"It's ESO meets roguelike" Rich Lambert of Elder Scrolls Online discusses the highlights of Update 40 (Exclusive)

Elder Scrolls Online is bringing Update 40 to consoles soon, and ahead of that, we spoke to Rich Lambert, Creative Director of the popular MMO. Over the years, I’ve spoken to Rich several times about updates, new dungeons, and expansion to the MMO, so it was a pleasure to do that again. We covered a wide variety of topics while chatting about the game and what makes this update special. It’s important to learn as you go, and I certainly learned quite a bit about the game in our conversation. For example, I didn’t realize you could take a Companion NPC into Endless Archive.

There’s a lot for console fans to be excited about as Update 40 hits soon. Elder Scrolls Online is a huge MMORPG, and it’s always evolving. It was very interesting to chat with Rich Lambert about the reception of features and why some of these new features have come to the game.

Rich Lambert discusses the reception and features of Update 40 in Elder Scrolls Online

Q. Update 40 for Elder Scrolls Online is absolutely massive. There’s so much coming to the game in terms of new gameplay mechanics, balance, and Quality of Life changes. Do you have any favorites you’re looking forward to players trying the most?

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Rich Lambert: Well, I mean, Endless Archive is kind of my baby. I love the Endless Archive because it's ESO meets roguelike, and those are kind of two of my favorite kinds of things. I've just been having a blast on live, like I played it a bunch internally, but on live, my wife and I do at least a run every night together. It's kind of our date night, which is awesome.

So we get in there, we play, we're having a blast in there and just progressing through - just the two of us. So it's, it's a ton of fun. And, like I said, it just mixes the kind of the two genres that I love so much together, and it’s just awesome.

I mean, there are tons of other really cool things, too. Like, the Grandmaster Crafting stations are a huge quality-life improvement for the folks that are really big into housing, and all that other stuff is now they don't have to sacrifice 310 some odd housing slots for all their crafting stations. Now it's just four. So they get a lot of room to kind of play with things now.

That's a big one. Group finder has been really successful as well. We've seen a ton of players using the group finder too in weird ways but also in good ways too. So it's been a fantastic update so far.

Q. One of the major changes I’ve had my eye on is Quest XP and Gold Standardization. When it comes to this change, what ultimately led to it?

Rich Lambert: So we've learned a lot over the years in terms of building content, and building updates. One of the things we never really focused a lot on was the standardization of rewards. And we just kind of let the team do their thing In terms of how much a quest rewards or whatnot.

And we've seen over the years that they're all kind of all over the place. So like, you go into Morin, for instance, and you get X amount. You say you get 100 XP or 1000 XP for completing a quest, but you go into High Isle, and you get like 1200 XP for a quest, right?

And so it's just the weird things, and it was just time to kind of standardize and make it consistent throughout the entire game. So we actually went through all 3600 quests or whatever it was in the game and just made sure that they followed the same rules across the board, and now it's consistent and standard, and it's easier on us in terms of balancing numbers.

But it's also just a better player experience overall because now it's consistent, right? And you don't feel like you're forced to go and do this quest over in this zone, even if you don't particularly like it, because it gives you more experience.

Jason Parker: So it sounds like it will align better with what you guys had in mind for when you originally released One Tamriel.

Rich Lambert: Yeah, it for sure did. And I mean, standards change, things change, processes change, right? And you know, at one point, we were always trying to go down the path of, well, this is the newest stuff we want to incentivize people to go there. So you get slightly better rewards, right? You know, in terms of XP and gold and we've been doing that for seven years now, seven chapters, right? And so it was time to kind of standardize that across the board.

Jason Parker: Do you think it will make leveling easier, or do you think it’ll sort of stay the same?

Rich Lambert: So the way we did it, your average XP kind of per quest is now consistent across the board. So if it's a really easy quest, you get a certain amount. If it's a longer involved quest, you'll get more.

And so it kind of nets out about the same. It's just now, like I said earlier, you kind of get your choice if you can go to whatever zone you want to and feel like you're not missing out. Whereas, you know, if you really wanted to level ‘quickly’, you would just go to the latest zone even if that didn't interest you.

Q. On the topic of QoL changes, there was also a rebalance to Jewelry Crafting. Where did the major problem lie for this crafting option, and can you elaborate on what was done to improve it?

