TESO Ask Us Anything VP#11

Source: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/new...ty-pack-11

When entering a campaign with your guild, how many members are allowed to join the campaign once the limit is reached? - Ando Amaranon

Yes, campaigns feature a soft cap to limit the number of participants from one alliance. There’s room for overflow that will allow you to join your friends or guild members in an otherwise full campaign, but eventually there is a hard limit to that. You’ll be able to join campaigns with your friends, but we want to ensure that an alliance can’t bring too many additional combatants in and hurt the overall balance.


I have a question about guilds. Can a character in any alliance join any NPC guild? For example, do you have to be in the Aldmeri Dominion to join the Mages Guild, or do the alliances have their own guilds? - André Sommer

You don’t have to be an Altmer to join the Mages Guild. Characters from all three alliances can join the Fighters and Mages Guilds. Neither of these guilds take sides in the ongoing conflict in Cyrodiil. They prefer to focus their resources towards solving problems that are, in their eyes, more important, such as fighting Daedra and recovering lore on the brink of destruction.


I remember you guys saying that you can have both a first name and a surname. Will you also take into consideration allowing a fixed list of prepositions or middle names, or do you think it’s too much? Characters like Mjoll the Lioness and Argonians have multi-word names. – Phane

You can use more than one space in your character name, so the examples you picked are all viable. In fact, the current limit is a maximum of four hyphens, apostrophes, or spaces in total, so you can come up with all kinds of names, like Nh’yen the Ter-Grol. This should be especially convenient for players who want lore-based names for their Argonian or Khajiit!


I've played many multi-player games, and 99% of them are eventually plagued with the same enjoyment-killing problem. What is this problem? Kill-stealing. You know, jerks who like to go into areas where people are farming or trying to level and kill-steal them relentlessly. Does ESO have a plan to implement something to prevent this? – Emily

Fighting the enemies of your alliance—NPCs as well as PCs—should be something every aspiring hero jumps at the opportunity to do. We don’t intend to limit helpful behavior in Tamriel by lowering the experience or loot you can take away from a hard-fought victory. If you help someone kill an enemy he is already engaged with, all you can do is take away some of the pride he might have felt by winning the fight on his own. He’ll still receive the full amount of experience and loot. If you did enough damage (or provided enough support), you might get some experience and loot of your own, too. And if the two of you decide to group together, both of you will get even more…

In Variety Pack 10 you said that when you die in PvP, “you can respawn at a keep your alliance owns (as long as it isn’t under attack).” When is a keep officially under attack? Will it suffice for a single player to scratch on the door for the status of the keep to switch to “under attack”? - Ando Amaranon

A keep is considered “under attack” when significant damage has been done to a section of the keep (for example a wall or a door). A few scratches aren’t enough to declare the keep as unsafe or to alert the whole alliance. If a capture flag is being transitioned from one alliance to another, the keep or resource is also considered under attack.


When you are picking a lock, will another player be able to kill you while you’re trying to open it? – Brenden Warren

Tamriel is a dangerous place. If you let your guard down while you focus on lockpicking, you might get attacked. Enemy NPCs might do this anywhere in the world, and hostile players will love the opportunity to surprise you in Cyrodiil. But then again, you never know what loot might be in that chest … maybe it’s worth bringing a friend to watch your back?


Will we meet an ancestor of M'Aiq the Liar? - Jan S.

We were lucky enough to meet someone with that name just the other day, and when we asked him the same question, this was what he answered: “In the development of every project—and you can consider a family tree as a sort of project—there comes a time when you have to make certain decisions to either build your own legend or help others to do so. But then again, why did the mouse steal the cheese?”


How does the lockpicking in ESO work, exactly? Please elaborate. - Toni Ćelić

When trying to pick locks in ESO, you’ll see a set of tumblers. Using lockpicks that you carry in your backpack, you’ll need force them down into the correct position. If you pay close attention, the game will give you visual and audio hints as to where the right position for each tumbler is. But you’ll also have to fight against the clock and open the lock within a given time. And then there’s the hostile environment you might be in (see above). For a quick glimpse at lockpicking watch the "Exploration and Gathering" video at 1:15 min.

