The Elder Scrolls Online Interview

Computer and Videogames is offering an interview with The Elder Scrolls Online’s lead gameplay designer Nick Konkle, which touches upon the usual subjects, such as the title’s combat and how the team means to approach the competition among others. Here’s a snip:

What are some of the flaws of modern MMOs that you’re directly addressing?

We have a smaller number of abilities that you can use at once than in most MMOs, but each one is extremely meaningful. Instead of having a full bar of buttons that you’re supposed to hit in a very specific order regardless of what you’re fighting, we wanted to create a feeling of interaction with monsters and other players. We’ve created an exciting and tactical interplay in the combat, rather than just saying “Well, your gear has this number of damage, but mine has this, so I win.”

The combat looks much more dynamic and reactive than, say, World of Warcraft…

One of our big philosophies is that we want you to play the world, not the UI. As nice as the interface is, we think you should be look at the world around you. We want you to read attacks from enemies so you know when and how to defend. All of that is told to you in the game so you don’t have to look at numbers or get heavily into stats. They still exist, of course, because that’s where the depth and progression comes from, but as far as playing the actual game goes, you generally just look at the world and react to enemies naturally.

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How will you support the game after release?

We’ve been making a game designed to be played for a long time, and that’s reflected in the classes and the plans for endgame content and PVP. That’s what people want from an MMO. They want something they can get invested in for a long period of time, so all of our game design philosophies are based around that.