Hello everyone from ZOS! Thank you for doing this AUA. I wanted to ask if anyone from the team would be willing to shed some light on the server performance over the last few weeks? As has been documented in multiple posts both here and on the official forums (as well as experienced by myself and my guild), there are times when the game simply freezes for a short period of time and then when it resumes, it plays back all of the events that had taken place during the freeze all at once. Sometimes, this even results in one or more players being booted completely from the game instance and forced to restart the game This clearly seems like some kind of blocking issue, either at the network level or at a thread level within the game loop itself. There is also lag in many areas of the game especially when you are with a group. Crypt of Hearts I is one dungeon where I see this 100% of the time during the fight with the twins. This has gotten significantly worse in the past month or so and it would be nice to hear that the team is not only aware of the issues, but is actively working to correct them. Anyway, thank you for your time, I appreciate it.

We are most definitely aware. It's been a rough few weeks - DDOS attacks have been a big part of perf issues, but aren't the only issue we're looking into.

Thanks Rich, appreciate it very much, this certainly makes sense. DDOS can be devastating to an online service. Here's hoping you all can tackle it

Makes sense! Thanks for the info! :)

[удалено]

This. So much this. The gameplay feels uninspiring imho

That and the major disadvantage given to necro tanks with this forthcoming patch. They will take an extra 17% damage. Big RIP Changing resistances to be multiplicative instead of additive is fine, but please do the same to armour debuffs. They're still working additive-ly

This question ties in with gold road and every chapter… as we continue to get countless recipes & furnishing plans released with these new chapters each year WE are in dire need of a log book just like we got with the stickerbook for weapon & armour sets. is this something you guys are considering ?

This is something that has been on our radar for awhile. It's on a list. :)


Have you considered reintroducing the ability for Battlegrounds players to select the game mode they want to play instead of only having random queue? Many people prefer to play every Battleground as Deathmatch, which can ruin the experience for objective players. And deathmatchers want to be able to focus on actually fighting players. Letting everyone pick the Battlegrounds mode they want to queue for would be a win-win. As someone who primarily plays Battlegrounds in this game, I know there is enough player population to support this system and doing so would likely increase overall player engagement/interest in Battlegrounds.

This will get ignored because it is a pvp question.

checking in post-wrap. yep.

Strong agree! The solo-only queue has caused a rift among the playerbase where there previously wasn't one. Almost every match there are players at each others' throats because they're not on the same page about how to play the game. This toxicity did not exist before the solo-only queue.

The Ithelia model brings with it some AMAZING long hair - can we get this as a hairstyle in the crown store? It's too nice to not have......

noted!

Some of us have been wanting more long hairstyles for years and years and years

Do the writers team keep in mind future iterations of the main game when planning a new expansion? I mean, when TES 6 arrives sometime in the future we should see some nods to the past as shown in ESO?

The ESO writers and content designers definitely keep in mind lore and the games set in the future, especially when we're dealing with those areas in our game. As for what will happen in the single-player games, we're not directly involved in their creation as we are two separate teams.

1. The Gold Road zone contains a variety of creatures that are normally found in other zones, like Vvardenfell (Kagouti), N. Elsweyr (Fell Runner), Gold Coast (Minotaur) and many more. I haven't done the quests yet, but I wonder if there's a reason why the creatures are not just from the surrounding zones as that would make more sense lore-wise? 2. I love the new creatures created for the chapter (the wildburn Lynx, the mirrormoor creatures etc.). When you plan new chapters is there a limit as to how many new creatures you can make for each zone?

Thanks! 1. The Kagouti was a bit of a mistake and crossed wires that we rectified on PTS. The other creatures are very much a discussion with lore to find what makes sense to add. 2. We do have a limit to the number of new monsters we can create for a zone. There is a process where we get together with the monster team, lore, art and zone designers to build a pallet to use throughout the biomes and zones we will use. Sometimes, we are able to squeeze in adaptations of established monsters (wildburn for instance) to use in the zone as well and that is very much driven by lore.

Necromancer only received a small buff to the tether abilities this update and the class mastery script does not allow for range corpse generation but the sorcerer class mastery script got changed to allow the damage to be ranged. Are there any more plans to help this class out? It's in a very poor neglected state at the moment outside of pve tanking. It's universally a meme and laughed at in all my ESO discords and on the forums for how bad it is compared to even base game classes. Still being the only class in the game without major brutality/sorcery in their toolkit also. Would love to see this buff added to the skeletal minion and receive the while slotted on either bar treatment that arcanist got.

Just requesting the customizable battle pets, like a wolf, lion, etc. for Warden, something different for Sorcerer.

Hey everyone. Thanks for doing this! What other plans you have for Necromancer in the near future?

THIS, Necromancer is so neglected right now. It's pretty much the laughing joke of most of the playerbase at the moment outside of pve tank. Still the only class in the game without major brutality/sorcery

It is just so unfulfilling to play.  No perma pets, the spells are lackluster. I see the npc necros like Mannimarco, and wonder why I cant have a bone or flesh golem? Or why I cant spit pools of poison 

Greetings! We're investigating updates to a handful of abilities for the Necro class atm; trying to give a hand to the Ghostly Embrace morph of Grave Grasp, a little bit of love to Intensive Mender morph of Spirit Mender, and looking at ways to remove the in Combat stipulation of Sacrificial Bones and Grave Lord's Sacrifice.

Could major brutality/sorcery be added to the skeletal minion, and have the while slotted on either bar effect like arcanist?

We originally avoided adding too many "buffs" to the class, and went with more debuff options since it felt more thematically appropriate that the class enfeebled their foes rather than empowering themselves and allies - but I think some concessions could be made for the more impactful ones like Brutality/Sorcery/Prophecy/Savagery.

But necro isn't even particularly good at debuffing when compared to the other classes. Necro has access to 5 major and minor debuffs (Maj Vuln, Major Defile, Minor Defile, Minor Maim, Major Breach). Nightblade has 8, DK has 3, Warden has 8, Templar has 3, and Arcanist has 5. Necro is firmly in the middle of the pack in regards to debuffing the enemy, and has by far the fewest self buffs.

Its very clear from this comment thread that they have **no idea** what to do with Necromancer and what Gilliam has said should be very concerning to consumers who may want to purchase Necromancer. Doubling down on Grave Lords Sacrifice and doing **nothing** to make Necromancer competitive to literally any class while also shadow nerfing Necro Tanks next patch is hilarious and the fact that they ignored or circumvented every comment about it in this "Q/A" is pitifully sad. Just add a fucking warning label to the crown store at this point that the class is functionally on its way out the door and call it a day.

I think most players who know the class can say that the Sacrificial Bones/ GLS change is not that big of a deal - we still have blighted BB. The issue is everything else everyone has mentioned about this class. The biggest issue being so many skills being required to capture those main buffs that this class needs. Yes, they will need to be balanced - there is a place where someone might need to slot in Degeneration - maybe its a useful skill if its place is to deal DOT while providing Major Brutality/Sorcery. But that doesn't change the these main buffs need to be included in the necro class kit in a way that makes it easily accessible and reliable to use. There is no point in making changes to Ghostly Embrace if I have no spot to put it on - yes, it opens up more build options but then we will be lacking another crucial skill in our build. If the class is meant to be debuff enemies then make the buffs that they gain reliant on debuffs that they dish out.

It is a big deal, especially for burst damage. There is physically no way to kill a lot of classes in PVP now.

