Elder Scrolls Online new Seasonal approach brings more flexibility and excitement to team - SGF Preview

Released more than 12 years ago, The Elder Scrolls Online has sent adventurers across the ever-growing lands of Tamriel, seeking out dungeons, dangers, and best of all, loot. Much of the growth of the game came in the way of massive chapter updates. Up until now, it has been the status quo, but now, the team at Zenimax Online, developing ESO, has shifted to a new seasonal approach, and while at Summer Game Fest’s Play Days, I got to speak with Jason Barnes, the associate design director, and Nick Giacomini, game director, about this new approach and the excitement it has rekindled in the team.

The first of these new Seasons features the sneaky pick-pockets themselves, the Thieves Guild, with a brand new storyline, along with a new Sheogorath storyline and a host of other new goodies. One such example being the new Favors system, a daily activity that will act as a scavenger hunt with players collecting items that hint at the next location that you will need to work out. But perhaps the addition that I am most excited for is the Dynamic Encounters. Nick explained these encounters like this: “These are like random events that'll spin up. You're going by a farm, and all of a sudden, it gets attacked, and bandits are setting it on fire. You have to go in and rescue the horses and put out the fires, and anyone can come in and join at any point. Or maybe there's a vampire lord who shows up that's wreaking havoc across the zone, and you all have to team up to figure out how to stop them.” I’m always down to take out a vampire lord.

As excited as I was about what was in store with this first season, as Nick and Jason were telling me about their plans, it was clear that the two of them were even more excited, so I was curious about what this new season approach made them so excited.

“We're players, we're gamers, we play the game a lot, and we love the game. And again, with the chapter model being as limiting as it was, like there were a lot of things that a lot of us, like, wanted to do for a long time,” Nick began, “I remember early conversations with Jason. Like there's no shortage of like things like, oh, it would be so cool if we did this, if we did this, if we did this, if we did this. And a lot of that, again, it's not that that didn't happen. It just didn't happen as much as we wanted to. So this, in many ways, has kind of unlocked things, right? We've come out like there's nothing that's off the table…that's the approach that we're taking here. There's nothing off the table; let's build what we think is going to resonate the most with our players. It's gonna excite them the most. And to be able to unlock that creativity and innovation and being able to do this really cool stuff has definitely resulted in a lot of renewed energy and excitement about our game. And it comes through like right now, that's really important to us because we care deeply. And when we care, and we work really hard on these new things.”

One of the big new features that both Jason and Nick feel is now possible thanks to the new seasons is the big new class mastery rework that hadn’t even been hinted at in their roadmap back in January. The start of this endeavor to completely rework and balance ESO’s classes began with the release of the first season and will continue with new classes getting their updates over time. This came about from feedback by players after the introduction of Subclassing, with many folks who preferred to use only a single class and felt left by the wayside.

“And one of the primary pieces of feedback that came through with players is like, okay, that's great, I'm really excited, but I wanna play my pure class. Are you telling me that I'm gonna have to wait for two years in order for this to be viable again? Very, that's very understandable feedback. You're absolutely right. We should try to do something about this faster. And so Class Mastery came about, which wasn't on the roadmap in January. We had no plans to do that, but we pivoted in order to do it, and now it's coming out!” Nick explained.

If this shift to a seasonal model lives up to its promise, then ESO’s shift away from the Chapter approach could give the MMO a newfound flexibility it hasn’t had in all its 14 years of service when Season 1 begins on July 8. I’m a firm believer that excited teams make exciting games, and there seems to be plenty over on the Elder Scrolls Online team.

Elder Scrolls Online is available on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Series X/S, and PC.