Fansite TESOLife managed to get an interview with Elder Scrolls Online game designer Maria Aliprando to answer questions about the game. Among other things, she confirms the stress tests have been going well as well as how books and mounts will be part of the game.
So books won’t give away skill points the way they do in prior Elder Scrolls Online games. Instead of going to your inventory, it will have its own interface where you can read them at your leisure. Books will be most useful when you join the Mages Guild. Collecting Mage Guild Books will upgrade your skills instead of constant use. Books can be collected around the world, from bookcases and even dungeons, which will have lore specific books.
All the mounts in Elder Scrolls Online are horses, and you can enable them to be faster or stronger depending on what you feed them. You can own several horses, and possibly name them. You will use only one horse at a time, and can visit them anytime in the stables in whatever town you are in.
Horses can be bought for 15,000 gold and are available at any skill level. However, they are all base horses, so you will have to feed them certain foods to give them the attributes you want. You talk to the stablemaster so that they can be fed what you want.
In terms of combat, there is a telegraph system in beta, with visual representations showing you how their skills will affect you. You will always have the option of turning these off. Death penalties will downgrade your armor. If you do die, you can choose to ress at Wayside shrines, or use a soul gem. You can always teleport to a shrine if you aren’t at one, but using soul gems requires it to already have a soul, which you can get via soul traps.
In terms of the endgame, the game will get harder along with your skill level, so it’s up to you to breeze by it if you can, or to take your time. Certain portions of the game will be activated a certain period after the game’s release, in connection with transpiring events, but ZeniMax has all the content already being created. If you do enter the game at a later date, all the levels that were already there from the start will be available for you to go through.
Armor will have enhancements on Health, Magicka, and Stamina, as well as other elements, such as Armor Sets, Heartening, and Enrages. Armor will be fully customizable, and can even be crafted, and will only change in terms of armor ratings, which you can earn by building sets or using artifacts.
PVP stats will remain the same, Health, Magicka, Stamina, and Resistances. Ability Progression has not been developed for now, beyond morphing abilities one notch.
Dungeons last less than an hour on average, and are best handled in groups. Aliprando suggests that you each member take on certain roles, such as tanks or healers. They can always switch these around in the middle of playing.
If you want to play as the tank, there is no agro system in place. Therefore, you will have to taunt to get an enemy’s interest, and if they lose interest or find someone else you will have to taunt them again. Taking enemies away from other players is a case of figuring out who these enemies are targeting, so that you can sucker them into making you their target.
Aliprando admits to one bug connected to archery. To make sure you hit your target, you have to both be facing and looking at them. Any other scenario, such as turning or moving around will result in failure. Zenimax is looking into the bug and hopes to have it resolved soon.
Getting back to the stress tests, everything is running fine on the server side, and Zenimax has instead been running scenarios such as 100+ armies battling each other, and finding out the system’s current limits. They have already met their minimum goal of 200 people on screen with full effects, full weaponry and full frames. Now, they are looking at how to handle cases the system is supposed to fail, and figure out what elements they can take out at those points so players can keep playing.
Lastly, Aliprando was noncommittal about chat bubbles.
Again, as a reminder, these are all details of a work in progress, so we can’t commit to any of these being in the final game. However, this should give you a snapshot sense of where Elder Scrolls Online is at so far.
Source: TESOLife
