Elder Scrolls: Online

[Vintage Paw]

So, here's a way to deal with space for crafting materials, and also how to help level up crafting in a smarter way as a result.

You need 10 accounts signed up to a guild in order to open up guild bank space - which I have read is 1,000 slots.

You can be a member of 5 guilds. They are cross faction.

So, let's say we try and get a guild started, just to help us with inventory space. We can all deposit our crafting materials in there, on the understanding we can all access them (so if I deposit 100 jute, Epona can use it whenever she wants; if Buddy Bradley deposits 10 Jora runes in there, I can waste them all trying to learn new enchantments) - so individual responsibility and shared trust comes into play - but I think we're reliable sorts.

This makes crafting a lot easier, and we can reserve our own bank space for gear we want to save/research later, for those ultra rare materials we're holding onto for the right time, etc. It gets us out of a tight spot from the get go, and means we don't necessarily have to waste our money early on trying to unlock extra personal space.

In addition, we can use it to swap items between each other for deconstruction. If I make 10 robes and deconstruct them all in order to level up my skill a little, the amount of experience gained is quite small. If, however, I give those 10 robes to someone else and they deconstruct them, they gain more experience from it than deconstructing something they made themselves. I presume this is to encourage trading and community and friendships and reasons to be in guilds. So, any gear we deposit in the guild bank can be assumed to be taken by anybody else, either to wear or to deconstruct. Gear we make for ourselves can be stored in our own bank because now we have more space since we're not using it for our own crafting mats.

How does that sound? Do you think that between us we could muster 10 different trustworthy and reliable players to get a guild started at launch? I have 1 possible non-urban person who might be buying it - with a 2nd being an outlier 'maybe' at this point.

And if we're looking for a guild name, might I suggest the rather boring but useful 'Urban Alliance'?

 

[Buddy Bradley]

You can be a member of 5 guilds. They are cross faction.

How does that work, then, given what Epona said earlier about how a guild can occupy/trade out of held keeps in Cyrodil - surely that would mean a guild would have to be all one faction? Or could the same guild be active on all 3 sides of the PvP battle?

I'm up for an urban-related guild, I like the social/assistance side of MMOs more than building the best PvE groups/raids. I wonder what happens if your membership drops below 10?

Also, where do you go for bag upgrades? I keep reading about them, but I didn't notice anyone offering them in-game. (I eventually bought the Digital Imperial edition, btw.)

 

[Vintage Paw]

There's still a bit of confusion about how guilds will work, but it seems to be understood that guilds are cross faction. You join with your account, rather than with your characters - so if you join a guild that is focused on the Ebonheart Pact there is absolutely nothing stopping you from making a breton in the Daggerfall Covenant. That would be too restrictive, building it into the game that you can only be in a guild if you only ever from this point out have characters in X faction.

In terms of PvP, stores and Cyrodiil, I'm not certain about the specifics, but if your guild holds a particular keep it presumably means that the leader or someone from that guild from that faction did something to gain superiority in it. I don't know if that's based off Alliance points, or completing an objective, or what. You get certain passive bonuses for being a member of a guild that holds a keep (I think) - but if you are in an opposing faction then you won't get those bonuses. Only those in that faction will get them, and only those in that faction will be able to use the store, will be able to team up and play together, etc.

So, for general play guilds are going to end up being formed around a specific faction, because that way everyone can work together, get the bonuses etc. But, since they don't limit you to 1 guild, you can be a member of a guild like that but also it will mean groups of friends can form a guild to help each other out, keep in touch, etc., but still play in different factions with some of their characters if they want. At times you might find that a handful of you are playing in the same faction and of course you can group together and do content then, but at other times you might be evenly split between the factions, but still be allowed to be in the same friends guild as each other.

It would be far too restrictive to do it the other way around, I think.

This is what I've gathered from looking around at a few different places. Info still seems thin on the ground, and I haven't spent a lot of time mining for info on ESO's official site either, so don't quote me on any of it. But they'd be daft to tell friends that they can only be in a guild together if they all decide to lock off 66% of the characters for the rest of time.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Bag upgrades - there was one in Bal Foyen in the same building as the bank and crafting stations (Ebonheart Pact) - that's in the second small starting zone. So I'd expect there are some around the starter zones for the other factions too. I read somewhere that bag upgrades will be available at every second major city. That to me suggests there should be one at Ebonheart but I couldn't even find a bank there (had to keep going back to Devan's Watch for the bank instead - but there was no bag upgrade merchant I could find there either).