When we first come across a keep, will it be free for the taking or held by the Imperials? – Dominic Hoggart

Omnis cyrodiila est divisa in partes tres … In the beginning, all of Cyrodiil is divided into three equal parts controlled by the alliances. Depending on the area the various keeps, mines, farms, and other objectives are in, they’ll be guarded by troops of the corresponding alliance. Of course, we expect this to change quickly, and from that moment on it will always be up to you to defend the objectives in your area and attack and capture your enemies’.


In Skyrim, you can get a vampire follower named Serana. I know she and her family were born in the First Era, so is it possible that she might be included in the game? – dovanator

Probably not, unfortunately: as you may recall, Serana was imprisoned in a stone coffin in Dimhollow Cavern from sometime in the First Era until the time of Skyrim in the Fourth.

Apart from being the emperor (for a short time) are there any other ranks one can gain in PvP? For example, can I become a Captain or General of my alliance or get recognition for the amount of enemies I have slain? Will friends and enemy players be able to see how successful I have been in PvP? – Jenny Sart

You can gain many military-themed titles from the PvP ranking system. There are also lots of achievements to earn and leaderboards that show how many Alliance Points you’ve earned in a campaign. The leaderboards update every 10 minutes or so and are filterable by class, alliance, and overall rankings.

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Personal thoughts on this - I'm really glad we have some information on character name limits. I'm sure a lot of people will be pleased with that. Even though it still seems like something that could be abused by trolls and the like - it's something I'm glad they didn't remove because of this. Something ELSE I find interesting is the fact that when we are in groups we apparently get more XP & loot? Sounds like my idea to level with a friend isn't a bad one after all! I'm also foreseeing sabotage missions on enemy keeps so that they will be signaled as "under attack" a very worth-while strategy. This is very dependent on how a faction leaves a keep. . whether it's from a door or a one-way sort of gate. If it's the front gate, however. . I can imagine a group or two of rogues will wait for someone to leave then sneak past everyone and wait in the keep. Then, when that alliance attacks another keep they move in to the sabotage so that that faction can't respawn near to that keep. All & all, this VP was pretty exciting if you ask me!

What do you find most interesting from this VP? Discuss in the comments below!

not too shabby. I still wish they would shed some live on end-game PvE though. I like how they completely dogde he first question (great start). Of course, their M'aiq answer was just gold, lol.

(November 18th 2013, 10:04 AM)DoRakk Wrote: not too shabby. I still wish they would shed some live on end-game PvE though. I like how they completely dogde he first question (great start). Of course, their M'aiq answer was just gold, lol.

Yah, it was indeed. I'm sure he dodged an exact number as to not over-spectate or under-spectate the amount of people capable on being in the game at once. They've only had 1 stress test so far, and that was about 2-3 months ago. I'm sure they're working on finding a real hard cap number that their server can hold before announcing it to the public.

Sorry about that Kilivin, afraid I missed this when I glanced over the forum!

(November 18th 2013, 03:54 PM)Horizon Seeker Wrote: Sorry about that Kilivin, afraid I missed this when I glanced over the forum!

Oh, no worries. I didn't know you were posting them. I just saw it just get sent out so I thought I'd be a "good TESOFIAN" and share it while the day was young. xD

I'm still worried about the campaigns... I want there to be an overall effect on the world. I don't feel like it will work well if one campaign the AD is winning, and in another, the EP is winning. How will this work??? Besides that, I though the loot/exp thing was a great reveal. I will be happy to help and have help now that I know it won't hurt the original adventurer. I don’t want to hurt others when trying to help, and I don’t want to be penalized for receiving help.

(November 19th 2013, 05:45 AM)chocobacon Wrote: I'm still worried about the campaigns... I want there to be an overall effect on the world. I don't feel like it will work well if one campaign the AD is winning, and in another, the EP is winning. How will this work??? Besides that, I though the loot/exp thing was a great reveal. I will be happy to help and have help now that I know it won't hurt the original adventurer. I don’t want to hurt others when trying to help, and I don’t want to be penalized for receiving help.

Agreed! Honestly, I was expecting the separation effect with the campaigns though. You can't have hundreds of thousands (or hopefully millions) of people suffer or gain from a few thousand people (or however many is the hard cap limit). In addition, you can't have hundreds of thousands of people or millions in one campaign of Cyrodiil. So, yes. .one campaign will be very very different than the campaigns besides that one. Even so - they will probably give bonuses depending on how many campaigns your alliance has won? Who knows. . that's a bit of info they haven't released yet. :p

In your travels outside of Cyrodiil, you'll most likely encounter people from other campaigns. As how your alliance is performing in your campaign directly affects bonuses to your character, two characters from different alliances may have the same buffs, or two chars from the same alliance may have different buffs.

