Problems that need to be fixed FAST

Vivec

Here are some problems I've noticed that really need to be fixed FAST if ZO is wanting to keep players.

1) Clunky combat - holy hell have you tried fighting with a bow or staff lately? Especially bows. I feel like ZO decided that the power attack for ranged weapons absolutely NEEDED to take the same time to charge up as melee weapons, which leaves it feeling super clunky. Bow and staff combat is atrocious, and both looks and feels terrible, especially for a supposed AAA MMO. You couldn't come up with a better system than light/heavy attack for bows and staves? Makes no sense to copy melee combat with these weapon types. Being an archer IRL, I can nock an arrow, do a full draw (heavy attack), and release faster than the time it takes to do it in this video game, that's not right. You guys got it perfect in Skyrim...where did you go wrong.

2) Dodge roll - This doesn't evade damage? Really? You can run out of a red circle in the same time it takes to dodge roll, and for only 5% of the stamina cost. Also I just love when an arrow is coming my way, I dodge, and the arrow changes course mid-flight to still come hit me, even if I'm in the middle of my dodge roll. It's not "dodging" if every attack can still hit you, for as useful as dodging is in it's current state it shouldn't cost any stamina at all. It feels like this was a last minute thing ZO threw into the game to compete with GW2 which has an excellent dodging system.

3) UI - Improve it ZO. You pretty much signed this games death-warrant when you limited the addons that can be used. If you want to save it, then either allow these addons, or make the improvements yourself.

4) Repair Costs - Why are these so extreme? If you're saving up for something you almost just forego repairing entirely because of how ridiculously expensive it is. Why do you have repair costs at all? They were done away with in Skyrim, and are being done away with in other modern MMOs like GW2. Did you just throw armor repairing in the game so you could be more like WoW and because you can't think outside of the box for game development? Punishing players for dying by hitting their wallet shows an extreme lack of creativity.

5) Chat bubbles - not having these in game is just a terrible idea. First of all, people need to be able to run up to strangers in MMOs and ask them things, or communicate information to people directly around them, particularly in AvA (such as "INC WATCH OUT!"). Without chat bubbles, you just don't see it. You have zone, guilds 1-5, say, and group all crammed into 1 small window. Chat bubbles would be EXTREMELY useful, and not having them in a 2014 MMO is laughable. I don't RP, but I also hear from the RP community that it makes acting out scenes extremely difficult, which is sad to see in a game where the world is as detailed as this one is.

Judging by reviews of your game so far, it'll be F2P within the first 9 months easy... but if you hope to keep your core group of players, you need to make these fixes fast, or you'll lose it all.

Sindane

Agreed with everything except #3. There I am firmly on their side.

Rotherhans

So you hate how the game handles Bow&Staff and now the game is dying?

2 - this might be due to lag. I usually have a hard time dodging too but when it works th damage is avoided.

3 - it´s intentional game design. Deal with it. I´m willing to find out if it´s actually practical in greater groups, but so far to me it´s much more imersive than all these super statistic UI addons and flashy GW2 like skill blocks.

4 - one word -> economy. A couple of other words -> meaningful death consequences lead to more exciting fights.

Vivec

Rotherhans wrote: »

So you hate how the game handles Bow&Staff and now the game is dying?

2 - this might be due to lag. I usually have a hard time dodging too but when it works th damage is avoided.

3 - it´s intentional game design. Deal with it. I´m willing to find out if it´s actually practical in greater groups, but so far to me it´s much more imersive than all these super statistic UI addons and flashy GW2 like skill blocks.

4 - one word -> economy. A couple of other words -> meaningful death consequences lead to more exciting fights.

That's one of the small reasons among many that it's going to be SWTOR 2, yes.

2 - it's meant to get you out of AoE fast, not to evade damage. Dodging is useless however as you can simply run out of AoEs just as fast as if you're dodging out of them.

3 - It's like they chose to be like Skyrim in all the ways that wouldn't work in an MMO, but unlike Skyrim in all the ways that it would work in an MMO. You need to see stats in an MMO because if you can't there's no way to track your progress. Making the information available to other people causes problems, making the information available to the player is standard practice, or so I thought... If you want immersion in PvE or while exploring just toggle the info off. In AvA or raids though I need to see what numbers I'm putting up.

