Elder Scrolls Online’s Creative Director and Lead Encounter Designer addressed the “disappointment” from parts of the player base after the launch of the 2024 roadmap. Assuring the game’s fans they’ll continue trying to “mix things up”.
When the 2024 roadmap for the Elder Scrolls Online was announced back in January, it showcased what players had to look forward to in the year ahead. A new Chapter of story to play through, two new dungeons, a trial, a new combat system for magic, and new cosmetic and housing additions too.
While some players were excited for the slated content this year, others expressed worry over a pattern they saw emerging. Some even vented their “disappointment” this year’s roadmap confirmed a “new norm” for the game of one trial and two dungeons per year.
But is this pattern intentional? Or just coincidental? Ahead of the launch of Scions of Ithelia, we spoke with ESO’s Creative Director, Richard Lambert, and Lead Encounter Designer, Mike Finnegan, about the ins and outs of planning the game’s roadmap.
According to them, it’s a bit of both.
“Part of it is that,” Finnegan said, agreeing with the player sentiments above. Then going on to explain why this sort of pattern is a focus for the studio.
“Breeding that consistency is also a good thing, sometimes, so people can know what to expect. But we also have a lot of different pieces of content to cater to a lot of different players… Having a kind of beat for players that they can look forward to is good,” he explained.
Finnegan gave Trials as an example specifically, “So like, the ‘trial a year’ well, that targets a very specific group of players,” he added, addressing the comment. “Trials necessarily have bigger balance concerns.”
“We try to mix it up,” Lambert said, “But there’s also the realities of development too, it takes a long time to do this stuff.”
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In the current environment in game development, the pressure to deliver regular content has created some unhealthy culture around time management and crunching. Thankfully, Zenimax Online Studios doesn’t want to make crunch an aspect of their studio culture. A point both Lambert and Finnegan were clear to make.
“We have a good idea of how long it takes and every once in a while…” Finnegan explained. “When we can, and we take a look at when it would work to mix it up and stuff, we do.” He then offered last year’s Infinite Archive launch as an example of the team squeezing in extra side content on top of this “new norm” players are perceiving.
“That was a crazy change,” Lambert laughed, referring to the development process for the new content.
“There was a crazy amount of work to do with that for sure,” Finnegan said.
The Infinite Archives are just one example of new content systems arriving to keep it fresh for veteran players, and interesting to newcomers too. And at the end of the day, the team is proud of what they can accomplishwithout the need for crunch becoming part of their cycle.
“It’s really bonkers to me to think about what we have done over the last ten years,” Lambert reflected, looking back over the game’s ten years of development, mentioning major changes like the Justice system, the Dark Brotherhood skill line, and Imperial City as additional examples of the team’s commitment to providing more than just dungeons and trials in every update.
“All these things we kind of take for granted now, but those were major updates to part of the game.”
“Ultimately, what we want to do is create content that people are going to want to play,” Finnegan concluded.
