The Thieves Guild will be Elder Scrolls Online's first DLC of 2016, and it's shaping up to be pretty massive in terms of content included. We caught up with ESO's Creative Director, Rich Lambert to ask a few questions about the recent info dump on the content pack.
MMORPG: Will the Maw of Lorkhaj (a new 12 player Trial) be scaled so that players of all levels can try it?
Rich Lambert: Yep – the Maw of Lorkhaj will scale like our dungeons do. The leader of the group determines the level of the Trial. Note – in order to get on the leaderboard, the leader must be VR16 and the trial difficulty be set to Veteran. It’s also our very first Trial that has both a Normal and Veteran mode!
MMORPG: What's this about Trespassing? Explain!
RL: We’ve added in more criminal activities into the justice system. Specifically:
Trespassing - Certain locations in Abah’s Landing are off-limits where just being seen there is considered a criminal act. These locations are accessible via clearly labeled entrances that make it clear you will be trespassing. While doing so, the on screen justice indicator will notify you of your illicit status.
Criminal Mischief – A bunch of different actions fall under this criminal category. (forgery, vandalism, etc) While you are on quests or exploring Hew’s Bane these actions will be highlighted in red before performing them to indicate their criminal implications. Being witnessed performing criminal mischief will incur bounty, just as with other crimes.
Bounty Pardons - Given the Thieves Guild has certain “connections” they may at times reward their members with documentation which conveniently erases some of your accrued bounty.
MMORPG: Can you preview any of the skills we'll see in the Thieve's Guild line?
RL: For Thieves Guild skill line we’ve added in all new passive skills. The focus of this line is to improve your toolset as a thief – the easier it is to either escape the law or reduce being noticed during criminal activities, the easier it is to be a successful thief. A really good example of this would be Clemency, which is the ability to sweet talk your way out of being arrested by a guard for a limited amount of time.
MMORPG: What are the benefits we'll see with a 64-Bit client?
RL: Players will see some pretty significant stability improvements (i.e. – less crashing or stuttering) as well as overall performance improvements as the 64-bit client will be able to take advantage of larger memory pools.
MMORPG: What sorts of updates will we see to Cyrodiil with this DLC?
RL: We’re hard at work on improving the overall performance in Cyrodiil so there are a number of behind the scenes server and data performance improvements going in. In addition to the performance improvements, there’s a new non-champion point campaign as well as a new traveling vendor who you will be able to purchase monster mask sets from with AP or Gold (dungeon sets).
MMORPG: Those players currently on a new alliance's content after VR1, can they go back and start working on the other?
RL: Yes! Once a player hits VR1, they automatically unlock access to the other two alliances worth of content and you can progress through them in any order you wish. When you finally do meet up with Cadwell and receive the Silver/Gold questline, any progress you already made towards its completion is automatically updated.
In addition, Cadwell’s silver/gold quest rewards have been improved significantly!
MMORPG: Prioritization of animations... does this mean animation canceling is "fixed"?
RL: We wanted to make it more clear which attacks players are using, while preserving the responsiveness and feel of the combat system. The goal is that if an ability is successful, the player should always be able to see it impact (or launch in the case of projectiles). Under the new system, we are prioritizing the impact/launch of the first attack over the first few milliseconds of the wind up of the interrupting 2nd attack.
MMORPG: Thanks for your time, Rich We're all really looking forward to this first DLC of 2016.
