Elder Scrolls Online's Matt Firor Talks Questing, Endgame, Story

Written by: Jason Winter (Twitter @winterinformal - Google+) | May 18, 2012 4:30 pm

25 Comments

Matt Firor is next in line for Game Informer‘s series of sit-down interviews.

The Elder Scrolls Online game director talks about how the game will be a fully modern affair, with easy grouping and teamwork options, with less time spent looking for quests and more time doing quests.

We wanted to make an MMO that delivered content to the player… without them even knowing that they’re being delivered content.

Firor goes on to describe the scenario of seeing a ruined tower and a town and feeling like you have to visit the town first to get a quest to go to the tower as being “dumb.” TESO won’t work like that, which sounds a lot like another hot game currently in development and the “hubless” questing system described in the original reveal of the game.

Firor also made the rounds on endgame and raiding — which will tend to involve larger group-on-group fights instead of just boss fights — and story, which will maintain a solo, heroic feel to make sure it stays true to the original Elder Scrolls vision.

In some ways, a lot of what Firor describes is fairly basic for “modern-day” MMOs. But nice to see that ZeniMax Online Studios isn’t totally just copying the WoW formula for questing and raiding, right?

Elder Scrolls Online's Matt Firor Talks Questing, Endgame, Story

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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco

still not paying 15/mo
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PG4DRLIEDYPSF3YKJW6ZW7UVYM aj
  
  Seconded
  - Sklys
    
    where as the game sounds like a game to play, I go with others and say not
    paying to play
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Robbert-de-Wilde/1806039882 Robbert de Wilde
      
      Yep pay to play is really unnecessary these days. Let the people decide how much money they want to spend, don’t force them. It will allow for people to enjoy the game more and longer. And true fans will spend a lot of money, it it will feel like they have control and not being forced.
- http://twitter.com/nemui_89 Nemui
  
  i agree. imho an MMO would need to deliver an expansion-worthy amount of content every 3 months to justify a sub fee (of 15$/month). no MMO actually does this.
  - MMO_Doubter
    
    I think that is a very reasonable attitude WRT sub fees – BUT, an MMO has to make money some way, and a cash shop is WORSE. It means MORE money for LESS content.
    
    I see no current MMO that is worth $15/month – much less what a cash shop would cost.
Jeremy Whallon

Meh, I’ll get interested in the game when I see in-game video that shows this content. I just get the feeling that they’re saying what they think we want to hear.
jayremy

GW2 innovation was a natural step that MMORPGs had to go in for years, the issues are nothing new. If people have started developing concepts and MMOs its likely going to come out years after HAVING those ideas already in mind and laid out for the game.

So I don’t think anybody is really getting anything from GW2, they are getting it from the MMO community and personal gripes withing designers of the company, after all GW2 got their ideas the same why: evaluating what they thought was cool or needs to rid of themselves and learned what the community wanted.

The best thing game developers can do is interact and listen to the community, as long as TESO devs can do that, along with their own genuine ideas, imagination and innovation they might have something, like any MMO developer could.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Steve-Lazarowitz/100000420795554 Steve Lazarowitz
  
  I have to agree with this and I’m a Guild Wars 2 fan boy. Just about everything being done in Guild Wars 2, I talked about long before the MMO Manifesto video came out, just talking about where the genre needs to go with my friends. Not to say anything specific, but the general idea of dynamic events and a living breathing world, and how grind needs to be gone particularly gear grind….it just sorta makes sense.
  
  And if Skyrim is an example of the direction they were heading, they weren’t that far off anyway.
scottsummer

TESO still sounds nothing like the elder scrolls series.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  Yup. Typical MMO development. Use an IP skin to suck players into a game that is very little like the source material.
integerx

There’s nothing to make me think they didn’t just look at GW2 and decide to add or change stuff.
Chikane Himemiya

If they had announced TES:O with these same exact descriptions of their
game before the GW2 BWE(and the positive reaction that garnered) I would
be a lot less skeptical about it.
Old Ben

Building an MMO around the concept of each player being “the most important hero in the unverse” = FAIL.

