General:Ask Us Anything: Variety Pack 15

Originally published June 16, 2014. The original article can be found here.
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Find out more about tanking in ESO, loot in dungeons, and more in our new Q&A.

Still have questions after our recent reddit AMA? Don’t worry—you don’t have to wait for a special event to ask them. We have some answers to new questions in today’s article, and we’re looking forward to responding to even more in upcoming features. If you have a query for us, send it in to community@elderscrollsonline.com and it may find its way into a future Ask Us Anything. We hope you’ll enjoy today’s answers.
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''Why doesn’t Alchemy have a hireling in its skill tree? This seems to be rather unfair, taking into account that all other crafting lines have them. – Ciannicay

All the crafting skills have some commonalities, but each also has elements that set it apart. The passive crafting skills aren’t intended to perfectly mirror each other. For instance, the Alchemy passive Medicinal Use separates it from the other professions. Alchemy doesn’t use rare additives like some of the other professions do, either, which is one of the main benefits hirelings bring to the other skill lines.


On the subject of PS4 and Xbox One: There is no doubt that there will be features implemented in the PC game that it didn’t originally launch with. Will these features be included with the console game at launch or will we have to wait even longer for them? – Nick Johnson

When ESO launches on PS4 and Xbox One, the content will include most (if not all) of the updates that we release on PC and Mac between now and then. As an example, the recent Craglorn update will be included in the launch content for PS4 and Xbox One.


What is the reason or meaning behind your Ouroboros aside from portraying "infinity"? I would really like to know how you guys came up with the idea/design and the vision behind it. – John Zhang

Years ago, Matt Firor needed an ESO logo for a presentation he was doing, so he asked me (Mat Weathers, Lead Artist) to quickly put one together. This wasn’t the Ouroborous, mind you, and Matt was very clear that this was not going to be the final game logo. I whipped up a series of drawings and everyone picked one. It was more of an old-school MMO style logo, big and a little cartoony. It worked for the presentation, but it wasn’t the right tone for ESO.

A couple years after that, Matt was kind enough to give me a chance to regain some of my artistic integrity by working on the actual game logo. He wanted a design that was serious, in tone with the Elder Scrolls IP, and evocative of the “three alliances in conflict” theme that is the central element of our game. I created a thumbnail series of logo treatments, and the one that stuck was a metal ring with three animal heads each attacking each other’s tails.  It was pretty straightforward after that.

I iterated on that design, making it less like a flat icon and more like an actual piece of metal art. I modeled a version of it in order to make it more realistic—give it more heft, if you will—and handed the concept and model over to our talented Lead Figure Artist Mark Shahan. He took it and did a ZBrush pass on it to give it the age and wear that it needed. It was that nearly-final design that we handed over to the Marketing Team for final iteration based on the direction of Matt Firor, and Jared Carr (our Art Director).

I will say this: I’ve been on this project from the very beginning, and it was a real honor to be able to make the iconic game logo. 


''Why is queuing for dungeons limited to a certain level range? If I pass that range, I can't use the group finder to find people for those dungeons anymore, and in some levels there are no dungeons available to queue for at all. – Jarkko Ikonen

We currently have dungeon queues set to lock out dramatically over-leveled characters for a few reasons. Having a significantly out-leveled character in what is otherwise a tightly-controlled challenge can negatively impact the play experience for the other players. It also reduces the other players’ chance of rewards because of our power-leveling prevention mechanisms.

That said, we understand that everyone would like to conquer dungeons with their friends, regardless of level differences. We’re working to make that a reality. In a future update, we’ll be adding a new dungeon scaling system which will allow you to find and participate in any dungeon by adjusting everything to the group leader’s level. We’ll share more details on this in-development system in the future.


''It seems to me that my Enchanting is leveling considerably slower than any of the other crafting skills. It’s come to my attention that it could be because deconstruction of items includes greens/blues with Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Clothing. I also noticed more experience in Alchemy than Enchanting. Is it meant for Enchanting to be harder than other crafting skills? – Moe Amleh

We’re aware that Enchanting takes the longest to progress through out of all of our crafting skills. In a future update, we’ll be making some balance tweaks to inspiration for Enchanting to bring its progression rates more in line with the other skills.