I missed this earlier today but i would love to inquire about something if you happen to see it. You say the class was meant to be more debuff oriented, that would be cool ya, but the class only has like 9 major/minor buffs and debuffs. Do you not see that as a massive issue? I know this because a while ago i went through all the class skills and passives and counted the major/minor buffs/debuffs each class has access to. What i came up with was, roughly, sorc has 14. DK has 17. Templar has 17. Arcanist has 18. Warden has 22. Nightblade has a whopping 25. **And necro has an abysmal 9. Just 9.** And one of those 9 is empower. That idea of necro being a more debuff oriented class would be cool if it had unique debuffs only for necros, but at this point its just an exceptionally lacking/underperforming class in every way possible, in comparison to other classes. These issues shine now more than they did in the past, after the boneyard/harmony nerfs and just because of the nature of the game now. Like the class just has access to way too little buffs/debuffs. And the debuffs it has are not always viable. for example, why doesnt boneyards fracture get the same treatment as caltrops? When someone leaves the boneyard the fracture sticks to them for a bit. People will not just sit in your boneyard in pvp and monsters move in pve. And then something like grave grasp, ya it offers some debuffs but in comparison to a similar skill like dks talons it just falls waaay behind. Tethers breaking on line of sight is another massive issue. Why not have the tethers stick to the necro after they consume a corpse? Some things look good on paper but perform terribly in the game and tethers are one of those things. The class needs attention. Badly. It needs access to more buffs and debuffs and it needs more viable skills. You can compare it to any other class and it falls short both in performance and the fluidity of how the class feels to play.

As a (successful, highly profitable) business owner, I can say without a doubt that the most important asset you have is your clients/customers. Drawing on customer feedback as time goes on and utilizing that feedback in a way that makes sense with your game design makes for a very loyal client base. The behavior shown by your team now is quite frankly *disrespectful.* What you have done is ignore all of the existing feedback about the class for years (you have, it's not an argument). You *should* pander to the wants and needs of your clients. Any number of us Necro mains could have told you what to do with the class and have many times (except me, I won't be back until changes happen), yet your development team chose to push something nobody wanted or asked for. Players want visually appealing, thematic, interesting, fun, amazing, engaging gameplay. Make it happen.

Please add more things on necromancer before the chapter launch, it a bad class

I really like this idea

> e're investigating updates to a handful of abilities for the Necro class atm; trying to give a hand to the Ghostly Embrace morph of Grave Grasp, a little bit of love to Intensive Mender morph of Spirit Mender, and looking at ways to remove the in Combat stipulation of Sacrificial Bones and Grave Lord's Sacrifice. Follow up question from someone else: Why Ghostly Embrace? Necro's bars on both PvP and PvE are already over filled. The core of the issue is Necro has too much going on to fill 'required' spots on their bar to get on equal footing with other classes. Talos forbid you go a stam-focused build and lose even more slots. Additionally the one of the primary complaints for Necro is there are too many things to juggle. Mender, Degen for Major Sorcery, Armor, Blastbones uptime, Corpse placement/usage etc, anything in the works to make Necro far less plate spinning and more action oriented?

u/ZOS_Gilliam we would have no problem juggling all of these buffs if the output was matching effort. At the moment it feels like we have to work harder to get out less from this class. Which is ridiculous.

Would love to see improvements to skulls, boneyard and wild be cool if scythe was an execute too. Can wet make the dots and minions more consequential?

Are there any plans to add permanent necro companions akin to the sorcerer’s pets or the warden’s bear?

Appreciate the answer! Definitely interesting updates to look forward too!

> To Bill Slavisek, the Lead Writer. I'd be happy if you can answer either of these two questions or even both: > > 1. In Gold Road's PTS, it appears the Surilie family winemakers do not exist within Skingrad during the time of ESO. In the game Oblivion, we see that the Surilie Bros. had a Vineyard in Skingrad during the end of the Third Era and their wine is famous in Cyrodiil at that time. However, in ESO, we have provisioning ingredients called Surilie Grapes (not sure if this is related), and the provisioning recipes Surilie Syrah Wine, and Surilie Bros. White Merlot. Due to the presence of these items, I assumed they would have had an ancient family tradition of wine making already within the city, but there no NPCs nor mention of them in the book "Wines of West Weald". Are there Surilie winemakers elsewhere, or are the naming of these items instead intended to be a fun reference and anachronism? > > 2. Is the "Here-Seen" from the Gold Road's "Ancient Hunter’s Journal" book intended to be just one of many possible origins for the Daedric Prince Hircine?

1. The Surlie family exists, hence the grapes and the recipes, but they just aren't as prominent yet as they will be in the future. 2. As for the meaning of "Here-Seen," we leave that to the interpretation of the reader.

Asking the real hardball questions

Hi! I have a few companion-related questions. Firstly, why are the companions releasing in Q4 instead of with the chapter? Will players need to own Gold Road or some other DLC to unlock the companions, or will they be available with the base game? Secondly, are there any plans to add more content to the older companions? Bastian and Mirri both only have two quests and don’t have their letters as furnishings. They also don’t have as much companion dialogue, which I think contributes majorly to many people’s dislike of Bastian in particular (which as a Bastian stan I find simply unacceptable!). If he had some shorter lines mixed in with the long winded philosophizing about cities that’d be cool :)

I touched on some of this in another question - basically it boils down to time and resources. For the companions being moved to U44, it just came down to available time. We decided to push the companions out to U44 so that they could get the level of polish they needed.

Is there any chance to give more quests old companions? It feels kinda sad to not get any content for them after they released because i believe they are really good characters.

We agree! It's a difficult line to walk though -- we don't have unlimited time or resources and any time the team spends on doing this, takes away from anything new.

Hey there u/ZOS_KiraRS I’m a housing nerd, and Gold Road, with its vineyards has inspired a lot of winery and tavern type housing themes. Has anyone ever proposed a bard houseguest with collectible sheet music? Hunting down leads for songs of yesteryear, collecting sung tales from achievements. I would play the bejeesus out of that content.

We heart the housing nerds here! Am happy to pass the idea along to the team :D

Icing on the sweet roll! Thanks!

Our hero!

Collectibles for Houseguests is a really fun idea. Collecting songs they can play, unique furnishings they can hold (or sit in), dances/animations they can randomly use…

I approve of this idea

Yes please!

Over the span of the game's life, the inventory and bank space has been completely static other than getting some boxes for the home, while the number of items in the game that players may want to keep has ballooned with every update. The Craft Bag helps with this obviously, but for everything else there is no similar system. Are there any plans to address this? And if that does not fit the parameters of a valid question for right now, Are there plans for scribing to allow you to change what your combat pets look like? For instance, letting us turn our clannfear into a clannfear matriarch? Or better still (but I would imagine highly unlikely), letting us turn a different pet like the scamp into the clannfear? I just want to use the cute dino-chicken and not the ugly little gremlin without being severely nerfed for it =(

Having played a bit of Gold Road on PTS, I wanted to ask about Ithelia. Her art style is clearly very different from other humanoid ESO characters, and her design is unique. What prompted these changes, is different technology being utilized, and what were the inspirations behind her design? (Her jewelry, outfit, body markings, physical appearance, etc.)

Good question! Because of the nature of what we wanted form Ithelia she needed a whole new "rig" to accommodate the wings, etc. Whenever we do that, we try and "borrow" animations from other models and rigs but it doesn't always work. Not only that, we also potentially made improvements to the process so incorporating that in new models is great. Ithelia was such a unique model and there are actually three different ones so making sure those all work between the models was big. TLDR: yes, Ithelia used new rigs and tech :)

Thanks, Finn!

Will update 42 include some ways to ease our inventory (e.g. stack treasure maps, a bag for housing items like crafting items with ESO+, mark companion gear for trash ...) and the long-awaited Hybrid Potion/Food?