It's decently expensive. 400g for another 10 personal inventory slots, rising in price for each 10 slots after that. Bank space starts at 2000g I think, for 10 slots, rising thereafter.

Crafting materials bring in a decent amount of money, and they are usually found in abundance if you are cool with exploring and taking your time. I had a stack of maple that had a price of 600g next to it, so it's worth taking your time adopting the hunter gatherer mindset every once in a while can give you a much-needed cash injection. I never got above 1800g in my 13 levels this weekend, and spent a lot of that on various things. I wasn't really watching my money, and I didn't sell my materials other than a few bits here and there. To be honest, I think having to plan ahead how you're going to manage money rather than relying on getting it all from quest rewards or loot is a good thing because it adds to immersion. As long as there are ways to make money that don't require epic investments of time that a lot of people don't have then it's a positive thing.

 

[Epona]

Vintage Paw - Yep I'm cool with having a small guild for a bank to share crafting materials, excellent idea - as long as everyone is sensible and fair about it and gathers stuff when they see a node to replenish materials they use then I think it's an excellent way to have a shared pool of crafting resources rather than taking up personal inventory/bank. Also good idea on leaving spare stuff there for others to deconstruct - if I make 10 daggers to level my smithing then I can put them in the bank, someone else will get far more out of them by deconstructing them than I will by doing it myself. I can take someone else's 10 daggers and get more 'inspiration' from breaking down those.

It would save an absolute ton of personal storage space even if it's only the lowest tier of mats that we are putting in there at first. I reached critical mass with provisioning when I hit level 12 (level 26 provisioner) and started finding stuff like onions, potatoes, mutton, bear haunch etc. that I had never seen up until that point - I was pretty much "oh fuck, there's a whole new tier of provisioning supplies here, where am I going to put them?" So I started to destroy some of the lower tier ingredients just to save on space, but with a small guild like that someone else might have a real use for those to help level that craft.

Buddy Bradley - I managed to get both of you joined up to the "Urban Gamers" guild which was an AD based guild when I set it up. But you both showed up in the guild list with your account name rather than character name, and I could have a look at the guild members list at various times and see that at times we weren't always playing in the same alliance. In fact when I was playing as a non AD character, I was still guildmaster of that guild, because it's tied to player account, not player character. I didn't get to try out the bank because it was only the 3 of us. Where it gets complicated is that when you choose a Cyrodil campaign, you cannot (for obvious reasons) be in the same Cyrodil campaign with different characters on your account. So if, for instance, we decided we wanted to PvP together as members of that guild we would have to all have 1 AD character and all choose the same Cyrodil campaign for those characters. Also if we wanted to group to do PvE content, we would have to have 1 character each in the same Alliance. I think that's where it gets confusing. But in theory, each player can join guilds in any alliance, but won't be able to group with them for characters they have in a different alliance. Also you can only be guildmaster of 1 guild - I tried to set up a second, because I've been trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, and got a message that I was already a guildmaster and couldn't run 2 guilds - but I could join another 4 as an ordinary member, in different alliances if I wished.

I think!

 

[Epona]

Thinking about it, I'd really like to try out the guild bank next beta, so if you know anyone who seems to be trustworthy and who is up for it, ask me to add them to the guild list. I 'know' 1 person who was swapping racial motif books with me by mail the last 2 betas and I could invite him/her - s/he was giving me stuff for free so I think it's unlikely that they'd be selfish about bank content.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Also if we wanted to group to do PvE content, we would have to have 1 character each in the same Alliance.

Does that mean that there is world PvP once we get out of the starter, alliance-only areas? Seems like that will make it rather easy to level up your weapon/armour skills by just meeting up with guild members on the 'other side' and bashing at each other for hours.

I haven't spent a lot of time mining for info on ESO's official site

Don't bother, there isn't any. Hopefully the ES wiki will fill the gap once the game launches.

 

[Epona]

Does that mean that there is world PvP once we get out of the starter, alliance-only areas? Seems like that will make it rather easy to level up your weapon/armour skills by just meeting up with guild members on the 'other side' and bashing at each other for hours.

No, only PvP is in Cyrodil. Mind you I say 'only', the place is vast.

 

[Vintage Paw]

You could spend an hour in Cyrodiil and never see another player, friend or foe. Or you could find yourself about to be overrun by an army of 200 enemy players, and crouch down and sneak behind a rock and watch them charge past while they never know you're there. Or you could be on the front lines storming keep walls with 300 of your comrades, throwing up magical bubble defences or sniping enemy mages from the battlements or fixing broken siege equipment or manning the battering ram and avoiding boiling oil being poured from above, or you could discover a dungeon in the middle of nowhere and head in with 4 of your friends to explore, just be about to fight the big boss NPC in there and be ambushed by 5 enemy faction players who were in there at the same time and lying in wait for you.