This looks like an excuse to charge a monthly fee for a single-player game. If you’re going to do a multiplayer game, design it as multiplayer game.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robbert-de-Wilde/1806039882 Robbert de Wilde
  
  I agree, it makes very little sense. At least in Guild Wars 2 your personal story doesn’t have to be solo, I mean its personal for a reason. But it’s also mostly just story not like “You are the only amazing person in this world” like these dudes are describing for Elder Scrolls Online.
  - Old Ben
    
    GW2′s story suffers exactly from the same problem: The world’s main NPCs start calling you and treating you as “the great hero” right after quest #1 (before you’ve done anything to earn their trust, let alone their admiration), while the open world NPCs treat you as the level 1 noob that you are. Jumping between both aspects of the game is like trying to live with split personality. The good thing about it isn’t that you can play it with other people; it’s that it can be skipped.
    
    TSW, SWTOR, even WoW do a much better job of making your story feel personal while still meshing with multi-player aspect of the game, and give you a sense of progression and achievement that you simply can’t get when the game makes you an instant hero. It’s fine to treat the player as “a chosen one”, but not “the chosen one”. Not on a multi-player game, anyway.
    - Chikane Himemiya
      
      Just think about it this way, since the personal story in GW2 are instanced, they are actually part of your character’s dreams/fantasy. So of course everyone is going to treat you like a hero in your mind. When you go back to the open world that is your character’s real life, working amongst many others like themselves as an everyday blade/mage for hire.
      - Old Ben
        
        My dreams have a better screenwriter. Even the ones where I’m a banana riding a bicycle through a forest of toothbrushes.
      - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
        
        Nice dream there Old Ben, good positive symbols.
        
        Protection, as the banana peel perfectly protects and fits the banana. Sweetness. The “fruit of your labor” or energy invested for long-term gain.
        
        The means by which you move forward in your life, the context within which you grow personally and learn your life lessons.
        
        A toothbrush represent ability, willingness, or efforts to take care of or improve.
      - Old Ben
        
        Sure it doesn’t just mean I have secret gay fantasies about a dental hygienist I’ve met at the gym? I am disappoint.
- Jado Cast
  
  I can’t agree more.
  
  I’ve read other similar comments on other forums, and I can’t stress how stupid that would be from a business perspective. I really hope gaming companies have not become so stupid that they think people will buy an MMO to play single player and pay a fee. In the short run some will buy it, but in the end it would be a disaster.So many MMO’s have gone to some type of F2P or hybrid because it wasn’t working. To think people will pay sub for this non-sense is just plain stupid.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Aaron-Bailey/1357714628 Aaron Bailey
  
  I agree… I play a MMO not to be “the most important hero”. Don’t get me wrong, I like to compete in my MMO but I do not want to be “the most important hero in the universe” unless I earned it. When you see everyone running around with the same “most important hero” tag the game becomes a bit dull.
  - Old Ben
    
    Actually, if you could literally see everyone with a tag above their heads saying “the most important hero”, that would mean the game at least had a sense of humor.
MMO_Doubter

Solo-friendly = failure for an MMO. Casual-friendly is almost as bad.

MMOFringe
- jayremy
  
  I honestly doubt that Mr doubter. If it’s good enough to enjoy alone, it will stay good enough to enjoy with groups. Every great single player game I have played I always thought it would be nice to play along with friends on it, if you look at Skyrim for example, I am sure having a Multiplayer mode like Diablo or such would be great assuming what other players did to the cities wouldn’t gimp or grief your experience.
  
  I don’t think making a game casual friendly is bad either, its never that. It’s been more on the case of (over) “casualizing” the whole game instead of making it easy for newbies to get into or to play in a relaxed short time environment. It’s really to the point where gameplay experience starts getting limited, narrow and losing depth to those changes, is when it gets bad.

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