4 - So death becomes meaningful because it adds a gold sink? Lol okay. Like I said, extreme lack of creativity, and a blatant WoW copy/paste that never should have made it to 2014.

mr_stealth_b14_ESO

I agree with most of this, to some degree, except for the UI. I think the UI is fine the way it is. I'd rather not have a cluttered interface, or a situation where others will expect me to clutter it with mods I don't want.

Staff and bow could use some improvement on the look and feel of blocks. But I don't think the charge time for heavy attacks is a problem. If they did make those faster, it would certainly come with a damage reduction to balance it with melee weapons. It is rather unrealistic for the bow, but I'd rather keep it as in than lose damage for the sake of speeding it up.

Dodging is definitely not good in its current state. For the stamina it costs, it should avoid all incoming attacks. I was actually surprised to see it like this in beta, and even more so when that made it to the release build. There aren't many situations where dodging is the worth the stamina cost, as you usually have time to simply move out of the way.

Repair costs I'm not completely sure about. They are too high at lower levels. I've had several hundred gold repair bills (even without any deaths) from just a couple levels worth of playtime around level 10-15. I have no idea how the cost scales at higher levels, but I can only hope that it's not going to be 3-4x higher at 50.

Altheina

@Vivec You pretty much nailed in in terms of combat clunkiness especially with bow. I am actually surprised that the combat immersion from Elder Scroll series(especially Skyrim) wasn't brought forward to TESO. This is so apparent the fact that I can feel the difference between Skyrim combat immersion(I am still actively playing it) compared to TESO. Even the lack of little details like bow draw sound is absent.

Also agreed on the dodging part - I thought it was probably only me when I still got hit even when I dodged the red circle on the groun but well, I guess it's just the limited combat mechanic this game offers. Pretty sad given that Zenimax could have implemented non targeting for TESO to maintain the consistency with the Elder Scroll series...

Thankfully, at least for me, is that I decided to purchase and play this game by lowering the expectations so that I don't get dissapointed.

On second note, TESO reminds me of LOTRO in terms of overall character design and feel. Anyone else feel that as well?

Vivec

silenthunter29 wrote: »

@Vivec You pretty much nailed in in terms of combat clunkiness especially with bow. I am actually surprised that the combat immersion from Elder Scroll series(especially Skyrim) wasn't brought forward to TESO. This is so apparent the fact that I can feel the difference between Skyrim combat immersion(I am still actively playing it) compared to TESO. Even the lack of little details like bow draw sound is absent.

Also agreed on the dodging part - I thought it was probably only me when I still got hit even when I dodged the red circle on the groun but well, I guess it's just the limited combat mechanic this game offers. Pretty sad given that Zenimax could have implemented non targeting for TESO to maintain the consistency with the Elder Scroll series...

Thankfully, at least for me, is that I decided to purchase and play this game by lowering the expectations so that I don't get dissapointed.

On second note, TESO reminds me of LOTRO in terms of overall character design and feel. Anyone else feel that as well?

Character design is great in this game, I'm loving it. The world itself feels very TES too which is great.

As far as the staff and bow go...yeah. No idea why they couldn't make it as fluid as it was in Skyrim. This whole left click working half the time/awkward animation/weird invisible cooldown thing isn't doing it for ranged combat at all.

Hawke

@Vivec don't you think you are being a little Chicken Little with the end of the world about some little stuff?

1. The attacks for good or bad at least work the same across all weapons.

2. Dodge is a tool that is at your disposal, you can disable it, if you want to save the stamina.

3. There are addons that have UI additions on it, but they want to keep it an even playing field when it comes to PvP, and rightfully so...

4. *shrugs* What else are you going to spend your money on?

5. Chat bubbles are a big no. Because then people are going to complain that their screen is cluttered by a bunch of chat windows.


The game is not perfect, but they aren't going bottom out or go free to play because of a few differences in the game. Them not having an auction house is a prime example.

Let's just take a breath and see what happens?

KidKablam

Vivec wrote: »

Judging by reviews of your game so far, it'll be F2P within the first 9 months easy... but if you hope to keep your core group of players, you need to make these fixes fast, or you'll lose it all.

Hate to fact check you, but at the current time there is only one review on Metacritic and it's an 83, which isn't a bad review.

Other than that by googling I find a few reviews in progress. I won't extrapolate from that what I suspect they'll ultimately say. Anyone who has put out a full review by now couldn't be doing a service to their readers.