Cyrodiil is amazing.

 

[Vintage Paw]

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zluwg/0181_patchnotes/

Patch notes.

Most important one: INCREASED THE STARTING BANK SIZE BY 30.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Gutsripper is no longer quite as fearsome as his name, and his difficulty has been adjusted.

Good - stupid dinosaur killed me a dozen times before I gave up.

Interesting they have made so many adjustments to prices - mostly reducing the cost of new stuff and paying more for stuff you sell.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zluwg/0181_patchnotes/

Patch notes.

A comment on there points out that weekend testers never actually played the previous 0.18 patch, which had even more fixes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1yso0g/upcoming_v018_patchnotes/

Now after the tutorial completion, new characters will go directly to first alliance city where you will then have the choice to go to the starting islands.

Molag Bal has stepped up his attacks, and Dark Fissures are opening throughout Tamriel! These are smaller events than the larger Dark Anchors. To close a Dark Fissure, several Daedra will emerge from a fissure and must be slain. They are designed for solo or a small group.

In order to make the world feel more substantial, you will now collide with NPCs, including collision with NPCs in combat. We’d appreciate everyone’s feedback about how this changes the way the world.

 

[Epona]

A comment on there points out that weekend testers never actually played the previous 0.18 patch, which had even more fixes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1yso0g/upcoming_v018_patchnotes/

Yep we were on 0.171. Looking forward to giving a more recent patch a whirl because there were a couple of quests I couldn't complete for various reasons and I could really use the XP before tackling some of the others (again)!

I managed to do Gutsripper eventually but I was about level 10 and came out of it by the skin of my teeth.

 

[Epona]

I also made a breton templar and a khajiit nightblade but they never made it out of their prison cell because I was having far too much fun with my dunmer dk. I prefer the EP areas to the AD areas so far. I haven't done more than a level or two in the DC, so I'll likely focus on my templar there next beta.

Ah I knew I'd seen you say this but after my screenshot splurge I was tired and thought "I'll comment on that tomorrow" and then didn't!

But yes I agree with that, I've now done all 3 alliance starter areas twice and got a little bit around the bigger zone once in each alliance, and AD is definitely my least favourite of the three. Not that it's bad mind you, just that I prefer the others. Can't put my finger on exactly why that is, possibly because both times I've done AD I seem to have got bottlenecked at the quest in the Ayelid ruins which is really hard and there don't seem to be as many side-quests on the very bottom of the zone where you start out? That can't be the sole reason, the other 2 alliances both have plenty of difficult fights, it just seemed a bit easier to find a wide range of quest-based stuff to do near where you start out in the zone.

Don't know if anyone else has this problem, but I've always had a problem (in any game) picking back up with a character that I've left for the amount of time we have between beta tests. I like having a range of different characters anyway, but especially because we've been restricted to low level zones (and also not wanting to spoil myself too much) I find myself starting new characters rather than continuing old ones. Mind you I will take my highest level one back to Cyrodil next time if the lag isn't as bad.

 

[Vintage Paw]

You know, I didn't have too many problems with old Gutsy. He killed me the first time with my nightblade archer, and I just managed to kill him the second attempt but was sure I was near death. It was that fight that made me certain I'd never survive without that lovely first siphoning ability I think he's a good deal easier with a ranged character, because you can still be doing damage while you're avoiding his attacks. I liked the sudden spike in difficulty though because it forced me to think about whether I'd been properly focusing on blocking, dodging and interrupting charged attacks and exploiting stuns and so on. That said, if he'd have killed me more than 3 or 4 times I think I'd have become really quite grumpy!

I killed him incredibly easily with my dragonknight this past weekend, but that was mostly because I had learned that he has pathing issues. If you jump on and off his little pedestal he can't follow you down at the back, so has to leave by the side to come around - and then if you jump back on it again from the back he has to go back around to the side again to get back on it. It made kiting him really easy, and let me regen magicka and slowly chip away at him. That does kind of feel like cheating, but at the same time this is a game where it can be important to use the environment to block attacks and get away when you need to, so it's not quite as bad as typing in a cheat code. The only thing that makes it 'cheaty' is his pathing.

