Interview with Rich Lambert – Creative Director Zenimax Online Studios
Feature
Hooked Gamers:
Welcome to Melbourne - apologies for the weather today, it’s not my fault.
Straight off the bat, I’m just going to let you know that I haven’t played The Elder Scrolls Online since the High Isle expansion, so I’m a little behind when it comes to the latest features.
So with that said, let’s get straight into it, shall we?
In your opinion, what is the thing that sets TESO apart from other Online RPG's?
Rich Lambert:
One thing, or the many things?
We could be talking for a while, but no. I think that honestly the biggest thing is the fact that levels don't restrict you from exploring. They don't prevent you from playing, you can just go anywhere, any direction right from the start. That has introduced a few other problems here and there in terms of people trying to really understand progression, because in the MMO space, levelling equals progression. But in The Elder Scrolls Online it's not preventing you from exploring and so to me, that is the thing that really separates us.
You know, if you're a player that is brand new to the game and your friends have been playing since the beginning, you could still play together and you can make meaningful progress. And you know, we've also seen a lot of players like you who haven't played since High Isle, right? You can come back and can play the new stuff and you don't have to grind through all the other stuff.
It Is really freeing, and makes it really easy for people looking to pick it up and put it down and just kind of play at their own pace without feeling like they're falling.
TESO has been going from strength to strength for almost 10 years now…How long will ESO be supported by the Bethesda/ZeniMax team? Is there likely to be an expiry?
As long as people want to play it, that's what we're going to do. We're going to keep playing the game and working on the game and adding to it. It's in a really good state and has been for a number of years and it's one of the best games on the market today, in my opinion. Maybe I'm a little biassed, but you know it's really strong in the communities.
How do you find new ways to keep the game fresh for existing players whilst still keeping it accessible for new players. How do you find that balance?
So that one, that one's definitely hard. We segment our players, or cohort our players. And try to kind of put them into buckets. There's the PvP players that never leave here at all. There are the people that only love doing the 12 player trials or the veteran dungeons. There are people that just want to build things in their homes. And so over the course of a year, we try to make sure that there is something for each one of those cohorts.
And then in terms of balance, how does a new player come in and play content? We kind of follow that same kind of mentality where the story stuff is generally more balanced towards the newer player. The highly skilled players aren't really challenged by that. They're more in it for the story and then the highly skilled players can go and do the dungeons and the arenas and the world bosses and the delves and and things like that are tuned to be a little bit more difficult. That's worked pretty well for us, overall. And then we always try to make sure that it's not just questing, there's other things added into the mix.
Yeah I can't remember which expansion it was, but there was one that introduced treasure hunting.
Yep, we did Antiquities. We've also done Tales of Tribute, which is the card game that we put in there this year with. In Update 40, which comes out in November, we're introducing basically a roguelike element to Elder Scrolls Online where it's a solo or dual arena basically. That is really where it's this systemic thing. You pulled a bunch of boxes from all over the game, put them in there. There's loot, all kinds of really cool new cosmetics, but it's systemically endless.
So like a roguelike you're going through, you're getting these buffs and it's really great. And it's one of my favourite genres so it's really exciting.
How many of the creative ideas actually make it through to the next expansion. What proportion of ideas get left on the cutting room floor?
A lot, A lot. Yeah, I mean the hard part isn't being creative. The hard part is picking the best idea with the timeline.
And sometimes, as the technology starts to mature, some of those things you can actually do. Housing is a really good example. We wanted to do housing since before launch and we were always told “It's impossible, there's no way we can do it”. And so that got kind of put on the cutting room floor.
And we got some time to really dig through the problem and come up with some really creative ways to do it, and then housing came out. Was that in 2016? Somewhere around there, and it just kind of blew the doors off. We gave players the freedom to do whatever they wanted - knowing full well that they could make really awful things - but they can also make cool stuff.
Games such as FFXIV Online have experienced players helping the newbies (known as Sprouts), Are you aware of anything similar in ESO?
It doesn't.
It's one of the things that we're looking to tackle next - that new player experience. You know the game is so big it can be overwhelming. We don't always do the best job at that, Kind of surfacing all of the stuff that’s in the game.
Even for players that come back. You know, if you're gone for a year, you’ve missed four major updates and times change. So that's kind of next on the list to try to find a way to improve. I don't know that I want to specifically call out new players, because that could add a whole host of other kinds of social anxiety. But that is definitely a thing that we need to do better.
Server in Australia/New Zealand/Oceania? Will this ever be a thing?
That's a really tough one because our technology, the way it is, they're built for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of players, you know, they're not kind of your traditional shards. If you are aware, you have 5 to 10,000 people on them, so we have to make sure that when we put a server somewhere that it's going to be able to be supported and get full use. It's one of those things that we get asked a lot. And we always, you know, look at that.
I know it has been awhile now, but how did COVID impact ESO. Was there a surge in player uptake as they were spending more time at home?
