In your opinion, what are the strong and weak points of Gold Road?

Necrotech_Master

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the main story spent too much time on the recollection wood elves than ithelia, there was only a handful of quests actually involving ithelia that she felt more incidental than the main focus

This is my main complaint about the story as well. TBH the best quest in the whole questline was the one where she's sitting at the inn and you talk to her. We really needed more Ithelia and less wood elf drama especially considering that it was like half of the questline while not really being that related to the main story outside of retracing her steps.

yeah i think the outcast inn was probably the best zone POI quest

Pelanora

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the main story spent too much time on the recollection wood elves than ithelia, there was only a handful of quests actually involving ithelia that she felt more incidental than the main focus

This is my main complaint about the story as well. TBH the best quest in the whole questline was the one where she's sitting at the inn and you talk to her. We really needed more Ithelia and less wood elf drama especially considering that it was like half of the questline while not really being that related to the main story outside of retracing her steps.

yeah i think the outcast inn was probably the best zone POI quest

And it made it clear what the attitude of the story was, to Ithelia, and I couldn't bear it and stopped playing. What they did to her was just a poor effort in story telling.

Tesman85

I just finished the chapter story (and have done many of the side quests) and found the experience very enjoyable. The best part was the zone story in general - although there were some flaws in the execution. Especially the parts involving Ithelia directly were very intriguing and engaging. The inn quest in particular was exciting, it fleshed Ithelia out very nicely and had a nicely strange, spooky atmosphere. In the end I found myself pitying Ithelia, Torvesard and Vargas. The writing in these parts was very good, even excellent at times. There's only one question I would have liked to be addressed or even asked: Was Ithelia really inevitably going to be a monster, or did Hermaeus Mora inadvertently create a self-fulfilling prophecy by overreacting to one possible fate he saw? Either way, what happened to her was quite tragic (and at the same time, it nicely answered why she wasn't heard of in the single player games). Ithelia's voice acting was top notch, which certainly helped in the enjoyment of the story.

The ending was bittersweet, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the other hand, it avoided the fairy tale "happy ever after"-feel these storylines can have. But on the other, I hated how Leramil was treated by Mora. She had served faithfully and then got such a raw deal as a reward. Well, what can expect from a demon?

The side quests I did were mostly very nice. The writers had bothered to make even more insignificant NPCs interesting and their voice acting was well done. The murder mystery at Weatherleah manor was very engaging in particular, as was the quest with the Scarlets.

The zone is very beautiful. I love the autumn colours, the architecture, the new motifs. The design people responsible for these did an outstanding job! Skingrad as a city is both believable as a medieval-style town and functional writ-wise. The visual atmosphere in general is one of the best in all ESO, on par with Summerset even.

Scribing is somewhat of a middle ground. The system has much potential, but the grind to unlock the scripts is rather heavy for doing with all characters. The storyline was nice to do once or twice, but fortunately isn't obligatory for all characters.

As for the negative, there's quite little. I agree with some others that the story spent too much time with the Bosmer at the expense of more interesting things.

Also, there were some bugs. One boss in Silorn got stuck in the wall, for instance, and a random encounter was (pardon the pun) randomly ended by another encounter spawning at the same place in the middle of dialogue.

The incursions are a pain to complete. Okay, they are supposed to be an epic invasion, but do we really have to kill that many tedious things before we get even to fight the real boss? Speaking of bosses, some of the public dungeon ones are rather too beefy. I had serious trouble soloing Viikor in Silorn (and gave up in frustration), which shouldn't be the case with a public dungeon boss. They should be solo content, after all.

So, the scale certainly shows much more positive than negative things.

JustLovely

Weak point: Price
Strong point: I won't know until the zone goes on sale for more than 50% off

El_Borracho

I thought the zone was gorgeous. The placement of the wayshrines were logical, unlike Northern Elsweyr and Murkmire. The story was great, but...

The quests were inane. I hate going back to places I have been before to gather something else. By the time it ended I wanted to send Beragon to live with Stuga so I would never hear from him again. Especially in the epilogue. Skingrad was promising, but its essentially a movie prop city; there is nothing to do and most buildings you can not enter. The delves, especially Varen's Watch, are needlessly winding and long for what they offer.

Twohothardware

The biggest weak point was Scribing and the new skill customizations. They had a chance to overhaul a lot of the aging skills with new exciting combat animations and graphics to really breathe some life into the classes and instead we got a ton of mish mashed abilities tied into skills with mostly boring animations. Much of the new skill customizations you can barely tell the difference between the new and old with only minor changes in color.