I had more problems first time around with the Doshia fight in the fighters' guild storyline. I don't think I died that first time I did it, but it took me far too long to realise those orbs were healing the boss and that I had to get rid of them as quickly as possible. It felt like it took forever and I was constantly having problems managing my resources (and my health!). When I did it again this time around there was a nice big rock formation in the middle of the room that I could kite around and over, and it was a fair bit easier.

Then there was the fight against that big old bone golem in the main faction storyline in EP (I mean, seriously, the moment I saw them summon that golem I thought "this will end badly"). That was a level 8 quest, but I didn't do it until I was something like 12 because I was busy doing other things! The fight was easy, in that I at no time feared I would die - BUT it took forever. He kept healing over and over and it seemed like there should have been something I could have done to stop it but he regened to practically the same amount time and time again. It was a pretty boring fight and I was getting annoyed with it, simply because it just took so long with absolutely no variation to what I had to do. Just kill the scamps as they turned up, dodge his aoe fire attacks, hit E to use the rune thing the dude I was with had, and keep spamming my attacks at it as it slowly lumbered from one side of the cavern to the other over and over again. Perhaps it would have felt more interesting had I been closer to the suggested level and been kept on my toes a bit more, but even with stronger attacks because of my level it still took forever to chip away at his health.

 

[Vintage Paw]

As for the starter areas and main faction areas, I liked that the AD starter island was all in one, but it also felt a little barren as a result. Bleakrock and Bal Foyen felt more bustling, things were closer together. Auridon was very, very pretty and I enjoyed exploring it, but it seemed smaller than Stonefalls, and again it didn't feel like there was as much to do. By level 11 I'd explored the whole of the Auridon map (even managed to sneak all the way past the exterior of the Banished Cells and get to that last shrine you had to pray at for an NPC... only to get utterly killed by the troll that was there). By level 13 I'd only explored perhaps 2/3 of Stonefalls - and that's just the exterior, I certainly hadn't gone in every mine or dungeon I'd noticed. It will be interesting to see what the DC areas are like. I plan on having a few different characters so I'll certainly see all 3 areas come launch, but at this point I have no idea which I'll end up spending more time with.

And yes, I have problems going back to characters after a long break. I'm the same with Skyrim as well. I haven't played it since November, and while I hadn't finished the story I planned for my dunmer I'm itching to make a different character on my return. But I also want to do a complete reinstall since so many things have changed - 4 months is a hell of a long time in Skyrim modding But at the same time I really don't want to abandon Anis, and she was the one I planned to do my first run of Dragonborn with because it would make the most sense. My nord companion was the one who first completed the main story, because it felt right (plus Kodlak in Sovngard - how could it not be my companion?). My dunmer was going to be the one to do Dragonborn, because Solstheim and dunmer and all that jazz. I still haven't ever done the mage guild story because I've never had the right character for it. For that matter, I've never completed the dark brotherhood or thieves guild... because I get distracted!

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I find myself starting new characters rather than continuing old ones. Mind you I will take my highest level one back to Cyrodil next time if the lag isn't as bad.

Hopefully we can play on the EU megaserver next time.

The patch notes did specifically say that they want players to roll new characters to try out the new tutorial/starter experience, so don't feel too bad if that's what you end up doing.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Just reading up on the racial passives available - they're pretty underwhelming. Basically just breaks down as:

Choose Breton, Dunmer, or Altmer if you're going to mostly be a magic user.
Choose Redguard, Orsimer (Orc), Nord or Imperial if you're mostly going to be a hand-to-hand fighter.
Choose Bosmer if you're mostly going to use a bow/stealth.

Argonians have a weird potion/being healed passive. Khajiit seem to have the best, with a combination of stamina, stealth and crit buffs available as you level. Shame they look so stupid.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Ah, no, you're not at all forced to be any of those races for your class at all. The overcharging feature means you can pretty much reach the soft cap for health, magicka or stamina with any class at all depending on racial passives, class passives, armour enchantments, armour passives, and/or points put into those stats.

For example, I hit the soft cap for armour with my dunmer dragonknight fire mage while wearing mostly light armour, with 2 pieces of heavy, whenever I'd use the Spiked Armour skill.

In addition, before I'd taken any of the Dunmer magicka passives I hit magicka regen soft cap because I'd taken one of the light armour passives and was wearing a couple of pieces of gear that helped magicka regen as well. If I'd have worn all medium and taken the medium armour passives I'd have likely hit the stamina soft cap instead.