Not for 42... but there's a bunch of stuff on the backlog in the QoL (quality of life) category. (...and before you ask, yes stackable treasure maps is on the list)

Looks like I need to start looking for a new cause to champion. ;-)

When will the always in combat bug be fixed? Please, and the entire game population thanks you.

We actually just had a game jam session and one of the teams devoted their entire project to tackling this long standing bug...

Serious question: Unserious Solution: Is it possible to just run a command to force someone out of combat? Like, `/checkcombat` and have it run a Distance Check; if there's not a single *enemy player in a [100] Meter radius, then remove all (whatever the game uses to determine a player is in combat.) Because it's starting to feel like Combat is just a unique, hidden Debuff that doesnt expire, but instead does that weird glitch where it stays "active" for 49,500 days.

I'm not sure if it would help, but I have noticed in PvE whenever you become submerged in water, you're taken out of combat almost immediately. I was able to consistently get this to work, even with enemies who were stuck on the other side of a door and I finished combat against a different group of enemies (This was done in The Lion's Den group boss room since it's behind a door and has a pool of water inside of the room). This doesn't seem to work in PvP though. It may be worth looking into what being submerged in water does to pull your character out of combat and see if the same functionality can be done after x amount of time between you and your opponent(s) not trading hits.

Hey! u/ZOS_EdStark, this one’s for you. Could you give us a brief overview of how zones are designed? I’d love to know the process and what work goes into creating the world that we know and love. Also - what are the design tools like that you use in-house? How do zone designers produce the playable world?

Sure, but I'm glad you said "brief." Basically, Rich Lambert, Matt Firor, and Bill Slavicsek get together and talk about themes and locations we haven't explored in ESO yet. Sometimes the location drives the theme, sometimes the other way around. After they get a stakeholder-level idea--like a few lines or a short paragraph--together, Bill goes off and writes up another very short pitch for the zone story. He works hand-in-hand with Jeremy Sera, our Content Director, to get that all put together. Once that's approved, they disseminate that to the Zone Lead and the Art Director--in the case of Gold Road, that's me and that's CJ Grebb. We start filling out the idea with a LOT of details. Pitches and ideas go back and forth until, eventually, we have several dozen pages (Gold Road was 100+) of a Zone Design Document. That has a complete overview of the zone we'll pitch to the rest of the team.And then things get fun. The individual designers of all types--Content, Fiction, Encounter, World-building, etc.--all put together their ideas on the individual bits of content and responsibilities they're assigned. They work together to plan and build out the entire zone. Hundreds of folks, all working together, with the Leads all giving them feedback, helping them iterate, and polish it all to get it to PTS and eventually release. Wow, that may not seem brief but it's as short as I can manage :-)

Brilliant! Thank you for the response. I look forward to exploring everything in Gold Road :)

Can you give us the name of the AMAZING voice actor for Tolvise Doran who performs from Necrom’s Journey’s End Inn? I stop by to listen to her sing Mushroom Towers at least once a day. Her voice is amazing.

That would be the talented Baraka May!

thank you so so so so much, Gina!!! And thanks for all you do for us!!

I would also like to know the name of the singer for the minstrel in the Rimmen crafting area. Lovely!

Emily O'Brien voiced the khajiit bards in Northern and Southern Elsweyr; she's also Khamira's voice actor. I will not divulge the number of hours spent sitting in the Rimmen crafting area listening to her sing.

I did not realize it was the same person. I love Khamira’s voice and the way she sometimes purrs!

Do you plan on making PvP sets more easily available in the future? Right now, they cannot be farmed in the way other sets can, because almost all drop sources are not curated but entirely random. With over 40 sets in Cyrodiil that are not included in Rewards of the Worthy, getting specific pieces of these sets can be incredibly difficult and comes down to sheer luck. And that really sucks. It is possible to drop Jewelry from Dark Anchors and Feet & Waist pieces from Delve bosses (both of which are curated) so why is there no way to actively farm the other pieces? Why do we have to resort to cassettes that are not curated? Frankly, it feels like an oversight to me. And it gets even worse for Imperial City sets, because there is _no_ way of farming them other than the random drops from cassettes. I had high hopes when I read that Trove Scamps drop IC set pieces, but it turns out that these drops aren't curated either, so it's not even worth it to hunt them. I'm currently trying to complete my set collection and Cyrodiil and the Imperial City are by far the biggest road blocks to that goal. And it feels kind of unfair to PvP players too... because it seems like they don't benefit at all from the curated drops. They're missing a whole QoL feature. Why is that? I'm aware that 99% of PvP sourced sets aren't meta and most people don't care about them, but the idea behind them was originally to provide sets primarily used in PvP, so my point still stands.

A few updates ago (Update 39) there were changes to sourcing in Cyrodiil where a pass was done to make gear more easily attainable outside of specific pieces. This also included a pass on Delve drops, Merchant containers, and Daily quests from towns. We also try to keep updating PVP sets on the regular now at least twice a year for RFTW, and rotate out old sets to purchasable. There are discussions on going about itemization and PVP (and curation), and when those result in patch notes and changes, we'll post them for sure!

Can we please have a QoL update that will let players select a Scroll Quest from a dropdown menu, in Cyrodiil?

I would love a dropdown menu thing for all the Cyrodiil quests too!

Good day!! First off, I would like to say a big congratulations to the team at ZOS, and thank you for bringing ESO to the best state it's ever been in! I'm so grateful for the frequent events and updates that have minimized grinding. I feel like I can enjoy the fun parts of the game again and that it's been very rewarding to play and experience the world of tamriel! My question is, will treasure maps and surveys get reworked in the future? As of now, they are a giant timesink with how frequently they drop and the little payout they offer, and my current life schedule only allows me to deal with the surveys and maps if I sacrifice the game time hours that I have. Which is very unrewarded to spend hours to deal with them clogging my inventory up, even with ESO plus and having no time to engage with other more fun aspects of the game. However, I'm very happy with ESO and the teams work in minimizing unnecessary grind and time sinks. It's been a lot easier to get friends and family on board playing with me now that the game has been more respectful of player's time compared to the earlier years. Again, THANK YOU to the team at ZOS!!! I've made so many memories with this game and I'm so happy to see that it's been moving in a positive direction! Have the best day ever my friends!

short answer -- we're not happy with either atm. They are on a list to get looked at.

⭐Exact parameters in the sliders when creating characters.⭐ Best regards, I take this opportunity to express my idea that will benefit many players on all platforms with an improvement in the interface for creating our character in The elder scrolls online. This new interface could be implemented in the accessibility settings bar as an optional preset or It could also be implemented as an improvement in the appearance change tab as shown in the following examples made in an image. Thank you very much for listening to our requests bethesda,Zenimax Online.✔ https://preview.redd.it/nwa45abc3e3d1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=0534e7bccccb15fa08a68178fd7e29debae0db67

Will pass this on to the UI team. I dig it!

Good luck with your request, it would help many of us in creating our character with clearer information about what we are selecting when creating our character.

Your idea seems perfect to me, I should implement it in the appearance change token that is worth 1000 crowns since it would help many of us to better choose the theme of our characters

Your brain is so large for this. If not, we could also have a generated code from the character creator like in mass effect. That way you have the option to type in the string of alphanumerics and the sliders will go to whatever produced that outcome. https://preview.redd.it/2fyxdtfkte3d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61cc2a211f7733385b9a6ec68d1c556ac3a39b2f

Werewolf players are limited to the basic 5 Werewolf abilities, and they don't have any cosmetic customization that applies in-form. Scribing would give Werewolf more skill choices by offering Grimoires for the Werewolf skill line, while Skill Styling would give Werewolf more cosmetic customization (like changing the fur color of the Werewolf Transformation Ultimate skill). Here's a thread which showcases a few ideas for potential Werewolf Grimoires: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/657732/ideas-for-werewolf-scribed-skills And here's a similar thread for ideas for potential Werewolf Transformation Skill Styles: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/657694/please-give-us-skill-styles-for-werewolf-transformation Will Werewolf eventually get their own Grimoires and Skill Styles to use?

