scribing shape into the feature it is today between feedback and highlighting bugs.
u/ZOS_EdStark:The story of the Gold Road chapter is incredibly intricate. Not only did we have to pick up where Necrom left off--and still make Gold Road its own zone--but we also wove together what appears at first to be two very different storylines: The story of Ithelia, the Forgotten Prince, and the arrival of the Wood Elves in western Gold Road. Tying those stories together in a fun and exciting way was a big challenge and I think it paid off.
u/ZOS_GinaBruno:Isn't it your birthday?
u/ZOS_Finn:HAPPY BIRTHDAY IFFY!!!
u/ZOS_KiraRS:u/ZOS_Gilliam is 100% correct, but I'd also add that it was quite a challenge going from our initial concept "Spell Crafting version 0.5" and then creating something that was clear, easy to use, and offered a ton of player flexibility. I'm super proud of how it turned out, especially with adding over 4000 unique variations of the new customizable skills.
u/RyanIsIffy:Thanks for answering!

You know, thats the truly outstanding part. How you have that much information, that many variables, but actually find a way to make it digestible, enjoyable and feel rewarding for players I will never understand, but you guys did it! And I will enjoy the hell out of it! You should be proud! Thank you and GG!

u/ZOS_KiraRS:Aww, that's so kind, will def let the team know!!! Also, I hear that I'm supposed to wish you a happy birthday? :P
u/NickFirzen:Can you go deeper into the HDR support for PC and it's delay that was planned to be released with U42?

I see other games to struggle with it as well, I don't get how why though, it seems to be hard to implement for certain specific game engines especially in house ones and I am sad to understand Windows'/Nvidia's/AMD's/Intel's pipeline/support for it still isn't near perfect and so different... I was very happy when it was announced for ESO PC, because I was waiting for it since consoles got it back in 2017, (albeit I only have such monitor since 2021) and it was mentioned that those had been updated eversince, and pc support was on hold until it is on a level desired from both devs and community...

I don't see a member here from your graphical depertmant, but maybe you could answer, thank you!

I'll be waiting and hoping for its speedy and well cooked coming at first light of the fith day at dawn to the east next update!

u/ZOS_RichLambert:The short answer to this question is - we pulled it from U42 because of some stability issues (i.e. - crashes) that we were not confident we would get fixed in time.

We will continue to work on it until its done and ready for prime time.

u/NickFirzen:And another question that could have released with Golden Road, could you shine some insight why Eso is not on the PC Gamepass? It is on Xbox Gamepass for a while, and now even Playstatiom's service, and had been on Stadia, is on Nvidia's and Xbox's could service... Just not on the Microsoft ecosystem's PC segment... Is that something you are working on that might have issues implementing with kind of cross platform cross save account stuff yet? Thank you.
u/ZOS_RichLambert:Short answer - for xbox, it just works. (we already have a special build and the xbox team just makes it happen). We don't have that for PC and in order for us to be able to get to PC gamepass, it requires a completely different build process. It's something we'd love to do at some point in the future though.
u/tarponpet:Is there some sort of blanket name we can use for some of the new glass Daedra? Like I'm assuming things like Glass Mantikoras are just taking the form of Mantikoras.

Would they be called Glass Atronachs? Or just Glass Daedra?

u/ZOS_Finn:The short answer is that the Daedra created by the princes are not always easily classified or named in a common naming structure, even when they look similar or are based on others. Molag Bal for instance took a lot of daedra from different princes and made his own and named them as he saw fit.

I would say that her realm being Mirrormoor would give a good indication as to how Ithelia would refer to them.

u/WulfTek:Hello! Wondering if we can expect any fixes for the historical Xbox achievement issues when this update comes to consoles?
u/ZOS_GinaBruno:Is there a specific achievement(s) you've been running into issues with?
u/King-Arthas-Menethil:After playing Gold Road on the PTS I've wondered how writers handle the native/locals of a zone from a writing point of view?