Basically there are endless different ways you can get the right stats for the type of character you want to play - racial passives are just one of those ways. But as you rightly point out, the 2 outliers at the moment are argonians and khajiit, because no one really knows whether critical chance/damage can be increased to the same extent any other way right now, nor how important the argonian ones might be. There are lots and lots of khajiit stealth characters out there - but they're not all dual wielders as you might expect. Some are big fuck off 2h tanks with good crit damage. Some are siphoning healers (healing crits too).

The racial passives and the existence of classes is making a lot of people stumble at the first hurdle, I think. It'll take a while for people to break free of the chains that other games have created for them. But you can be whatever the hell you want. You can be an orc sorcerer with a bow, you can be a khajiit nightblade healer, you can be an altmer dual wielding single target dps rogue... it's all about the combination of things you choose. Sure, you can decide to get your magicka regen bonuses from the race you pick, but you can equally get them from the armour you pick. If you take light armour passives and dunmer passives and put your points into magicka you'll hit the 2 soft caps for magicka sooner, but then what do you do? Put all your points into health or stamina or only enchant with armour and health, only eat health and stamina food and drink I guess - whereas if you'd have chosen another race, or decided to make your dunmer wear only heavy or medium armour, or put your attribute points elsewhere, or spent your skill points on something else other than the racial passive, you could have reached those soft caps in other ways.

You're absolutely not gimped for choosing one race over another. You'll just have to make different decisions about where to put your points, what weapons and armour to use, and think outside the box (I hate that phrase) with your build - which is far more interesting in the long run because khajiit dw nightblade #758 is going to be just as predictable as the 757 that came before her.

Disclaimer: I'm making a khajiit dw nightblade

 

[Vintage Paw]

There's an update to the client, if you want to get the jump on it before beta is announced.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

There's an update to the client, if you want to get the jump on it before beta is announced.

As long as they don't announce it for this weekend; my internet is cut off until Tuesday.

 

[Vintage Paw]

And I've got work to do (work I should have done last weekend ).

Doubtful it'll be this weekend now. If we're lucky little things we'll get a week of beta but I doubt it. An official tweet went out replying to someone saying that "there will be more chances to help beta test eso before launch" - emphasis on the 'chances'. But frankly we're clutching at straws. It's not long til the end of March anyway

 

[Vintage Paw]

A Finnish website is saying the next beta will be 14th March, weekend-long. We're updated to patch 0.183 - no news on patch notes yet though.

Exciting!

 

[Vintage Paw]

ZOS are getting themselves a bit of a rep for actually listening to people.

From the PTS (public test server - the beta that is ongoing 24/7):

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to drop a line in to talk about some things coming to the game in the future that we thought you might want to know about. Of course, there is way more happening than what is listed here, with team busy on many initiatives including continued bug fixing, balancing, and other features. But these are things we can offer some tidbits on that you’ll hopefully be seeing soon. As with anything in development, things could change, so we are not guaranteeing these.

Adventure Zone – Craglorn and Trials We are going to be talking about this in lots of detail very soon. I know everyone is eager for details, and they will come soon.

FOV Slider There isn’t a lot to say about this feature that isn’t in the title, other than we will be adding it in. We know different people have different Field Of View settings which will make them comfortable, or just not nauseous.

Improved World Interactivity You will be able to pick up even more objects in the world, including picking up that sword or armor off the rack.

Death Recap In your darkest hour, we rub it in. Just kidding. When you die, you will now be informed of who or what killed you, what the last top five events were that contributed to your death, and offer some hints that might contribute to your success in the future. This will be a UI element that comes up when you die. We don’t want you to die, but if you do, we want you to be a better person for it.

Battle Level Off We're adding a toggle so you’ll be able to turn off battle leveling in Cyrodiil if you wish.

Exclusive Full Screen Mode In Digicolor. Okay, Digicolor isn’t really a thing, but exclusive full screen mode sounded so impressive, I thought I should embellish. Sorry about that.

Player Separation We know that group members can become separated in some of our content, and we are looking at ways to make sure you stay together with your group members. We are currently testing some solutions.

So there you go. Just a peek into what’s coming up, and really, that’s only a small portion of what we are working on. We’ll be announcing more in the upcoming weeks, and I’m looking forward to seeing you at launch.