Vivec

KidKablam wrote: »

Vivec wrote: »

Judging by reviews of your game so far, it'll be F2P within the first 9 months easy... but if you hope to keep your core group of players, you need to make these fixes fast, or you'll lose it all.

Hate to fact check you, but at the current time there is only one review on Metacritic and it's an 83, which isn't a bad review.

Other than that by googling I find a few reviews in progress. I won't extrapolate from that what I suspect they'll ultimately say. Anyone who has put out a full review by now couldn't be doing a service to their readers.

Never trust reviews put out by big sites/companies like that. There's so much money flowing around the gaming industry now days it wouldn't surprise me at all to see payoffs happening for good reviews, especially for games like this which had such an astronomical development cost.

Read forums, talk to players, read guild opinions, watch Youtube video reviews. You have to trust the people playing the game who live and breathe gaming over those review sites who hardly ever know what they're talking about. Not to mention that the Metacritic review you're talking about was done by 1 random German guy lol.

KidKablam

While I agree that those review sites are lousy, I don't think the virgins who cry about games from their mom's basement on Youtube are in a position to give a better opinion. If I wanted to find gaming geeks whining about any game, I could find it right now, if I open the gates as wide as you have.

However, I'm not trying to derail the point. The review talk was a weak point in argument. Keep to the items in question, which I agree to some on some level.

Vivec

KidKablam wrote: »

While I agree that those review sites are lousy, I don't think the virgins who cry about games from their mom's basement on Youtube are in a position to give a better opinion. If I wanted to find gaming geeks whining about any game, I could find it right now, if I open the gates as wide as you have.

It's a good thing that gaming geeks aren't the people who keep these MMOs alive and strong.

Oh wait......

KidKablam

What I'm saying is that there will always be whiners, not that all game geeks are whining all the time (although that would just as easily support what I was suggesting as well).

Feimerdre

Didnt see one real PROBLEM addressed in this thread opener.
What I DO see is someone bringing his PERSONAL point of view and threatening a game developer with UNSPEAKABLE consequences.

You know what the real problem is that has to be addressed fast?
Keep those inevitable forum trolls from posting their point of view and making it the only thruth.

mutharex

Feimerdre wrote: »

Didnt see one real PROBLEM addressed in this thread opener.
What I DO see is someone bringing his PERSONAL point of view and threatening a game developer with UNSPEAKABLE consequences.

You know what the real problem is that has to be addressed fast?
Keep those inevitable forum trolls from posting their point of view and making it the only thruth.

I reported OP for trolling, I am sure if we all do he will be gone quickly

Hawke

Nah, his gripes are ok, it's the whole "the game will fail because of XYZ" I have the issue with.

Oh and AngryJoe and other youtube and blogger critics actually like this game.

Yankee

I use a bow quite a bit, and have no problems with it.

The only issue you list that I somewhat agree with is repair costs seem a little high right now, even without dying.

Other than that, to me this post is an overly dramatic wall of text.

Kyosji

Vivec wrote: »

Here are some problems I've noticed that really need to be fixed FAST if ZO is wanting to keep players.

1) Clunky combat - holy hell have you tried fighting with a bow or staff lately? Especially bows. I feel like ZO decided that the power attack for ranged weapons absolutely NEEDED to take the same time to charge up as melee weapons, which leaves it feeling super clunky. Bow and staff combat is atrocious, and both looks and feels terrible, especially for a supposed AAA MMO. You couldn't come up with a better system than light/heavy attack for bows and staves? Makes no sense to copy melee combat with these weapon types. Being an archer IRL, I can nock an arrow, do a full draw (heavy attack), and release faster than the time it takes to do it in this video game, that's not right. You guys got it perfect in Skyrim...where did you go wrong.

2) Dodge roll - This doesn't evade damage? Really? You can run out of a red circle in the same time it takes to dodge roll, and for only 5% of the stamina cost. Also I just love when an arrow is coming my way, I dodge, and the arrow changes course mid-flight to still come hit me, even if I'm in the middle of my dodge roll. It's not "dodging" if every attack can still hit you, for as useful as dodging is in it's current state it shouldn't cost any stamina at all. It feels like this was a last minute thing ZO threw into the game to compete with GW2 which has an excellent dodging system.