Rich Lambert: So the core issue with jewelry crafting is it was always designed to be an end-game activity. So it was a pretty sizable grind to get the materials you needed. It was really, really expensive. And so only the top end could really participate in it. And we've been getting that feedback for a number of years like it was just so expensive. It didn't feel like the reward was there. It didn't feel like the other crafting skill lines that we had where, you know, everybody is constantly improving their gear.

You know, they're participating in the system. So we wanted to make jewelry crafting feel like it was in the same vein as the other systems. So we went through it, and we rebalanced it so that it wasn't quite as grindy as the materials. It's a little bit easier to get them.

As a result, the costs will go down, and then just kind of standardized it to make sure it hits in the same vein with those other lines. And it's been really successful. We've seen prices of jewelry crafting materials drop significantly. Gold plating, which you needed a bunch of in order to craft, used to go for, you know, a million gold.

So that's how expensive it was and how hard it was to get. And now that cost is cut in half, and we're seeing them continue to drop down. For context on, say, the Blacksmithing side, to get a Gold Booster, which you need eight of in order to improve your purple item to a gold item, they go for about 50,000 gold apiece. So there's a big difference there; it made a huge impact on the players and players' quality of life, which is cool.

Jason Parker: Have you noticed an improvement in the overall economy for Jewelcrafting?

Rich Lambert: Yeah, it's much healthier. As part of this process, we also went through. Because we removed kind of an intermediary step in there, we converted a bunch of those intermediate materials into the actual plating that you needed. So there was a big influx in all of that, and players were able to jump in and start playing with the system a lot more and felt like they could because it wasn't so darn expensive.

Q. I’d like to talk about the Group Finder updates as well. That’s a pretty massive change to the game. Is this something players have asked about for a while? Or were these changes something you wanted to see to help improve how people group together?

Rich Lambert: Yeah, so it's funny. Players will ask for a feature without necessarily asking for that particular feature. So one of the bits of feedback that players have asked for for a long time is, you know, a trial finder to allow us to automatically or easily find groups to go run the larger content without having to spam general chat in the zone that the trial is in, right? That's how players have done that before.

So we took that, and we were like, ‘Ok, well, we could build like a trial finder which you just hit a button and queue up and go in through, but it only works for trials’. And there are other aspects of the game like Cyrodil - Finding groups in Cyrodil is really, really hard.

You're spamming things in chat as well as getting groups, and then there are world bosses and things like that. So we decided to build a tool that would encompass all of those activities and allow players the freedom to pick and choose what criteria they want in their group, and then players could apply to those groups.

And you know, form groups that way. So that's the genesis of the group finder is feedback from players that we then started taking to the next step and trying to implement in a way that you could use it for literally any activity in ESO.

Jason Parker: You mentioned not too long ago that people are using it in weird ways. Can you elaborate on that? Because now I’m kind of curious.

Rich Lambert: Well, I mean, it's the internet, right? Of course. So, you know, sometimes you'll see listings like ‘Looking for a Waifu’, right? You know, just that kind of stuff. Which I mean, you know, it's the internet, and we give you the freedom to kind of set up any kind of group and call it whatever you want and whatnot.

But I've seen groups being formed for role-playing sessions in homes. I've seen groups being formed for housing tours and world bosses and, you know, some quests, obviously trials, and in Cyrodil. So it's pretty cool, and we've seen a really, really good engagement with the tool so far.

Jason Parker: It kind of sounds like Final Fantasy 14’s Group Finder - the kind of stuff you see in those.

Q. Though, speaking of housing, let’s talk Grand Master Crafting. Grand Master Crafting Stations might be one of the best things to happen to homes in ESO’s mine as well as other players. How difficult are these going to be to farm up, though? Or will it be a relatively painless grind to unlock this for your home?

Rich Lambert: So it's, it's meant for the people that are heavily invested into this system. I think they're like 4000 or 5000 writ vouchers per station. So they're, they're on the expensive side. But if you're doing your writs on a regular basis, you've got them. We didn't want to do this system with the Grand Master Crafting Stations to negate all of the hard work that players had put into collecting all of the other crafting stations.

So, you know, they spent hours and hours and days and weeks collecting all of the writ vouchers to get these 300 tunable crafting stations. We didn't want to trivialize that and, and negate that and say, ‘Hey, you know, thanks for doing this. But here's these other things that trivialize all the other stuff.’