That sounds really good. The phasing thing was something that was probably my biggest worry. As it stands now, yes you have the 'travel to friend' option if you are both phased into a different instance, but that is generally only for private instances (for the most part). The big problem is that because of the way the story changes the world around you, if your friend is a couple of steps ahead from you in the story, you can't join up with each other to go random exploring adventuring or anything. You're stuck in different phases. This means that more seasoned players can't go back to help newer players (a big feature of some guilds, but also friends who buy the game a month or so after you and you want to play together - nope!). It also means that if you start out at exactly the same time, if one of you happens to need to go offline for a while, the other can't continue playing or they'll desync and you'll be forever separated in different phases. In addition, good luck trying to pick different options during quests - surefire way to trap yourself in a different phase.

Obviously this is disastrous for an MMO. It's wonderful for the story, the way they want to show the world reacting to your decisions, but for an MMO it just doesn't wash. There has to be a way to group with your friends and stay grouped with them to do the same content regardless of whether you've already done X quest or picked Y choice instead of Z. This is something that will come back to bite them on the arse if they don't sort it out. So hopefully this announcement shows they're aware of it and trying their hardest to find the most elegant solution.

 

[Epona]

HAHA! I wasn't sure how public that info was so just sent a PM to you and BB with some of the info in case you hadn't seen it, whilst you were posting this.

It all looks like good stuff, especially pleased about the grouping stuff - that's kind of important

 

[Vintage Paw]

Yeah I just saw

Sounds like good news all round so far.

Now, I have to have a concerted effort to push through and finish all my work so I can play guilt free next weekend

 

[Epona]

My response on the most recent player survey about trading (included this as part of my response about guilds):


My one concern (actually my biggest concern about ESO as a whole) is that with a guild requiring 50 members to operate a guild store, and needing to hold a keep in Cyrodil in order to have a public storefront, independent or small-guild crafters will be very isolated and cut out of the loop and it will prevent a mode of play that many people enjoy - unless you are willing to be a part of the sort of serious large guild that kicks you out if you cannot commit yourself to regular guild activities or less than x (insert job-type number of hours here) hours a week of activities, or have the wrong build or wrong gear, or ought to be doing 0.1 more DPS, that sort of thing. Many of us cannot keep up that level of commitment to a guild and find some of the serious hardcore guilds intimidating to be a member of in terms of 'keeping up', or would prefer to engage in social activities on a more casual or ad hoc basis, or even prefer to solo.

So it is my worry with the current guild store system that those of us who would like to sell our crafted goods to other players but cannot commit to x number of hours or activities a week to satisfy a large 'serious' guild will be sidelined and it will not be viable for us to pursue crafting/trading seriously within the game. You have created such a wonderful crafting system, but I do feel there need to be avenues besides guild store or trade chat to sell items to other players in order to make being a crafter a properly viable method of play for independents and small guilds. Please consider lowering the number of active guild members required to run a guild store and adding other options for player to player trade!

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Won't independent crafters/traders just be able to 'set up shop' anywhere they like and sell their stuff? What is the benefit of being in Cyrodil - if anything, it means you're harder to get to than a regular city hub.

 

[Vintage Paw]

As it stands at the moment, if you're not in a guild with a guild shop, you'll be relegated to spamming zone chat (or if they have a trade channel) - WTS Green inferno staff lvl22 vrs traits avail - etc. It'll be hell. You will have no physical presence, no way to advertise yourself, nowhere for people to browse. I can understand why they've adopted this for the moment, because they first and foremost want to foster community relations and group work - but it leaves others out in the cold. It kind of feels like you're being shunned, you know? It'll be interesting to see how it develops though.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I like the idea of some kind of market or bazaar - in the main cities of each area or perhaps in a specific area anyone can access. Someone suggested tying it to player housing - if there are special areas for housing then there can be rough collections of people on the village green, for example, selling their stuff. Perhaps you have to rent a market stall, or at least book a slot - to avoid it being a complete free for all. Something that can still be collaborative and player-driven without it resorting to the guild structure would be ideal, and it could still maintain a sense of individuality, rather than the faceless insta-access that an auction house provides.

There are lots of ways they could do something interesting with this. I absolutely agree with Epona on the point though, because at the moment if you don't have friends you know you can sell to or trade with and don't want to or aren't able to get into one of the large trading guilds then there's no incentive to deal with crafting outside of your own requirements. This is the sort of game though that could see some people becoming very, very good at one particular crafting discipline. We might even see someone who specialises in 2h weapons exclusively, and others who only create heavy armour, etc. because of the intensive nature of the traits and skill points system needed to be the very best. Not to mention willingness and access to the special set locations. It's the kind of game where being a top level crafter is absolutely within the grasp of every single player if they put in the time and dedication - and with such a wonderful crafting system it seems a shame to restrict that possibility to the people who engage in a certain type of playstyle or group activity.