Like the Cyrodiils/Imperials of West Weald compared to the Reachfolk of the Reach and how much do older materials affect it like freedom to write whatever or following older material? Older materials being like the First Edition of the Pocket guide to the Empire (has culture lore of the Imperials) and Oblivion.

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:We always start with whatever has been written already, Because everything written in lore books is from someone's personal perspective, we have a lot of latitude to develop characters and cultures to meet the needs of our current zone and story. And if it's information from the future, we just make sure that nothing we do will adversely affect the events in the future games.
u/EmbarrassedPianist59:Hi guys at ZoS 👋 my question is about creating gold road's environment. What exactly about this zone made you want to make it look how it does, an autumnal looking, golden, hazy place? What was the inspiration behind that?

And bonus q if you have time to answer it, did you ever go back to oblivion to recreate or take inspiration for the area?

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:We try to vary the look and feel of each zone as much as possible for variety, and this was a season/color scheme we hadn't leaned into before. And yes, we always start out by reviewing the look and feel of what was in the related single-player games, but then we look for ways to interpret it in our time period.
u/FuriousLog:With everyone chasing after a new meta with the new update, have you designed drops to ensure that there won't be any major RNG bottlenecks that drive over-population of certain zones or areas, such as one of my favorites from the past: the Shadowfen Kilt lead.
u/ZOS_RichLambert:We have learned a lot over the years... I think we're in a pretty good place lead wise now. :)
u/Shploople803:This is probably the least important question, but will there be a new tribute deck added? I'm addicted to card games inside of other games....
u/ZOS_KiraRS:I love Tribute too! Here's an article that gives a bit of a preview: Learn More About the New Saint Alessia Patron in this Dev Q/A - The Elder Scrolls Online [7]
u/destindil:Questions for:

Mike Finnigan, Lead Encounter Designer

I just want to say thanks for all the creativity in the dungeons. They really are some of the best content in the game. Keep up the good work!

For infinite archive, will we ever see more tilesets? The current state is the Apocryphal tileset, which is cool, but I think more variety would add some longevity. Overall, still, cool system. Was just in it last night!

Bill Slavicsek, Lead Writer

Stories. Will we ever get to see more about Meridia? She seemed like a temporary ally in the base game, so I have often wondered if there's a deeper story arc that will resolve the Dragonbreak or something like that. Also, the High Isle era stories hinted at the Alliance War ending, is that something coming in the near future?

Multi-scene questgivers. I've noticed that in many zones, the introductory quest questgiver appears in a multiple places, often a quick horse ride apart. This feels a bit...intrusive...is that intentional? Like I understand you want players to adopt content, but it feels like it'd be more clear and immersive to have one location to pick up a quest.

u/ZOS_Finn:Glad you like Infinite Archive!

The nature of IA (as I am sure you can tell) is that it would potentially be expandable should there be a desire for that. So, keep playing and providing feedback and we shall see :)

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Never say never. We love to bring back characters whenever the zone and story makes sense to include them. As for Meridia specifically, we'll just need to wait and see.
u/Queues-As-Tank:Thanks for swinging by, gang!

I checked out Scribing on the PTS, loved it, and was barely into the guts of it after about five hours. (The Netch is my bestie now.) As a filthy completionist grind-slave, I plan on unlocking everything Scribing gives, but I would want these skills unlocked on a second (or third, or twentieth) character, and that seems like it might be a bit of a slog.

I understand there's a mechanism to get these skills a little faster on second characters if you've already unlocked them on one character. Would you mind talking about this a bit?

u/ZOS_KiraRS:Our pleasure to be here! Also, the Netch is just the most buoyant of us all.

Here are a couple of quick things about what we've done to expedite Scribing acquisition on alts.