Pelanora

It's the hope that kills you.

licenturion

lardvader wrote: »

Have yet to spend more time there but the music for this chapter is amazing! Beneath autumn leaves

I agree with this. Plus the boss theme is also the best Brad has written in whole ESO history of 'action themes'

licenturion

loveeso wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

loveeso wrote: »

Yeah, I agree with what others said about scribing. It is just too much grind for someone who has a lot of characters, like different supports or tanks for different group setups, and so on. Don't buy till they fix it unless you have only one character or just love to waste your life on grinding .
Recent Reviews on Steam: Mostly Negative.

You do know that you only have to do the 5 minute intro quest on other characters to access the scribing right? Also, I've accumulated enough scripts on my main to fully spec out at least 4 other alts now. Hardly a grind at all.

Hey Obviously, I wasn't talking about the quest but the following (per character):

11 grimoires (for now, more will probably be added with future updates)

21 focus scripts
20 signature scripts
26 affix scripts

67 scripts in total (for now, more will probably be added with future updates)

1 x luminous ink for each script applied to a grimoire each time you do it (3 skills per grimoire = 3 x luminous ink)

So, for 20 characters, it would be:

220 grimoires
1340 scripts
660 x luminous ink if all grimoires used on each character just once (more if multiple times, and obviously, less ink if not all grimoires used)

That's quite a grind in my grimoire but ofc we may disagree as to what constitutes a grind

Why would you need all those scribed skills on every alt? Realistically you add two or three at best to your skill rotation and you are good to go. Or am I missing something here? This feels a bit like: I went 100 hours of fishing and 50 hours of hunting but I am a vegetarian.

Warhawke_80

The quality of life promises are nonexistent, they are letting things like the Companion system just languish in obscurity, and as usual ZoS seems to be more interested in features no one asked for.

I'm still enjoying the content though.

angst

new raid is cool but overland bosses are bad and the story is as boring as always. Scribing is kinda cool too but it makes older content so much easier since you can have so many shields now

Shara_Wynn

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

Necrotech_Master

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

if you didnt like pvp, you could do other options for affix scripts, unless you were trying to maximize your script gains per day

bolgrul undaunted daily and incursion daily quests both also give affix scripts

i agree that the unbound scripts are not useful both with how infrequently they drop, but also due to all the other sources (the guaranteed daily ones + vendors that sell scripts)

Katheriah

tincanman wrote: »

Weak points: too ginger.

Whoa sorry

Shara_Wynn

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

if you didnt like pvp, you could do other options for affix scripts, unless you were trying to maximize your script gains per day

bolgrul undaunted daily and incursion daily quests both also give affix scripts

i agree that the unbound scripts are not useful both with how infrequently they drop, but also due to all the other sources (the guaranteed daily ones + vendors that sell scripts)

Yes. I know them all off by heart now. Which scripts need what quests. As I play off peak, it actually wasn't that harsh in IC, I only got ganked maybe two or three times max (during MYM). Sometimes not at all.

Necrotech_Master

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

if you didnt like pvp, you could do other options for affix scripts, unless you were trying to maximize your script gains per day

bolgrul undaunted daily and incursion daily quests both also give affix scripts

i agree that the unbound scripts are not useful both with how infrequently they drop, but also due to all the other sources (the guaranteed daily ones + vendors that sell scripts)

Yes. I know them all off by heart now. Which scripts need what quests. As I play off peak, it actually wasn't that harsh in IC, I only got ganked maybe two or three times max (during MYM). Sometimes not at all.

i mostly went really hard on trying to get them with my main, my other characters just get them incidentally as im doing other things (i have 1 character thats still opening siegemaster coffers from an event back in january because i stocked up like 130 of them lol)

i havent been super pressed for getting all the scripts mainly because i still barely have enough ink to even play with the system much

Valpro

Pros
1. The visuals are very nice. I saw the sun come up over the horizon was like my goodness.
2. I'm really digging the implications of the story. And I'm enjoying the story out right as well.

Observations. Neither Pro nor Con.
1. On one hand it feels small. On the other hand those resources are being spent on the back end. So I can let that slide because I accept what's happening.
2. The same amount of work is getting done It's just not all that work is going towards content anymore. I can be aware that stuff is happening in the background so I'm not worried. They change the release pattern every few years anyway.
3. There are from a statistical point of view fewer bugs and a lot of things got fixed over the last little while. A cold comfort when I feel like I'm still not getting what I want but it is factually true. Difference in what I "feel" and what I "know" is annoy sometimes.
4. Balance of the scribing system. Things always get rebalanced so.... Whatever. I don't expect perfect balance of anything on release. I do a bit of game development. Saying something "is overpowered/underpowered" literally tells me nothing.