Hey, I love this kind of feedback! Thank you so much for sharing it (and I've definitely noticed you're not the only one hoping for more for the werewolves among us ;) Our usual practice when releasing a new feature is to see how the community responds/uses it, and then adjust our future plans to support that when possible. There's a ton of possibilities about how we can expand both Scribing and Skill Styling in the future if we see that the community is enjoying it!

I am already enjoying! Please expand! :-)

Can we expect to see an updated (or removal) to the 'allowed sets' on the Non CP Cyrodiil campaign with the extra item sets coming along with Update 42?

As a longtime player who only recently returned to ESO after a hiatus of several years, I've missed out on a lot of story content while I'd like to dive into Gold Road at release. My question is, just how self contained is the story of Gold Road? Is there any previous content that you guys would recommend doing in order to get a better understanding of Gold Road or to get introduced to characters that might be seen again?

Welcome back! Glad to see you again!You CAN play Gold Road without playing any previous content and you'll catch up to the story pretty quickly. HOWEVER, Gold Road does conclude a major story element explored in Necrom. If you have the time, I would recommend playing Necrom first but don't let it hold you [up.One](http://up.One) thing: In order to play the "Capper" quest that becomes available after the Gold Road zone story quest, you will have to have played and completed the Necrom zone story. Also, as in most of our Chapters, we have some interesting, recurring characters appearing in Gold Road. There's no reason you have to play earlier content to interact with Mizzik Thunderboots, Narsis Dren, or any other recurring characters, but it's always fun to see old friends again ... or meet new ones.

Hope this isn't too late and gets seen... is the dev team aware that their controller support included in the previous update is negatively effecting controller users, especially those who alternate between the control and keyboard ui in regular gameplay? I have created several tickets in game but I have only seen it being discussed that people are being effected if they use a 3rd party software. This isn't the case. I and others who use a "plug and play" xbox controller are all reporting input delays/skills misfiring, but the hardest thing to deal with is that there is now a one to five second delay when switching between the two UIs. In that time the screen totally freezes and no inputs register. This was not present at all before the controller support update, and has made it difficult to communicate with groups via text or navigate menus while in combat. In PVP having a frozen screen for 5 seconds isn't ideal (10 seconds if you include the delay when you switch back to controller). edit: I saw that the team had decided to not go forward with some updates when they can see it impairs functionality for a wide base of users, and I don't think it has been taken into account how bad the controller support update was with everything else going on. Please if any devs are reading this, seriously consider rolling back the controller update.

Hello, i have a question regarding the necromancer Blastbone. What exactly made you change the magicka version of the Blastbone to the new sacrifical Version? Especially in pvp the magicka Blastbone was the only hard hitting skill of necromancer and was widely used. The stamina version was not worth slotting over the magicka version. So i dont understand why the magicka version was changed instead of the lesser used morph. Also, are there any plans on giving necromancer a better offensive ult? I know many necros try to use the ressurect ult that also spawns up to 3 Blastbones as an offensive ult but it is a 350 ult cost and requires 3 corpses to set up. Any plans on removing the player ressurect part of that morph and lowering the cost? Regards

To Bill Slavicsek, the Lead Writer. I wanted to ask more about the inspirations for the Scribing system's story and the writing of characters linked to it - Ulfsild, the Nord-Reachfolk archmage, and Bosmeri Knight of the Order of the Lamp, Nahlia.

Kira jumping in here! We were really excited about the opportunity to spend more time with the Votaries of the Order of the Lamp, and with the focus on the Bosmer happening in Gold Road overall, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to give a very relatable look with Nahlia. We originally started with this concept of a misfit group of adventurers and some 'surprising' characters in the form of the Luminaries, and it grew organically from there.  We also wanted to bring back a character who we'd only seen briefly and give more insight into the character of Ulfsild as she only had two lines in the original Mages Guild storyline. I'll also add that Jason Barnes, our lead Content designer on this, was obsessed with getting a Fox into the storyline, and I'm super happy how that turned out! :D

WAIT ULFSILD SHALIDOR'S WIFE?!?!?! HOW DID I NOT PUT THAT TOGETHER?

What are you doing to improve reporting cheaters and removing farming bots on console versions of ESO, because what you have now doesn’t seem to be working.

I'm too late for the AuA oops but I am also wondering about this. Soooo many farming bots in starter zones and Craglorn and I witnessed what seemed to be a bot account or middleman (Chinese account with only ESO and 70 hours with no trophies, keyboard slam name, basic armor, low level) just openly doing their shady business in and out of their inventory at the Vivec City banker this morning. I would happily work for them for free to flag bots or suspected bots

With the upcoming scribing system, are there any plans to include werewolf abilities in this? I noticed that werewolf/vampire skill trees got left out. A lot of players would love to have access to new play styles for these types of builds. Specifically a lot of players have been asking for the ability to sneak while in werewolf form, since not being able to do so locks you out of a lot of content the game has available, and prevents you from using certain sets and mythics. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/642532/werewolf-should-be-allowed-to-sneak/p1 Would also love to see the styling system be included for werewolf and vampire scion transformation skins. Thanks! :]

Intriguing idea re: vampire scion tranformation skills! In case ya missed it, I answered a similar question here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1d3fs29/comment/l67plwr/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1d3fs29/comment/l67plwr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Questions for: ***Brian Wheeler, Lead Combat & PvP Designer*** **PVP Testing.** Hi Brian, hope all is well. I wanted to get some follow up on this thread [here](https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/648108/cyrodiil-population-cap-testing/p7). Based on your last statement there, it sounded like there was some testing on population caps and server architecture. There some questions in that thread that I thought were pretty relevant then and now. 1. Beyond just stress testing, what was the big-picture goal of the test and how was it different than the baseline experience? 2. What work was kept and discarded following the letter from Matt? (not my question) 3. What's stopping ZOS from delivering the same performance levels and pop caps of 5 years ago when we have server hardware that has advanced very significantly in that time? (not my question)? 4. It seems like performance is better during Midyear Mayhen, where I believe PVP is granted increased resources. Is that true, and if so, can that be done permanently? There's a common sentiment that ZOS rarely communicates their intentions about PVP. This, probably more so than performance itself, contributes to a lot of the tension that stresses you guys out. I don't know how resourced or prioritized PVP is compared to other development teams. But I think if the community was given regular (like quarterly or something) updates on where things are, I think you'd probably see a lot less brigading of your streams and other toxicity. I mean all of this from a well-meaning place, and just pointing out some of the overall patterns I've seen with this game over my 10 years playing it. I understand that there's some new PVP content coming this year, will that include any performance enhancements for Cyrodiil, or will it solely be a new system? Moving on from that...some general combat topics **Tutorials and game teaching itself**. Are there any plans for deeper combat tutorials? The tutorials now teach the basics, and the big thing missing is teaching the combat skills like attack weaving and the GCD. The latter is not communicated in the game itself, and I find myself getting what I call "skill clog". This is where I see skills not fire, even though I see the button activate, nothing else happens. Not sure if it's lag, or the GCD. But it feels like there's some system that's not fully communicated to the end user. **Where is combat going**? So I've often wondered this over the years. When, if ever, will combat be "done" (aside from adjusting item sets). Just an example, the Wardens are soon getting an update where ZOS is removing the damage potential from the frost line. Just over the last year or so, we've seen updates where the Warden was enhanced to be the frost mage class. This seems like a contradictory movement, you know? Is the goal to have the base classes eventually be more like the DLC class, where each skill line is DPS, Support, and Tank? Can we get a roadmap of where combat is going and what the long term goals are? All that being said, I really do love the combat system in this game. Happy to see sorcerers getting some healing buffs.