Would you be able to comment on any improvements or changes that are going to be made to the Daedric Summoning pets? E.g. more survivability in VR content, better AI, or commands so they won’t attack stunned/rooted enemies? – Alexander Wojaczek

You’ll have some basic control over Daedric Summoning pets in patch 1.2.0, allowing you to use a hotkey + left click to attack a specific target or a hotkey + right click to command the pet to return to you. We’re also looking at increasing the Daedric Summoning pets’ resistance to area of effect attacks, but don’t have a timeframe to share yet on that.


Is using the Mages Guild skill Equilibrium to swap magicka for health and then healing it up again considered an exploit (for gaining Ultimate power)? – From ESO TwitchTV livestream

This is not an exploit, but the intent of the system is that you gain Ultimate while in combat, so we may revise this in the future. Generally, it’s going to be faster to gain Ultimate by fighting monsters in the area.


Barrier is currently heavily preferred by healers over Rite of Passage. Have you considered making changes to Rite of Passage to make it more appealing, such as increasing the AoE cap for it? – From ESO TwitchTV livestream

In coming patches, Rite of Passage will make you immune to crowd control while channeling. We’ve also resolved a bug that prevented it from benefiting from the Focused Healing passive. We think it’s cool that PvP abilities are more effective if you are in a huge group, while others are better for hit squads. That said, we will keep an eye on Rite of Passage and make sure it’s filling the intended role.


The scout quests in Cyrodiil were changed to dailies at one point, then changed back to be repeatable. People are using them to game the system and climb the leaderboards. Is this intended? – From ESO TwitchTV livestream''

What you're describing typically only happens in Campaigns where one alliance owns absolutely everything. We’re working on some changes, such as reducing the overall number of Campaigns, which may keep that from happening quite as often in certain Campaigns. In the meantime, we encourage you to offer your support to a Campaign where that is not the case.


''What can I do to help fight bots and gold spammers other than just report them? Is there a fast way to report them? – Jericho

You can easily right-click on a player character name in your chat window and choose the “Report Player” option. When you do, the window below will open.

Press “E” to report a player for chat spam, including spamming gold sales advertisements. This will automatically send a report and does not require you to open and fill out a ticket. Press “R” to report another player for something unrelated to spam.  Choosing this option opens the ticket creation page.
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Being a nearly-Veteran Nightblade character, I am looking forward to getting the abilities in the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild skill lines, but it is probable that I would have run out of skill points by then. Will new ways to get skill points through quests and other things emerge so we can get the abilities available through those guilds? – Robert Stockwell

In short, yes. When we introduce new skills and content into game, we’ll introduce new sources of skill points along with it. For example, when we introduced Craglorn, we introduced 18 new Skyshards.


''I want to know what abilities benefit from spell critical chance and what abilities benefit from weapon critical chance. I have seen people say abilities that do magic damage use spell, and that physical skills use weapon. Then I see people say if a class ability resembles a melee attack, it's weapon critical (like Nightblade's Vieled Strike). Please clarify this for me. – Francis Winters

We agree that this is not communicated as well as it could be right now. We have an ongoing effort underway to improve our tooltips and make them more clear and descriptive. You’ll see the first of those changes go in with the next major content update (v.1.2.0).


''Is it normal that a horse can continue to sprint even if it runs out of stamina? I think players don’t appreciate that trait, since it seems to do nothing. – Chris J.

Yes, horses can sprint indefinitely without consuming stamina. That said, stamina is still valuable for two other reasons: It protects you from being dismounted when attacked, and if you rapidly press the sprint key you will get big boosts of speed on your mount (but at a much higher stamina cost). Of note, only horse mounts have the endless sprint trait. Other upcoming mount types will have different special traits.


''I do occasionally group up with a friend to do quests and the like, but very rarely more than that. From what I can see of Craglorn, everything is group based. While I am happy to see that content come out for the game's longevity, I probably won't see it. Will there be any Veteran content in the future that does not rely on being grouped? – John Adams-Wade

Yes. We’ll continue to add content in the game for all types of players. We may concentrate in the immediate future on “new” content which is four-player or twelve-player group based, but we will have lots of features coming in which benefit all players, including having more varied activities.