1.On alts, all you have to do is complete the first Scribing quest 'The Second Era of Scribing' to gain access to all the upgrades to the Scholarium from other character completions. 2.This includes the immediate appearance of Chronicler Firandil, who will have discounted prices for previously known Grimoires and Scripts, including the Scripts that you've received as quest rewards. 3.We also have the Mages Guild Scripts for a pretty fast acquisition. 4.We have duplicate protection on characters, so you won't get any duplicates until you have acquired all scripts on that character. 5.Once you've received the Class Script for an initial character, you can purchase it on other characters from Firandil. 6.Both Firandil and Filer Ool from the infinite archive have a rotating selection of Scripts for sale every week (which will also have discounted prices for Scripts that you have knowledge of on other characters) 7.Last but not least, all players will have a chance of receiving Scripts as drops, and those are unbound/tradeable.

u/Hearing-Jumpy:First Question: WHEN WILL NARYU LOVE ME?!!!! T-T Ahem What I meant to ask is: I find it difficult to play ESO whenever I want to travel abroad to participate in events for tickets or just to do some dailies while on the go. I also recently got a sick new powerhouse of a PC build and really want to try playing ESO on it without having to start over after 10 years on playstation. Is it possible to implement cross-save for ESO? And if so, would it also be possible to bring ESO to the nintendo switch one day for easier on -the-go access to the game?
u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Naryu loves EVERYBODY. Then she stabs them.
u/Panda4Zen:Imma need someone to let me barrow $80 plus tax you can have my first born. I'm so far behind on the expansions because I mostly played on ps now that I switched to pc I'm broke and lvl one again with the basest of base games 😭
u/ZOS_GinaBruno:DMing you :)
u/RockWithAMedicineCup:Thanks for taking the time to answer these!

0.Has there been any internal worldbuilding laid out about the fate of the Alliances after the events of ESO?

1.Were there any big narrative or worldbuilding differences between old story drafts and the published game? I recall one early version of the main quest dealt with the Staff of Chaos. Any other things like that? ��

Cheers,

Rock

u/ZOS_RichLambert:Without actually giving the answer - yes we have thought about "the fate of the alliances". :)

Any big narrative or worldbuilding differences between old story drafts and the published game... oh heck yes. Tons! Iteration is the key to game development and what sounds good on paper doesn't always play well in engine.

u/simplysalamander:Question directed at any/all of u/ZOS_BrianWheeler, u/ZOS_Finn, u/ZOS_Gilliam:

Over the last few chapters, the difficulty of solo/group overland content has continued to bifurcate; "normal" overland content remains scaled exactly as in the original zones and complete-able with any build, while World Events and World Bosses have been scaling in difficulty with each chapter it feels. While World Bosses in older chapters like Elsweyr can by and large be solo'd by a proper character build, even "mini-bosses" like Seekers in Necrom prove quite challenging to solo, and true World Bosses in Necrom are all but impossible to complete solo.

As the game continues to expand and players are spread further apart across DLC zones, getting a party together to complete group content in older chapters proves more difficult by the year, with the exception of special events like the Anniversary Jubilee that brought players back to geysers, etc. in Summerset which had previously seen a handful to no players during non-peak times.

Does this trend continue with Gold Road world encounters - content that is all but impractical to complete solo or in a pair? While it makes sense to continue to scale difficulty to meet the requests of many players for more challenging overland content, it also can hurt how evergreen the content remains once they hype around the zone has died down.

Mostly, I'm curious to hear the design process of the team when balancing these opposing requirements, and agree that it is not an easy balance to strike.

u/ZOS_Finn:A couple answers to this one...

1.We are constantly evaluating the zones and content within them to see if we need to adjust difficulty levels as the zones age. This is not always a cut and dry process though as the nature of ESO means that the population of zones waxes and wanes based on various factors (events, etc).

2.Companions have changed a bit of the calculus on difficulty and they can assist quite a bit. With their addition, we can see their usage as a boon to players tackling challenges. We are reluctant to go back and increase the difficulty of older zones but newer zones it is one of the things we take into account.

u/RockWithAMedicineCup:Was there any internal worldbuilding written about how the Jagar Tharn character from Elder Scrolls: Arena relates to House Tharn of Cheydinhal as introduced in Elder Scrolls Online? It's a bit unclear how they connect other than the fancy surname!
u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Since ESO is set in Arena's past, we have no reason or method to answer the question of Jagar Tharn's lineage. But with how prolific Abnur and his family is in our time, there could be some blood shared by Jagar with the Imperial Tharn's of the Second Era. Perhaps.
u/toad_butt:With more and more 'eye' customizations coming out, can we expect to see them moved into their own slot? It seems there is one or two with each crate release including the U42 Diamond Anniversary ones, but it sucks being unable to use them with traditional head markings.