Well, Oh yeah, there was a huge increase in the number. There's nobody going anywhere., so you kind of saw that just across the board. Everything gaming just became the thing to do, because that was how you could be social without going out. So yeah, we saw a huge increase in players just like the rest of the industry did.
But COVID was really difficult, because we essentially had to relearn how to develop, because we were always together and it was really easy to be collaborative. You could walk by somebody's desk, you could ask them a question when you're in the line in the cafe for food or whatnot, and you just have this random conversation and so much happens and problems get solved and addressed in these one-off 5 minute conversations. You can't do that when everybody's at home. You have to book a meeting, you have to hope and see if someone is available.
Coming out the other end, do you find you’re more productive now?
Yeah, we're definitely better. We got a lot better. We're nowhere near as efficient as we were pre-COVID because just it's hard to recreate that sort of platform.
But, some teams are probably more efficient. You know the folks that are just focused on creating an individual thing in the game and like that's their job to go through this giant list. Say, a Biome artist that is just doing trees and rocks and whatnot, they can just bang all those out and they get their list. And you know, some of the engineers really work on that as well. But all the collaboration is not the same.
Do you find that more players are treating ESO similarly to a singleplayer title?
I would say that a good portion, probably the majority of people play it like a traditional RPG where they just play it by themselves. At least the story stuff by themselves, and then they start to venture out into the other things where there's more players.
Elder Scrolls 6 coming up, do you think you will find that there will be a reduction in The Elder Scrolls Online players for a short time?
I mean probably right, you know, kind of like any new game that comes out you always kind of see that ebb and flow, where people go out and they play the new thing and then they come right back. And that's the cyclical nature of online games, but also the game is really easy to pick up for them.
And with Elder Scrolls 6 in pre-production, do you have any influence on what goes on in their story, and vice versa for your upcoming expansions?
We talk a lot anyway. Yeah, you know, there are others, so we have to pitch, you know, major story moments, major lore implication things to them. And so we're working and constantly talking about it. What we do, why we do the things we do, why we need to do the things we do, and they understand and get that. But we have the luxury of being 1000 years in the past, so there's a lot of leeway in there because not a lot of not is known in that time period. But definitely, anything that we add to the lore is canon.
Is there a chance for a Starfield Online?
Haha, I have no idea. I have no idea. But you are the first person to ask that. Like Starfield was amazing. And it's this big, giant world. Yeah, I have no idea.
Do you get much time for gaming yourself? What sort of games do you enjoy playing?
Do I get a lot of time? No. Do I find time? Yes.
I try to play everything. I love story driven games, you know. Anytime Final Fantasy comes out and I love the Horizon series. I love RPGs and roguelikes as well, so you know, obviously when Diablo came out, I’m a huge Diable junkie. I love Path of Exile. Like, my son and I, every new season that comes out, we play and that's what we do together.
I've missed most of the new update and he's four weeks into the season now. And I think I've only got one character up to 90 at this point, and I'm just just ready to start grinding for stuff. And then he's basically done at this point and I’m not. So, yeah, I try to play everything. Hades is one of my favourite games. It was just such a clever way to tell a story.
And do you get inspiration from these other games?
Sure, there's always inspiration. One of the things that I try very hard to not do, but I always end up doing is trying to, what I call a 'tear down of the game'. Like why did they make these decisions? Why did they do this kind of stuff? You know, what was the reasoning behind that? What is this stuff and why did they include it?
I just dig on that kind of stuff. I love that stuff. John (Johanas of Tango Gameworks) actually did a really cool presentation yesterday for GCAP on the process they went through in order to create Hi-Fi Rush and it was so freaking cool. And I was just nerding out to all this stuff. He said "It’s just the presentation" and I'm like "It's so cool to dig through that stuff and understand all the trials and tribulations that that particular team had to go through to make their game".
The Necrom expansion came out recently (in June). Are you able to let us in on any new features coming to TESO in the near future?
Well, I mean update 40, which is in November is the Endless archive. So that's, that's the big part of that update, which is the roguelike meets ESO. We've also got a number of quality of life improvements in there as well. We rebalanced Jewel crafting which essentially just makes it a lot more accessible to more people. Right now it's a very, very top high end, super expensive. So we went through and did a balance pass on that to make it more accessible.
We've got a Group Finder tool that we put in. We have a dungeon finder tool. This is a tool that allows players to post their groups for basically any type of content now. You basically post your group, you can put whatever requirements on that group you want. You can say you have to be a champion point this, or this particular role or whatever. And then players can scroll through the list and apply and then they can get invited to the teams. And so now, players can use that for literally any kind of content.
Cool.
Well, that’s all we’ve got for you today. I just wanted to thank you on behalf of the Hooked Gamers team and our readers. Enjoy Melbourne, and soak in everything that PAX AUS has to offer.
Thank you, no problem at all.
It is clear to see that Rich still has a passion for The Elders Scrolls Online, and with the 10th birthday coming up in 2024 it will be interesting to see what new features will appear in the fantasy role playing game. Hooked Gamers will continue to let you all know about the latest updates...so stay tuned.