ESO News November 2015
Hi all, there has been a bit of a lull recently due to the release of some high profile games *cough*Fallout 4*cough* but there is still plenty on the way for ESO! The Orsinium DLC is now available on all platforms and has been received well by many players. The next DLC is expected to the the Thieves Guild in Q1 2016.
Orsinium
As you should know the Orsinium DLC is released which consists of the Wrothgar zone. This new zone has two new large Public Dungeons, a new solo arena (The Maelstrom Arena), new quests and more. All of the new item sets which arrived with Orsinium have been entered into the Item Sets page as well.
Champion Points
So along with the Orsinium DLC came the base game patch which included a change to how Champion Points are earned. Champion Points will require significantly less XP to earn if you have less Champion Points. The amount of XP required for each Point will increase as your earn more Champion Points. There is also a cap on the number of Points that you can allocate which is currently set at 501. This means that you can only have 501 Points active at a time. This cap will be raised in the future.
Veteran Ranks
We now have official word that there will be no further Veteran Rank increases in ESO, so Veteran Rank 16 is as high as it goes. ZOS still plan on removing Veteran Ranks in the future (they are still working on it now) and have hinted that gear in the future will be locked based on Champion Points. There are also suggestions that some kind of gear scaling system will be implemented at this time as well – we’ll just have to wait and see what they figure out.
EDIT: It looks like a bit more info has come to light. ZOS_RichLambert on the official forums posted some information in reply to thread about the issue.
- At this time nothing is finalized and everything could change!
- The intention is that once a character reaches Level 50, Champion Points take over progression.
- There won’t be any Veteran Ranks.
- When VR is removed your Veteran Rank will be converted into CP.
- At this time 1 Veteran Rank is about 10 CP.
- They are thinking of giving 2.5 CP per Veteran Rank when the conversion hits.
- This would be 40 CP for a VR16 player.
- When the conversion happens, any player with CP less than their old Veteran Rank * 10 will instead be given enough CP such that their total is their Veteran Rank * 10. So if a player is VR14 with 75 CP, they will be given 65 CP (140-75) instead of 40, so that they can still equip any gear they may have. This will allow continuity of gear and items so nobody finds out they can’t use some gear that they have been using for some time.
- ZOS will ensure that the 16 Attribute Points will carry over in some way and be available to all players.
- Source
Trinimac Style Motif
ZOS answered a question on the recent Reddit AuA suggesting that there will be a Trinimac Style Motif added to ESO soon. The Trinimac’s Valor item set actually uses Trinimac style gear so it is already in the game.
Group Finder
So the Group Finder is promising to be much improved – and for the most part it is! Then entire system of Group Dungeons was actually changed – they are all set at VR16 and now the players are scaled up to VR16 too. This means that there is a larger pool of players using the Group Finder as all levels can be grouped together. The Finder also searches all of the Alliances and so cross-Allaince play is possible in Group Dungeons. The Group Finder also alerts players when the group is full and ready to travel to the Dungeon.
Battle Level
The Battle Level system (scaling up lower level players) has been improved to take into account your Attribute Points and gear. All players are now scaled to an average VR16 stats but with differences based on your choices. This system also works the same in Cyrodiil, Imperial City, Group Dungeons and the Wrothgar zone. It looks like ESO is going to use Battle Level in more DLC zones in the future too.
PC 64-Bit Client
The long-awaited 64-bit client for PC users should arrive in early 2016 – possibly coinciding with the release of the Thieves Guild DLC.
Player Housing
ZOS has begun activity working on player housing and will have information about it half way through 2016. It still looks like a fair way off.
Load Time Improvments
After the Orsinium DLC patch numerous users are reporting a decrease in the long loading screens plaguing some users.
Dark Brotherhood
So the Dark Brotherhood DLC is set for Q2 2016, after the Thieves Guild and we now know that it contains an entire zone – The Gold Coast in Cyrodiil. It is assumed that this zone won’t be PVP but we can’t be sure. Most players are expecting a zone similar to Wrothgar which scales everyone up to VR16.