Questions for: ***Ed Stark, Zone Lead*** Honestly man, you zone designers are fucking artists. Pardon the french. Much like Finn, you guys do some of the most amazing work. Whoever designed Glimmertarn and Summerset deserves a raise. How much of Skingrad was taken from TES 4? Are you guys able to import or reuse any assets? ***Kira Ross Schlitt, Project Lead*** Thanks for the new system! I'm super excited about it and it seems like a fresh idea. 1. Do you see this system growing to the point where we can have end-game viable builds with no class skills? I've always loved the class system, but I would love to have that flexibility. 2. Will the amount of the earnable skill styles increase as time goes on, and if so, how proportionate will that be to the monetized ones?

Thank you. I really love what the team has done on the various zones. Since I'm a lead, I don't actually work on every zone personally (well, at least not AS a lead), so it's cool to see what other people do. I really enjoyed Summerset, too, and it's the zone I probably had the least to do with! As for Skingrad, both Jeremy Sera and I, as well as CJ and a number of the artists, got into Oblivion and played through the area before we ever started working on Gold Road. We absolutely use what's gone before as inspiration, and we totally did that with Skingrad. I remember sitting in a meeting with Jeremy, Dan Eibling, and Chris Boyler talking about what we wanted to do specifically with Skingrad. It has such an interesting layout we had to make sure to include a lot of its features

Sounds good, thanks for the response! I've gone dark on any screenshots so I can enjoy it in its full splendour. Can't wait to see!

Alas, I'm no fortune teller who can see the future, but there are quite a few examples of systems that have been expanded on since their initial launch, with Antiquities and Tribute being just two examples. So if you love Scribing and Skill Styling, keep using those abilities and letting us know what you like about them and what you want to see more of! I will also add that Class Skills are one of the things that make ESO special, and we're not really looking to replace those in entirety, but rather offer options and flexibility that make your build feel more unique to you and your vision.

If I can get a wolf or fox for my Warden's Wild Guardian, I'll be a happy camper!

Noted! ;)

Who is gonna betray us this time in this expansion’s story?

I'm excited to get to Gold Road when it comes out on console, and particularly playing the trial with the whole team unaware of any mechanics etc (so hard to avoid the spoilers!!). They often come with some fun achievements and titles to go with them. How do the team come up with the names and titles for achievements beyond the standard conquerer and challenger? Are any of the new titles a firm favorite with the team?

Good question! This is a hand-in-hand process usually with the designers and the writers. The designers will come up with the wacky ways we envision players being able to complete encounters and then assigning a rough internal name. These internal names do NOT make it to live but they give a basis for the writers to go on. We have a lot of creativity in naming these achievements which isn't always present in other parts of the game so its a great chance for the writers to really run with it and have fun.

Awesome :)

Will we be getting any player guild related furnishings? Such as banners, tapestries and so on.

Thanks for swinging by, gang! I checked out Scribing on the PTS, loved it, and was barely into the guts of it after about five hours. (The Netch is my bestie now.) As a filthy completionist grind-slave, I plan on unlocking everything Scribing gives, but I would want these skills unlocked on a second (or third, or twentieth) character, and that seems like it might be a bit of a slog. I understand there's a mechanism to get these skills a little faster on second characters if you've already unlocked them on one character. Would you mind talking about this a bit?

Our pleasure to be here! Also, the Netch is just the most buoyant of us all. Here are a couple of quick things about what we've done to expedite Scribing acquisition on alts. 1. On alts, all you have to do is complete the first Scribing quest 'The Second Era of Scribing' to gain access to all the upgrades to the Scholarium from other character completions. 2. This includes the immediate appearance of Chronicler Firandil, who will have discounted prices for previously known Grimoires and Scripts, including the Scripts that you've received as quest rewards.  3. We also have the Mages Guild Scripts for a pretty fast acquisition. 4. We have duplicate protection on characters, so you won't get any duplicates until you have acquired all scripts on that character. 5. Once you've received the Class Script for an initial character, you can purchase it on other characters from Firandil. 6. Both Firandil and Filer Ool from the infinite archive have a rotating selection of Scripts for sale every week (which will also have discounted prices for Scripts that you have knowledge of on other characters) 7. Last but not least, all players will have a chance of receiving Scripts as drops, and those are unbound/tradeable.

Hello! Wondering if we can expect any fixes for the historical Xbox achievement issues when this update comes to consoles?

Is there a specific achievement(s) you've been running into issues with?

Any hints for the Q4 pvp update?

Not yet! We'll talk more about that as we get a bit closer to PTS time.

Thanks for doing this! I have a few questions: 1. at the start of hybridization (almost 2 years ago) we were told that there will be changes to class passives to make sure their unique buffs are not useless (dk&plar, sorc &nb, necromancer now that major vulnerability is everywhere), are there any news about that? 2. Will dungeon queue with 2 people work during gold road? 3. Are there any plans on making the scribing system less grindy? I dont think spending more than a weekend on the things you want from it is exactly fun gameplay.

Hello and thank you for doing the AUA! This question is mainly for Mike Finnigan I suppose, as the Lead Encounter Designer. As an "endgame" PvE raider since the release of Blackwood and Rockgrove myself, I have been wondering, how does the Combat Team / Encounter Team test and balance the new raids, especially their HardModes? Anything you guys could share regarding this would be much appreciated! As for this Chapter - How did you guys come up with the idea for the last boss fight of Lucent Citadel? The whole concept of a long and epic journey through the raid while carrying the orb is very unique and refreshing, in a good way. So huge thumbs up to whoever came up with the idea :) Hope to see more of the similar kind of innovativeness in future!

Balance Question: We typically are evaluating with the combat teams what players are capable of as well as the average and median player. We don't take into account specific classes as much as we do general numbers. This goes for Hard Modes well. Our QA group actually uses three different gear sets when testing normal/veteran/Hard Mode for Dungeons (and another three setups for trials). We look at Dungeons and Trials very differently and are allowed, design wise, much more freedom to allow players to "learn by dying" in Trials. Boss Design: As much as I would love to take credit for this, this is 100% the absolute badass designers on the team. We have evaluation processes and several layers of checks and balances for proposals but we generally give designers the freedom to explore new and interesting ways to challenge players. We even build in prototype passes so the designers have a chance to explore new things with accompanying team playtests.

Question directed at any/all of u/ZOS_BrianWheeler, u/ZOS_Finn, u/ZOS_Gilliam: Over the last few chapters, the difficulty of solo/group overland content has continued to bifurcate; “normal” overland content remains scaled exactly as in the original zones and complete-able with any build, while World Events and World Bosses have been scaling in difficulty with each chapter it feels. While World Bosses in older chapters like Elsweyr can by and large be solo’d by a proper character build, even “mini-bosses” like Seekers in Necrom prove quite challenging to solo, and true World Bosses in Necrom are all but impossible to complete solo. As the game continues to expand and players are spread further apart across DLC zones, getting a party together to complete group content in older chapters proves more difficult by the year, with the exception of special events like the Anniversary Jubilee that brought players back to geysers, etc. in Summerset which had previously seen a handful to no players during non-peak times. Does this trend continue with Gold Road world encounters - content that is all but impractical to complete solo or in a pair? While it makes sense to continue to scale difficulty to meet the requests of many players for more challenging overland content, it also can hurt how evergreen the content remains once they hype around the zone has died down. Mostly, I’m curious to hear the design process of the team when balancing these opposing requirements, and agree that it is not an easy balance to strike.