I also wanted to ask, would you consider Gold Road to be a wood elf chapter, an imperial chapter, or both? I ask because for other chapters there was a clear focus on one race, but from what I've seen this is somewhat blended.

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:For the character question, I'd say both. In the zone story, the player will team up with a Wood Elf (Beragon) and an Imperial (Tribune Alea), so you get both perspectives in the story.
u/SmellyMammoth:Any hints for the Q4 pvp update?
u/ZOS_GinaBruno:Not yet! We'll talk more about that as we get a bit closer to PTS time.
u/Cooperharley:First of all, I wanted to thank you guys for taking the time to do this! This is super cool and a great chance for the community to get to talk with you guys, which we don't get to do very often! Very exciting and I think I speak for the community when I say THANK YOU!

I have a variety of questions that I'd like to break up based on what they pertain to - I'll start with questions pertaining to Update 42 first, along with future plans and implementations of its features, and then I have some broader/base-game questions I'd like to ask as well! Here goes, and thank you, thank you again!

Gold Road/U42 Q's:

1. What are your future plans for scribing? Will we see abilities added to werewolf and vampire skill lines, psijic, things like dark brotherhood or thieves guild, etc.? Will this ever expand to class skill lines?

2. For skill styling, I was under the impression originally that these would not be monetized - now that we know that they will be, after hearing your presentations at the 10 year anniversary event in Amsterdam, what is the ratio of earnable to purchasable styles for the future roughly? Mounts are 95:5 for purchasable (with real life money) to earnable and I'm worried this will be the case for the skill styles - especially cool ones (and possibly pet skins) in the future?

3. Will skill styling options eventually make it to class abilities as well?

4. Are there plans to do more multi-year stories in the future? I personally absolutely love the multi-year stuff.

Broader/Base Game Q's:

1. Since y'all are bringing in developers from Roundhouse Studios LLC, can you tell us which sectors of the company in general are being bolstered (eg. community mangers, QA)?

2. Are there any plans to add achievements or rewards for reaching certain champion point levels? Currently the soft cap is around 1500 CP (for power attained solely from champion points) and after that point, the next 2100 CP available (up to the max of 3600 CP currently) to earn are "meaningless" in terms of tangible rewards. Any titles, costumes, mounts, etc. planned as rewards for the progression?

3. Are there any plans to add optional veteran overland gameplay via instanced quests, public dungeons, WB encounters, etc.?

4. Are there any plans to change the seals of endeavor system? For example, you can purchase a radiant apex mount for 16,000 seals of endeavor and with that same amount of seals, you can purchase just over 200 Tri-stat potions. It seems like the pricing for a variety of lower tier items are grossly over-priced accidentally (?) relative to what they appear to be in the crown store or with crown gems for instance.

5. Another question pertaining to seals of endeavor - currently, it takes close to 7-8 months or more to get a radiant apex mount (barring special events like we've had with the thieves guild giveaway and its associated seals increases). Are there plans to lessen this to allow your dedicated players to achieve 1 radiant apex mount per season possibly?

6. Are there plans to add any larger gold sinks into the game to tame the ever-increasing inflation seen on PC's economy (e.g. mounts purchasable with gold, pets purchasable with gold, more houses for gold)?

7. Are there any graphical updates planned for the near future - to expand on this, Gold Road's new zone looks INCREDIBLE, but if you look at some older zones comparatively and player models, they're starting to look more dated. Still a BEAUTIFUL game, but figured I'd ask nonetheless :)

8. Are there any plans to allow for more native game UI customization akin to what users on PC have access to with things like BanditsUI (changing location of attribute bars, colors, seeing both ability bars simultaneously, etc)?