Anyone (whether they are active in Cyrodiil or not) will be assigned a campaign and receive buffs from that campaign and no other. Think of it like one of those Dragon Time things where Akatosh loses track of time, so everything happens at once (i.e. like the end of Skyrim where both the Stormcloaks and Imperials won control over Skyrim). We know that eventually the wars end and everyone kind of settles down until Tiber Septim arrives (probably after Molag Bal is pushed back, which we won't see in game), so we know what the outcome is. Cyrodiil remains divided, the alliances dissolve but remain separate and then a man bearing the power of the Voice unites Tamriel and utters in an age of glowing peace and prosperity that lasts even until Oblivion itself tries once again to overcome Nirn.

So really anything can happen (and if my theory ends up panning out where Akatosh just loses track of time and everything happens at once, anything DOES happen), leading to what we know is the continuation of the story.

(November 19th 2013, 06:27 PM)Ferroc Wrote: In your travels outside of Cyrodiil, you'll most likely encounter people from other campaigns. As how your alliance is performing in your campaign directly affects bonuses to your character, two characters from different alliances may have the same buffs, or two chars from the same alliance may have different buffs.

Anyone (whether they are active in Cyrodiil or not) will be assigned a campaign and receive buffs from that campaign and no other. Think of it like one of those Dragon Time things where Akatosh loses track of time, so everything happens at once (i.e. like the end of Skyrim where both the Stormcloaks and Imperials won control over Skyrim). We know that eventually the wars end and everyone kind of settles down until Tiber Septim arrives (probably after Molag Bal is pushed back, which we won't see in game), so we know what the outcome is. Cyrodiil remains divided, the alliances dissolve but remain separate and then a man bearing the power of the Voice unites Tamriel and utters in an age of glowing peace and prosperity that lasts even until Oblivion itself tries once again to overcome Nirn.

So really anything can happen (and if my theory ends up panning out where Akatosh just loses track of time and everything happens at once, anything DOES happen), leading to what we know is the continuation of the story.

But what about the crowning of emperor? Will there be a different emperor for every campaign?

(November 20th 2013, 05:43 AM)chocobacon Wrote:

(November 19th 2013, 06:27 PM)Ferroc Wrote: In your travels outside of Cyrodiil, you'll most likely encounter people from other campaigns. As how your alliance is performing in your campaign directly affects bonuses to your character, two characters from different alliances may have the same buffs, or two chars from the same alliance may have different buffs.

Anyone (whether they are active in Cyrodiil or not) will be assigned a campaign and receive buffs from that campaign and no other. Think of it like one of those Dragon Time things where Akatosh loses track of time, so everything happens at once (i.e. like the end of Skyrim where both the Stormcloaks and Imperials won control over Skyrim). We know that eventually the wars end and everyone kind of settles down until Tiber Septim arrives (probably after Molag Bal is pushed back, which we won't see in game), so we know what the outcome is. Cyrodiil remains divided, the alliances dissolve but remain separate and then a man bearing the power of the Voice unites Tamriel and utters in an age of glowing peace and prosperity that lasts even until Oblivion itself tries once again to overcome Nirn.

So really anything can happen (and if my theory ends up panning out where Akatosh just loses track of time and everything happens at once, anything DOES happen), leading to what we know is the continuation of the story.

But what about the crowning of emperor? Will there be a different emperor for every campaign?

Each campaign can be thought of (in a stretch) as it's own version of reality in Cyrodiil. So yes, each campaign will have it's own everything, including emperor (or empress?)

So think of it like a spot in time where every reality possible exists

I don't understand why people come up with a Lore friendly reason why an MMO has to do something. It's an MMO. It's to be expected from this. You don't even need to think of it like multiple realities or Akatosh doing a flipflop, just imagine your world and your campaign is the only campaign. Feel like the more you complicate it the more emphasis you put on an era of time that isn't recorded because it isn't recognizable in the history of tamriel. This is due to emperors rising and falling. When you throw Akatosh making a mistake or time nonsense you just make it seem more notable.