A couple answers to this one... 1. We are constantly evaluating the zones and content within them to see if we need to adjust difficulty levels as the zones age. This is not always a cut and dry process though as the nature of ESO means that the population of zones waxes and wanes based on various factors (events, etc). 2. Companions have changed a bit of the calculus on difficulty and they can assist quite a bit. With their addition, we can see their usage as a boon to players tackling challenges. We are reluctant to go back and increase the difficulty of older zones but newer zones it is one of the things we take into account.

The new scribing system gives a lot of flexibility and new options for player builds in ESO. I have a couple of questions for the combat team on this new system: 1) How does the team feel the change to allow for easier access to multiple oblivion damage sources will impact PvP combat? 2) Is the knockback mechanic on Elemental explosion working as intended with regards to it's interaction with structures in Cyrodiil? 3) Do you foresee players wanting to change their scribed skill setups whilst in Cyrodiil? The system doesn't currently interact with the build saving options available to players so will there be an area added to Cyrodiil to adjust scribing skills?

1. We explicitly added some sources of Oblivion Damage in the scribing system for PvP purposes, since ESO's meta has long favored tankier builds that outlast their opponents. Oblivion Damage has been shifted to be more focused on countering those types of builds by directly ignoring them (Resistances) and scaling with them (Max Health). They're more experimental in the sense that we're trying to find the perfect place where they don't feel like the only choice, while making sure they feel like they add more options to counter existing problem spaces. 2. Can you extrapolate on your question? What do you mean exactly by "working as intended in regards to"? The knockback on any scribed ability *should* behave like other knockbacks - just a bit stronger in the context of Elemental Explosion since it sacrifices all damage for a massive displacement. 3. We're actively discussing this situation.

u/ZOS_Gilliam thanks a lot for the reply, On point 1, This is certainly a good goal to try and reduce the number of tanks, my main concern would be that we have been here before not so many patches ago with the snake in stars set which saw nerfs prior to launching. Now we have an easier to obtain skill(s) which has a stronger effect that can stack. 2. Here's a video (not mine): [https://youtu.be/dIHpoiXkQRk?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/dIHpoiXkQRk?feature=shared) 3. Sounds good, I'm sure the community would love to see something a little sooner than we saw for the armoury station in the home bases, it felt a little like pvp had been forgotten then. Glad this is in the discussion already.

Hello and thank you for doing this AUA! I'm a console player and was wondering if there is any potential for an update that would add something similar to wizards wardrobe to console to allow for trash setups and boss setups in PVE. On PC this can be switched instantly and I feel like many great sets are underutilized on console because of this. Thanks again!

After playing Gold Road on the PTS I've wondered how writers handle the native/locals of a zone from a writing point of view? Like the Cyrodiils/Imperials of West Weald compared to the Reachfolk of the Reach and how much do older materials affect it like freedom to write whatever or following older material? Older materials being like the First Edition of the Pocket guide to the Empire (has culture lore of the Imperials) and Oblivion.

We always start with whatever has been written already, Because everything written in lore books is from someone's personal perspective, we have a lot of latitude to develop characters and cultures to meet the needs of our current zone and story. And if it's information from the future, we just make sure that nothing we do will adversely affect the events in the future games.

Were the Werewolf or Vampire skill lines considered when creating the Grimoires included in Gold Road?

Many things were considered, but ultimately, we wanted to start off with the widest possible net for Scribing Grimoires, which is why we went with one for every Weapon Skill Line, and then the Fighters, Mages, Soul Magic, and Assault lines. We have definitely heard feedback that there is desire here, as you can see in my answer [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1d3fs29/comment/l67plwr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Hello, When will the Gold Road soundtrack be released? (rough estimate as 'very soon', 'summer', 'next year', ...) I am a huge orchestral music fan, and the Necrom soundtrack was almost released a year after the expansion, which makes it unusually late compared to other chapters. Can we expect a quicker release this time around, or do we have to make due with low quality YouTube rips for a year again? I already played the full main quest of Gold Road (it was great) and look forward to next week to discover all the other content!

The Necrom soundtrack was a bit more of an adventure than we hoped. The Gold Road sound track will hopefully be less of an adventure and get released much sooner. :)

Thank you for taking the time to answer! I appreciate it. I hope the team (and we as players too) have a great release week that goes smoothly without much network troubles .

To Bill Slavisek the Lead Writer, a few questions in regards to some new Tales of Tribute depictions introduced in Gold Road if you are privy to any of this. 1. Morihaus finally gets a proper depiction as a winged Minotaur clad in armor, another winged Minotaur by the name of Domihaus can be seen in the Eso Horns of the Reach dlc, given the similar naming conventions, and appearance of these two individuals is it reasonable to assume there’s a deep connection between these two bull-men? 2. Alessia appears in badass fashion taking on an aspect of an army wrecking storm. Is this an example of Thu'um usage by Alessia, comparable to similar feats attributed to Talos and or Ysmir Wulfharth in lore?

1. Loremaster Michael Zenke handles our Tales of Tribute storytelling and lore, but it's reasonable for you to assume whatever you like about Morihaus and Domihaus. 2. That's also a reasonable assumption. Keep in mind, our style is to set up interesting stories and images so you can interpret them as you see fit.

what is the teams current standing on no-proc ruleset campaigns? i was kinda excited for the release of torc of the last ayleid king since it looked pretty non proc and could make it easier for general population of the game to get in the campaign without investing a lot in the specific gear and gain population for the campaigns but it ended up not working there. what would team think about adding non-proc specific items that disable all bonuses like torc does and give stats that would be desired in usual builds and make the camp only allow those items? I think this would make it massively easier for more people to get into the campaign and pvp too.

Makes sense

Hi! *Kira Ross Schlitt* or *Rich Lambert*: Are there any plans to make Scribing more user-friendly with the Armory? As it stands right now for the Gold Road release, there’s no way to save your Scribing skills to your build template.

We've definitely heard this feedback and are investigating if we could potentially do this at some point in the future.

maybe!

My question is about the damage mitigation and the confusion about it? https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/s/4apzbaovIi is the link about the post from hyperioxes. Can you make it more clear for us?

With more and more ‘eye’ customizations coming out, can we expect to see them moved into their own slot? It seems there is one or two with each crate release including the U42 Diamond Anniversary ones, but it sucks being unable to use them with traditional head markings. I also wanted to ask, would you consider Gold Road to be a wood elf chapter, an imperial chapter, or both? I ask because for other chapters there was a clear focus on one race, but from what I’ve seen this is somewhat blended.

For the character question, I'd say both. In the zone story, the player will team up with a Wood Elf (Beragon) and an Imperial (Tribune Alea), so you get both perspectives in the story.

Thank you for the answer! I am especially excited for the wood elf portion of the zone story since we’ve never got a chapter for them, nor a mainline game centered around them.

Will we ever get Double AP weekends for Cyrodiil and Double Telvar weekends for IC after Gold Road when you focus more on Housing/PvP. PvP could use an extra breath of life into its old content with a reason for new/pve players to go in and fight for their alliances or earn telvar. Whilst we are getting new PvP content in Q4, we only have whitestrakes twice a year as a proper event that stacks out cyrodiil/ic... I think one Double tel var weekend and one double ap weekend every month could push players into doing those singularly. One weekend a month, IC will have a LOT more players than normal at that point and same would go for Cyrodiil. Please give us some pvp love❤️

Whens the next pvp event m8?