So with this system, now you buy the Grandmaster Station, but then you have to feed the attuned stations to them in order to unlock the ability to craft those particular sets at those stations as you kind of unlock more and more of those set stations.

The Grandmaster Stations start to grow, so they get more filled out. And then, at the very end, they've got a really cool effect that shows that this is a full one. This is a completed one. So there's a neat chase there, but they're definitely meant for the heavily invested players.

Jason Parker: That makes sense. Yeah, you want them to be viable and not completely throw out all the work they already did.

Rich Lambert: Yeah, I have spent many, many hours collecting my writs and, and set stations and whatnot. And I, as a player, wanted to show that off. Like that was part of the coolness factor of having a home with all of those stations in there, right? I spent all this time organizing and doing this and collecting it, and now they're down to four. But I get the cool kind of, I guess, peacock value with having a full Grand Master station because it's got this cool effect on it and all that other stuff.

Q. Though we’ve already looked at the Endless Archive, I wanted to go over that a bit more. What has the feedback been like so far? Have there been any noteworthy replies from the fanbase that will shape how you update it in the future?

Rich Lambert: Yeah, I mean, this is our first iteration of the system, right? And I think we've shown over the years that we're going to continue to support and iterate and improve things as we go forward. EA isn't perfect. We've gotten a lot of feedback from players. Even on the PTS, and we made some changes on PTS where it felt like it was a little bit long to get through, you know, the arcs.

On PTS, you used to have to do three stages. And then you would fight a boss, and then you do three stages in a boss and three stages in a boss up to five, right? And some of the feedback was, it just takes, feels like it takes a little bit long. So we actually cut a stage. So now you just do two stages and then a boss and two stages and a boss that feels good. There are cool loot moments in there. Same thing with some of the rewards.

So we added more loot moments in there for players to kind of get loot rather than just the Fortunes. But overall, the feedback has been fantastic. You know, there are players that have - there's a group on the EU side that hit arc 19 the other day. They spent 13 straight hours in there getting to 19. And so they're pushing the boundaries on things and, and we're getting, you know, lots of good feedback on that and whatnot. So, yeah, this is a cool thing, and we're going to continue to support it.

Jason Parker: That’s wild. I can’t even fathom spending that kind of time in there.

Rich Lambert: I warned everybody! Like we originally kind of thought there would be some people that would hit, you know, arc 9, arc 10. That's where it starts to get really, really hard. Like anything after arc 5 is really hard, but it starts to really ramp up in 9 and 10.

And you know, I just warned folks, I'm like, we're gonna see some stuff that players are gonna do that are gonna make us go, ‘Holy crap, how did they do that?’. And Arc 19 was definitely a ‘wow, how did they do that?’ moment.

Q. There are already plenty of bosses in the Endless Archive, but if you could add anyone to it, who would you throw in?

Rich Lambert: So we’ve got 60 bosses from just kind of all over. Some of them are story bosses. Some of them are from dungeons, some are from trials, and some are world bosses. So we've got a really, really cool assortment of bosses. Obviously, we've got a unique boss as well in Tho’at the Replicant.

So, you know, in looking at or - actually, let me take a step back. So what we did is we did an audit of all the bosses we had in the game, and we tried to put as many in there as we could so that it felt more random, right? So that you get this really good, good mix. There are some bosses that we create or have created over the years that their space, their boss space, was built specifically for that boss.

So we weren't able to use them as a result in the Endless Archive because it's kind of a generic boss arena, right? In the Endless Archive. So there's a number of those bosses that I would love to see that have some really, really cool mechanics. Some from trials, from dungeons to be able to pull in. We just have to figure out how we can keep kind of the spirit of the encounter in there without having the space actually built specifically for that boss.

Q. Update 40’s been out on PCs for about a week now; were there any major changes that you noticed should be made ahead of the console launch, or is that not something that happens all that often?

Rich Lambert: It's mostly bug fixes and major issues that we try to get in. That's one of the reasons why consoles are two weeks behind is that we've got to go through a certification process. But while we're going through the certification process, we can get some, some major issues in and fixed, uh, you know, consoles don't have PTS.

So, you know, it's kind of one of those things we hope to be able to change one day in the future. But they don't have PTS, so they're two weeks behind so that we can try to make it stable.

Elder Scrolls Online’s Update 40 is already available on PC and will be coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on November 14, 2023. You can find another preview of the Endless Archive here, where we spoke to the developers of the new game mode