9. Can we expect any changes to reward structure across the board moving forward? For instance - over 95% of mounts that players can get in the game are solely purchasable through the crown store & crown crates. Are there any plans to put mounts as rare drops in content, tied to PvP achievements/rank-ups, tied to challenger PvE achievements, etc etc. more readily? There's been a huge improvement over the last half year in regard to this (tying mounts to zone completion, IA dailies, etc.), but relative to other commonly played MMOs, this is often viewed as ESO's "weak point."

10. What is your vision for necromancer? I feel like a large part of the player base is confused by this as there seems to be a disconnect between what the combat team is envisioning and what the player base is wanting/asking for, so I think a bit more communication for this would be FANTASTIC. Are there plans to add permanent necromantic companions to the game akin to how sorcerers have pets and the wardens have a bear companion?

11. Why is there a strong opposition to implementation of AOE taunting? Is it "needed" per se? Absolutely not as all of the content has been completed without it, but I think a lot of people would enjoy it as virtually every other MMO tank is able to actually "deal damage" and AOE taunt - 2 things of which ESO tanks are not really able to do effectively. We recently had the functionality of the Tormentor set gutted, because the AOE taunt usage was "not in your vision" even though this was largely used by beginner tanks. I'd love to hear your thoughts on why specifically this is a cardinal sin of sorts! :)

12. I know we can expect a couple of companions to be coming to the game later this year in Q4, but are there any expansions of the system as a whole planned (ex. Additional functionality, deconstructing/crafting companion gear or allowing companions to equip player gear, companion ability to wear helmets)?

13. Tying into the companion question one more time, can we expect to see companion additions in Q4 moving forward rather than Q2?

14. Are there any plans to improve the current class sets in the game?

15. When can we expect to see the next set of class sets added?

16. Are there plans to implement more account-wide features in the future (ex. Recipes, motifs, mount training) to lighten memory load for the game?

17. Are there plans to drop support for last-generation consoles (PS4 & Xbox One) in the next couple years?

18. When can we expect to see another new class added? About the same time between Necro & Arcanist (2019-2023 - 4 years) or more like the time between Warden & Necro (2017-2019 - 2 years)?

19. Are there any plans for cross-save or cross-play in the near future (maybe next 2-3 years)?

20. Are there any plans to add an in-game mini-map?

21. Can we get any sort of hint or word on what the new housing feature for Q3 is or the PvP feature in Q4 is?

u/ZOS_RichLambert:Holy questions! Can't answer most of these as we're not going to comment on future things just yet. (there's some good ones in there... just stay patient hehe)
  • Roundhouse - there are some folks working on ESO and some on a future project that we haven't announced yet.
  • No current plans to add more achievements for hitting CP milestones.
u/Born_Advantage2848:I have a very special question for the Lead Writer, as I would really appreciate some thoughts on a roleplay from someone so deeply knowledgeable in the Lore of the TES universe.

I'm currently developing a character concept in the game and would love your insight. My character is envisioned as a vessel of Sithis, the embodiment of chaos and the void, who has intentionally incarnated into Nirn to understand the nature of life and creation, the very opposites of the void (to better understand his enemy Anu). Through his journeys, he gradually develops feelings for the world and its inhabitants, evolving from a detached observer to a protector of Nirn. Given this unique and complex backstory, which class and race would you suggest to best fit the narrative of a character deeply connected to Sithis? I'm particularly interested in a class that complements the themes of stealth, darkness, and mystique, while also allowing for a rich and immersive roleplaying experience. (Necromancer as a death class? Nightblade as a shadow class? Sorcerer as a chaos/dark magic class?)

u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:Very cool concept. I'd go with Nightblade, personally. And check out the storyline in Shadowfen where you can earn the Fang of Sithis.
u/Born_Advantage2848:Thank you so much for the reply! What about the race? I was thinking about an imperial to make him as much "human" as possible
u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek:That works for me!
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