3) UI - Improve it ZO. You pretty much signed this games death-warrant when you limited the addons that can be used. If you want to save it, then either allow these addons, or make the improvements yourself.

4) Repair Costs - Why are these so extreme? If you're saving up for something you almost just forego repairing entirely because of how ridiculously expensive it is. Why do you have repair costs at all? They were done away with in Skyrim, and are being done away with in other modern MMOs like GW2. Did you just throw armor repairing in the game so you could be more like WoW and because you can't think outside of the box for game development? Punishing players for dying by hitting their wallet shows an extreme lack of creativity.

5) Chat bubbles - not having these in game is just a terrible idea. First of all, people need to be able to run up to strangers in MMOs and ask them things, or communicate information to people directly around them, particularly in AvA (such as "INC WATCH OUT!"). Without chat bubbles, you just don't see it. You have zone, guilds 1-5, say, and group all crammed into 1 small window. Chat bubbles would be EXTREMELY useful, and not having them in a 2014 MMO is laughable. I don't RP, but I also hear from the RP community that it makes acting out scenes extremely difficult, which is sad to see in a game where the world is as detailed as this one is.

Judging by reviews of your game so far, it'll be F2P within the first 9 months easy... but if you hope to keep your core group of players, you need to make these fixes fast, or you'll lose it all.

#1 > Completely agree. Started my destruction sorc, and the fighting system just feels wrong. You can't turn and attack, you have to turn, wait a bit, THEN attack. The ranged fighting becomes EXTREMELY difficult to target when your fighting a group, so you're always attacking enemies you don't want to hit first. When your spell only gives you 4 seconds to get someone down to a certain %, I need that targeting. Also, setting a full charge with my staff, and I suddenly don't want to attack? Oops, oh well, your stuck. You can do a complete 180 while charging, and the bolt still fires behind you and hits your target. That goes with every spell. You can't cancel a cast, which is something I don't understand. If something has a 2 second cast timer, you should be able to cancel it in some way.

#2 > Agree again. I keep rolling either out of the area of attack, or out of the range, but I keep getting hit. I don't understand the function of this at all.

#3 > Haven't tried any yet, so I can't comment.

#4 > Agree again. It's not really easy to get money in this game. Not unless you spam chat to trade node findings to others. 80% of the useless items needed for cooking you find in pots and crates have a 0 gold value, so no other way to get money except for selling your crafting mats. When you are a new player, this is something I can't do. I'd rather fight my way to the next even level tier and make new armor than to repair. Die twice at level 8, complete repair cost nearly 500 gold....yeah, that's fair for a new player.

#5 > Only one I don't agree with. Chat bubbles were more of an annoyance to me, and I always ignored them, as I had better things to do, like stay alive. Also, it took too much time to type it that way, so the whole idea was useless in raids and PvP. The chat box works well enough for that.

KidKablam

Honestly are the repair costs so debilitating? I'm only at level 11, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like even if I die multiple times out in the field I come back to town and it costs me maybe 120 to 140 gold for repairs. I'm pretty broke ingame, sure, but it's not the repairs that are killing me.

Kyosji

KidKablam wrote: »

Honestly are the repair costs so debilitating? I'm only at level 11, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like even if I die multiple times out in the field I come back to town and it costs me maybe 120 to 140 gold for repairs. I'm pretty broke ingame, sure, but it's not the repairs that are killing me.

You're getting it easy, then. As I said, after a few deaths at level 8, it asked me to pay nearly 500G.

Hawke

Change your equipment

mutharex

Kyosji wrote: »

KidKablam wrote: »

Honestly are the repair costs so debilitating? I'm only at level 11, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like even if I die multiple times out in the field I come back to town and it costs me maybe 120 to 140 gold for repairs. I'm pretty broke ingame, sure, but it's not the repairs that are killing me.

You're getting it easy, then. As I said, after a few deaths at level 8, it asked me to pay nearly 500G.

Die less?

Zargorius

Kyosji wrote: »

KidKablam wrote: »

Honestly are the repair costs so debilitating? I'm only at level 11, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like even if I die multiple times out in the field I come back to town and it costs me maybe 120 to 140 gold for repairs. I'm pretty broke ingame, sure, but it's not the repairs that are killing me.

You're getting it easy, then. As I said, after a few deaths at level 8, it asked me to pay nearly 500G.