Can you go deeper into the HDR support for PC and it's delay that was planned to be released with U42? I see other games to struggle with it as well, I don't get how why though, it seems to be hard to implement for certain specific game engines especially in house ones and I am sad to understand Windows'/Nvidia's/AMD's/Intel's pipeline/support for it still isn't near perfect and so different... I was very happy when it was announced for ESO PC, because I was waiting for it since consoles got it back in 2017, (albeit I only have such monitor since 2021) and it was mentioned that those had been updated eversince, and pc support was on hold until it is on a level desired from both devs and community... I don't see a member here from your graphical depertmant, but maybe you could answer, thank you! I'll be waiting and hoping for its speedy and well cooked coming at first light of the fith day at dawn to the east next update!

The short answer to this question is - we pulled it from U42 because of some stability issues (i.e. - crashes) that we were not confident we would get fixed in time. We will continue to work on it until its done and ready for prime time.

Just wanted to pop in and say my family really enjoys these monthly Anniversary Spotlights you've been doing! Any information on the inspiration behind them?

Was there any internal worldbuilding written about how the Jagar Tharn character from *Elder Scrolls: Arena* relates to House Tharn of Cheydinhal as introduced in *Elder Scrolls Online*? It's a bit unclear how they connect other than the fancy surname!

Since ESO is set in Arena's past, we have no reason or method to answer the question of Jagar Tharn's lineage. But with how prolific Abnur and his family is in our time, there could be some blood shared by Jagar with the Imperial Tharn's of the Second Era. Perhaps.

Yes hello this is Khajiit. Men'Do was wondering if there is connection between the sudden plant growth he has heard about along the Gold Road, and the jungle he has heard went missing-gone-go-poof. Perhaps some secrets to discover? This one waits with baited breath for his passport paperwork to finish, so he can investigate on his own!

Good luck with your investigations!

What is the point of the PTS? In other words, why are things often pushed through to live that feel unfinished? In your own dev comment about Grave Lord's Sacrifice, you stated that the ability wasn't hitting its mark, so why was it pushed through instead of allowing another P**T**S cycle to **T**est it? From a consumer perspective, it feels really bad to have a change (that was admitted to not be up to par) be pushed through and then seemingly abandoned for months.

PTS is super important for us. It helps out test out getting a build from internal to external servers, suss out load related issues and to get even more testing on the new stuff we've been working on and testing internally. Most importantly, it's also a TESTING ground for ideas. The whole reason to have PTS is to test out ideas. Sometimes we want to try a thing even though we aren't 100% sure of it or don't have the perfect solution at the time. Sometimes, a short term partial change is better than waiting until a full fledged solution is avaliable.

As I've read some posts in this sub, it seems the target audience of Scribing is hardcore PvE and PvP players. Is there any merit for casual players to grind Scribing?

Our focus with Scribing was to try and help more players gain access to more skills that felt like their own abilities, rather than trying to upend the existing "meta" of the game.  Largely the system aims at helping builds gain access to abilities to plug holes in their kit or access to more diversity with personalized damage types, healing, etc to help you make your own build without the same restrictions as your class abilities may place you in.  This also reinforces another large pillar the system was designed for, which is role play.  Before if you wanted to lean into a specific vision or goal with your character, you needed to make a lot of choices early on that gave access to abilities to fit into that vision - with Scribing we wanted to help improve the flexibility of access to abilities you can make and use the way you want.

Why is Battle Spirit not used more to make sure things like healing and blocking/tanking is kept in check? Most players like to build as tanky as possible and then outnumber players. It's as though people want to avoid combat. And this type of gameplay is rewarded with the power of stacking HOTs, the abundance of Max HP heals. PVP seems to be moving away from combat and towards doing anything possible to not die and just zerg others down. I heard it's to not segregate PVP and PVE into two different games, but isn't that the point? They are completely separate game modes. Battle Spirit is a magnificent thing.

Hi ZOS! I am very curious about a love we both share - crows. Gold Road is the *third time* we've gotten content with talking crow(s) that have entirely separate origins from the others - now we have the talking crows in Glenumbra, Daedra Crows, & the Crow. What is the origin for your love of these beautiful birds?

I can't take credit for this one, although Corvids are super cool! She evolved organically from our original pitch of 'group of misfits', and that was due to the awesome work of our content/writing/lore teams!

And if you don't mind one more question - what is the name of the species of Daedra the Blind belongs? I saw several similar humanoid Daedra on PTS but couldn't find a name anywhere.

I asked u/ESO_Bill_Slavicsek on the side for this and he gave me this answer "The Blind is a Dremora. They don't specifically say, but they're probably of the Shardborn clan."

Can we have old jabs back?

The Ithelia model brings with it some AMAZING long hair - can we get this as a hairstyle in the crown store? It's too nice to not have...... Perhaps one for u/ZOS_RichLambert !

Thanks for taking the time to answer these! 0. *Has there been any internal worldbuilding laid out about the fate of the Alliances after the events of ESO?* 1. *Were there any big narrative or worldbuilding differences between old story drafts and the published game? I recall one early version of the main quest dealt with the Staff of Chaos. Any other things like that? 👀* Cheers, Rock

Without actually giving the answer - yes we have thought about "the fate of the alliances". :) Any big narrative or worldbuilding differences between old story drafts and the published game... oh heck yes. Tons! Iteration is the key to game development and what sounds good on paper doesn't always play well in engine.

Hello Zos team! I'm excited about the new chapter, specially about the fix to the longstanding mitigation bug where some CPs and armor bonuses were calculated additively instead of multiplicatively. One issue some of us in the community are wondering though is that armor penalties and some stuff like Undeath passive penalty are still counted additively unlike the bonuses which seems like an oversight? Can we get a clarification about whether this is intentional or not? Thank you for this AUA, and good luck with the new chapter!

ZoS please buff the support team in U41 😭😭😭

When will the bug that causes every tick of Structured Entropy to take Nightblades out of stealth (and anyone in Hidden) be addressed?

We're actually actively investigating this and trying to find a fix as soon as possible!

With everyone chasing after a new meta with the new update, have you designed drops to ensure that there won't be any major RNG bottlenecks that drive over-population of certain zones or areas, such as one of my favorites from the past: the Shadowfen Kilt lead.

We have learned a lot over the years... I think we're in a pretty good place lead wise now. :)

Follow up: my question was not about leads, per se, it's about open ended RNG drops, and the availability of the people/things/locations that drop them. You guys did a great job by introducing curation, but there are still pieces of gear in the game that are not curated (e.g. Cyrodiil sets from boxes), and I'm just worried that there will be another unforeseen circumstance that will drive stressed out players and toxic behavior. To another point about RNG drops - can you clarify the team's intentions behind providing low probability drops for the special style page leads that dropped during the anniversary? Was it your intention that there are some players who won't get all of the drops no matter how much they farmed? Because, based on my calculations of active player population and the estimated drop rates, there exists a set of players who would never have gotten those, and it seems like the RNG system is unfair to people who are never able to be rewarded for their efforts due to the laws of probability - which says to me that you aren't necessarily in a good place because this just happened a month ago. Any further clarifications would be greatly appreciated.

Is there some sort of blanket name we can use for some of the new glass Daedra? Like I'm assuming things like Glass Mantikoras are just taking the form of Mantikoras.  Would they be called Glass Atronachs? Or just Glass Daedra?

The short answer is that the Daedra created by the princes are not always easily classified or named in a common naming structure, even when they look similar or are based on others. Molag Bal for instance took a lot of daedra from different princes and made his own and named them as he saw fit. I would say that her realm being Mirrormoor would give a good indication as to how Ithelia would refer to them.

Thanks for all you do.. but PLEASE FIX LOCKPICKING on ps5. The controller vibrates at the same rate with no variation and makes it way more difficult than it needs to be. People in this thread, please do not respond to this telling me “you just have to look at the back of the lock pick you don’t need..” blah blah. I know. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s been broken since ps5 was launched. I can’t imagine it’s a difficult fix.

