14 DAY TRIAL // Developer ZeniMax Online and publisher Bethesda are delivering a new developer diary for the coming The Elder Scrolls Online which focuses on the way the dungeons of the MMO are designed to twist the traditional mechanics of the genre.
On the official site, the team says that players will need to recruit friends in order to create a strong team with a variety of skills that can face the varied monsters and threats that the dungeons are hiding.
ZeniMax Online says that the traditional separation between tank, damage dealer and healer still exists in The Elder Scrolls but the system is flexible enough to deal with a number of situations.
For example, the death of a healer does not equal automatic failure because “You swap your two-handed sword out right in the middle of combat for a restoration staff, which activates your second hotbar (where you’ve cleverly slotted some healing abilities). Now, you can keep the party going.”
This choice is only possible because of the unique character and item systems implemented in The Elder Scrolls Online.
Developers also want players to rely on their comrades more than on potions, with tanks and damage dealers asked to actively draw the enemy away from healers.
The monsters that ZeniMax Online is creating will also break MMO norms by sometimes ignoring tanks and their threat in order to directly attack damage dealers.
This is balanced out by the fact these classes are able to dodge and parry a number of attacks to get out of tricky situations.
ZeniMax states, “we overwhelmingly felt that we needed something different than a traditional threat system where, by design, only one player (the tank) should be receiving direct attacks from an enemy.”
Monsters will also roam in packs in order to make stealth movement more important.
The Elder Scrolls Online will arrive in spring 2014 on the Xbox One, the PS4 and the PC.