Few deaths? Like 20? Were you carrying around in your backpack random used stuff in need of repair? Also, at level 8 - why not crafting new gear? I'm baffled.

Feimerdre

I guess he used the repair all button and was asked to repair any stuff in inventory. Pwnd.

mutharex

Feimerdre wrote: »

I guess he used the repair all button and was asked to repair any stuff in inventory. Pwnd.

So looks like most of the problems that need to be fixed asap belong to the category "Between the keyboard and the chair"...

Feimerdre

I have absolutely no prblem to run around with 2-4k gold on my level 10 chars...

Laura

This thread could have been constructive but became silly poop with the free to play and whiny nature of the post.

I love this game more than any I have ever played (didn't think I would) so I guess i'm a part o this "core" group and I disagree with a lot of what you are saying. Can't some games be GASP different?

I agree with some of the things you said but your post struck me as very off putting.

daneyulebub17_ESO

Yeah, with you on some of these, but repair costs -should be high- in my opinion to make death costly and give it some stakes. (Or, barring that, make us retrieve our corpses, naked, like they used to do in Everquest while losing level progress. THAT made things exciting, crossing a high level zone, knowing if you died it would be BAD.)

Or do you have a reasonable alternative to repair costs/body retrieval that doesn't make death trivial that "modern" MMOs use? Because--for the most part, the "modern" MMO seems to think low-stakes, keep'em grinding, F2P, face-rolling, easy-mode is the way to go. That's the one thing that would KILL this game for me.

There SHOULD be some tension involved when death is looming--that's what makes the game fun and exciting. Just complaining that "something" is too difficult, or "something" would make things easier are meaningless complaints about a game to me without posting an alternative and without more than just the presumption that difficulty or "could be easier" in and of itself is the problem--as if "easy" or "not difficult" is always better--they are most definitely not. There needs to be painful, annoying, hard things in a game to make it interesting/tense/fun. Give us a good reason why this particular painful thing detracts from the overall game design other than it hurts.

Sheesh. I've played many games where death is so trivial, people die intentionally as a quick port to a death ring location. Do we really want that kind of mechanic?

Unless you have an alternative in mind to repair costs that still make death not a trivial hiccup, which I'd like to hear.

LIQUID741

IMO...this post is way to early and out of line. The official release is tomorrow. Petty complaints always follow a release, the fact that ESO's release has been one of the best in memories say's a lot and I'm talking back pre-Kunark of EQ1.

I also don't see the clunkiness of combat...playing a NB archer, and having a blast. Yeah, there are things that I'm looking forward to changing, but I also remember that release day is tomorrow.

Audigy

3) UI - Improve it ZO. You pretty much signed this games death-warrant when you limited the addons that can be used. If you want to save it, then either allow these addons, or make the improvements yourself.

To be honest,

there are many players out there who see DPS Meters, DBM, Skada & Co. as the death of playing games online.

There isn't a second at wow where you are not insulted for "DPS, HPS, GS" etc. Addons decide if someone is worthy to group with you and this is horrible in my opinion.

I am happy that ZO doesn't fall into the wow trap, giving especially young people tools to harass others.

Kyosji

Zargorius wrote: »

Kyosji wrote: »

KidKablam wrote: »

Honestly are the repair costs so debilitating? I'm only at level 11, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like even if I die multiple times out in the field I come back to town and it costs me maybe 120 to 140 gold for repairs. I'm pretty broke ingame, sure, but it's not the repairs that are killing me.

You're getting it easy, then. As I said, after a few deaths at level 8, it asked me to pay nearly 500G.

Few deaths? Like 20? Were you carrying around in your backpack random used stuff in need of repair? Also, at level 8 - why not crafting new gear? I'm baffled.

Feimerdre wrote: »

I guess he used the repair all button and was asked to repair any stuff in inventory. Pwnd.

mutharex wrote: »

Feimerdre wrote: »

I guess he used the repair all button and was asked to repair any stuff in inventory. Pwnd.

So looks like most of the problems that need to be fixed asap belong to the category "Between the keyboard and the chair"...

You all may want to re read my original post.....I clearly stated that, adn i quote, " I'd rather fight my way to the next even level tier and make new armor than to repair. Die twice at level 8, complete repair cost nearly 500 gold....yeah, that's fair for a new player."