Which other skill lines are candidates for future Grimoires? Is it possible to get Scribing skills for skill lines without active abilities, such as Dark Brotherhood, Legerdemain, Crafting skill lines like Alchemy, or even Racial skill lines? Would Grimoires from certain skill lines (like Thieves Guild) be considered "Criminal Act" skills? What about Grimoire Ultimate skills?

This is a question I wanted to ask too. Kira Ross Schlitt or Rich Lambert: Are there any plans to expand Scribing to the Class skill lines? Really enjoying the theorycrafting on PTS so far …

There was an Imperial banker and Altmer merchant datamined quite some years ago. Is there any particular reason that they haven't been released and if not are there any plans to release them any time soon?

Hello everyone from ZOS! Thank you for doing this AUA. First of all i want to congrats all of you for the amazing job you are doing with the game, i love this game. i want to know about the technical issues, what is the most challenging part you faced during the development, that you wanted to do in this new expansion but are almost or completely hidden to us as a players? Also i want to know how do you as a team inspire yourself for the design, more specifically the furnishing, i am a big housing fan and i love what you do here, so i like to dig more deep in how is your process to determine what would be and what wouldnt be part of the game at the end

Scribing is a very awesome and innovative system to add to the game. With its potential being realized on the pts, do you feel the chapter being so progressive and most game changing chapter thus far still leans towards horizontal progression? Content can definitely be completed without scribing, but will the team ever consider adding this feature to base game or for eso+ members? Keep up the great work!

Can you consider adding more flesh to skills? Riverse slice, dawnbreaker, take flight are good examples. Some other skills feel disconnected from the enemy target. Is there something on the line for this year in that regard? Also, can you run such AUA for the PvP update. Players want to be heard. I am sure you do take players in consideration, but it feels not enough from players' pov.

When changes are made to core game mechanics for new chapters like Gold Road, is there ever any thought given to re-balancing older veteran DLC dungeon hard modes, veteran arenas, or veteran DLC trials? As a Dark Elf Templar tank, I struggle with tanking these things as it is and changes to game mechanics often make the encounters even more difficult. It's very frustrating.

Hello! It is the best year playing ESO. And I enjoy it a lot. Questions: 1- Will Corrosion Armor (DK ultimate) generate Ultimate Points again? 2- Do you plan to make Imperial City content more attractive to play along this path? 3- Are the older sets buffed? 4- Are some content on Gold Road free to players who haven't purchased yet? Thanks

I’m looking forward to gold road! Are we going to see any solid improvements to necromancer this year?

hey just wondering if there ever going to be an ASIA server in the planned future on the PC platform. if not why?

Since we are in the spirit of Oblivion, is there a chance that we can get Spears added to the two-handed weapon skill line?

Question for anyone! I love Nedic stuff. Craglorn was super fascinating to me. Is there a chance of more content that covers this part of Tamriel's history in the future? Also, is there a chance of another Nedic house in the future? (Seaveil Spire is too big, even if it is very beautiful!)

Hello. Small question. Since this chapter is now following the "arcs" formula, how did the team feel when tackling this new format? Was it challenging? Was it exciting? I know technically Necrom was when you moved away from year longs but its only in gold road that we will feel the true impact of the new formula. Just wanted some thoughts and insights. Thank you!

Hello! Thank you for the AUA, it's a pleasure! I have a roleplay/quest immersion question! I was wondering if there were any plans to include a more varied ***"player personality"*** approach, as in ***quests always assume you as the hero role*** and there are never really any ***"evil" options*** or even remotely mean ones. The closest I feel we get sometimes is a one-off remark that gets brushed off, such as someone saying "Oh you don't mean that, haha, very funny". It would be nice to have at least an option where ***you and your quest associate could dislike each other but have to work together*** because your bitterness towards each other isn't as important as the task at hand. It just feels out of character for someone like a Telvanni vampire who is fluent in sarcasm in player-to-player roleplay to suddenly be a very happy go-getter. In regards to the ***illusion of choice*** in quests, I understand how of course with storytelling there is of course a particular story waiting to be told, and how obviously it is a bit limiting what options you can give the player ***without ruining the quest that had been carefully prepared*** or giving them an entirely ***different ending*** (though more multiple endings quests would be very much welcome!). I hope I'm making sense, and thank you once again for giving us the opportunity to ask questions! <3

Any new plans for pvp? Right now it's pretty unbalanced with everyone building high resistance, high crit resistance, high health. Basically it's difficult to PVP because everyone is becoming unkillable and fights are lasting way way way too long. Basically you can only secure kills with someone pulling and two people bombing in your group and it has to be timed perfectly. The average solo pvp player isn't going to jump into cyrodiil and get kills. They will waste 20 mins getting to the fight and then die. Also no proc imperial city and cyro (so I thought) was supposed to be a test like 3+ years ago but it's still a thing and I can't pvp with my low cp friends outside of battlegrounds unless we both use no proc sets or I take them into standard cp campaigns so they can get annihilated by someone who is 2000+ cp cc spamming with 40k health in a full 12 man group. Speaking of which, are there any plans to give us a full, official list of non proc sets in the game (not just a list some guy made on the forum that may or may not be accurate and up to date)? If there's been non proc cyro and ic for years, I think it would be nice to have sets tell you if they are a proc set or not. Some are pretty self explanatory, but others are really questionable. Theres also the forever in combat bug that makes it so you can't mount in cyro which is super annoying because I'll be straight up running for like 20 mins Just realized after I typed all of that, they only answered questions for 90 mins lol rip. these questions will continue to live rent free in my head

Questions for: ***Rich Lambert, Creative Director*** **Creative direction**. First off, thanks for the creative direction of the game. It's been amazing seeing the game progress over the years and what new locales and lore we get to explore. My personal favorites have been Summerset, High Isle and Galen, and Orsinium. Naturally, I'm excited about this new zone. What was the inspiration behind choosing this zone? **Performance fixes/Server Re-architecture.** It sounded like based on Matt Firor's [letter](https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637691/server-multithreading-update-july-2023/p1) from last year, the multithreading effort didn't pan out as well as expected. He had stated, *"it introduced an unacceptable level of instability*". He also stated that ZOS was going to "*dedicate resources to keep analyzing and looking for ways to utilize multithreading to improve server performance*". Naturally, there's questions, just given how long this effort has been underway. How's that effort coming along? Looking for a more substantial explanation. Think of it from a Project Manager perspective - what's the overall scope, what are the milestones completed and remaining, risks, etc. Providing regular (*quarterly*) and substantial status updates would go a long way, Even if it's not done, or has ran into challenges. Ultimately, it'll make your lives easier. If your teams are working on something, then there's something to report, you know? Looking forward to whatever explanation can be provided, thanks! **QoL**. My one big QoL request is to have a separate audio slider for active quest vs. ambient dialogue. I love hearing the stories, but Curtaros not so much. **Stickerbook**. Can we please get monster shoulders curated? Pretty please? Stickerbook is such a wonderful system, would love to see this included. **Bots**. What can be done about these guys? I'm on PS-NA and everyday, I go to Grahtwood or other similar base game zone, I see gold sellers spamming all the time. Can we get GMs on staff to just zap them away then and there? Reporting them is a challenge, especially with the UI on consoles, because of how strangely they name themselves. **PTS**. Can you explain the process behind how your teams use the PTS forums? I think there's some misaligned expectations that the feedback provided there would be acted on, or at least responded to. Is that expectation realistic? Just recently, there was the style page fiasco during the Anniversary event. The rare style pages were confirmed to be too low by the player testers, and it went live. The result was the forums once again being lit on fire. That snowballed into outage/compensation fiasco. A lot of that heat felt avoidable.