Cons
-Dear Lord the work to reward ratio of scribing system is waaaaay off. I like having the custom skills but the amount of work I have to do just feels too extra. Like TOOO much. For context I really have no issue doing it, but even I'm like okay this is a bit much.

Outside of that I really don't have any other cons

shadyjane62

I rarely go to Gold Road. It too orange.

AlienSlof

For me:

Strong: Lucent Citadel Trial - it's AWESOME. Now my favourite trial.

Weak: The way-overused immunity 'god mode' phases of bosses (this is a very lazy and boring way to pad out a fight)
Bosmer taking up at least half the main quest. I hate Bosmer. I was hoping for more Imperial stuff, not more wood elves shoe-horned in.
Most of Skingrad was closed up.
Zone is very small.
Ithelia got a really bum deal from Herma Mora.

This has convinced me to no longer pay full price for chapters. Bargain bin only from now on.

Stafford197

I enjoy long informative posts but honestly I don’t feel any urge to speak positively about Gold Road.

It’s a flat out terrible chapter with minimal content and maximum grind, followed up by zero new content for the rest of the year.
- All Bosses have constant immunity phases to draw out every single fight
- Spellcrafting officially cancelled
- We get Scribing, a boring system entirely focused on endlessly grinding Dailies
- Another world ending plot storyline. Also introduced a new very important character and ends them in the laziest way possible
- Loads of ANTI-Quality of life changes, such as 14 day listings and the horrific Environmental Sustainability “cap menus at 30 FPS” changes
- Smallest chapter ever, and also full of locked doors which further shrinks the chapter
- No nostalgia for TES4 Oblivion, it’s completely unrecognizable
- No new content until 2025

Ok but the trees are red and orange and yellow, that’s cool right?

Total disaster.

xDeusEJRx

Strong point: new skills which I think is a good thing, giving players more built in power vs just relying on sets for power

Weak point: Luminous ink, a major selling point is literally behind a firewall of luminous ink having atrocious drop rates.

FriedEggSandwich

I came back to the game about a month ago, after about a year off. I like the scribing system, I think the game needed it, and although it feels pretty barebones right now, I'm excited to see what they do with it in the future. I really enjoyed the scribing quest line too, I found it engaging, and it had some great voice acting.

As shallow as it sounds, I'm also really enjoying the skill styles, and I can't wait for more. I hope they give is some class skill styles next. A red diamond crystal frags would be perfect. Generally speaking I've just been enjoying doing all the daily activities to unlock stuff, and this combined with the new(?) curation system has made the process quite rewarding. I already have one character with all scripts, and a few others that are well on the way to completion. And my sticker book is beginning to look healthy too.

I find the West Weald is pretty forgettable though, and the story line wasn't as enjoyable or coherent for me as the scribing quest line. I like skingrad, and the architecture in genera is beautiful, but the open zone just seems a bit boring, and I can't put my finger on why. It could be the orange, I don't lile areas of Ark's Fjiordur map for a similar reason. Or it could be that ~25% of it is grey and scorched, without that being represented by 25% of the story. But it's a much more tolerable atmosphere for me than something like coldharbour or greymoor caverns though.

barney2525

Rkindaleft wrote: »

I see the orange thing argued here on the forums a lot.

Am I the only one who doesn't hate the saturated autumn look of the zone?

The Zone doesn't bother me.

The character login screen is Horrid tho.

IMHO

LukosCreyden

Okay, positives:
1. The new Ayleid assets are beautiful. Making me want to make an Ayleid character with an Ayleid house!
2. I liked Ithelia more than I expected. Her VA was great and the glass aesthetic was cool (more on her later...)
3. I like scribing. Gives my magsorc more cools spells to use (more on this later...)
4. I like the random Bosmer fortune teller lady you can encounter. Super weird, just how I like Bosmer lol.
5. hot take; I kinda like how the story ended. I enjoy the idea of being privvy to some crazy, forbidden knowledge that is potentially very dangerous and sounds like the ravings of a madman.

Now, the negatives:
1. West Weald is merely okay. Not bad, but it doesn't stand out to me either.
2. Ithelia. What is WRONG with her face!? It is like she has had a hard life of substance abuse. What happened here?? Really takes me out whenever the csmera zooms in on her lol
3. Ithelia. We don't get enough on this character. She REALLY needed more than one single chapter story.
4. Scribing. A good start, but needs work; Ink scarcity discourages experimentation, the 10 second buffs and debuffs need to be increased to at least 20 seconds. The two soul magic skills are lovely, but need useful passives to make them worthwhile. I am using them purely for fun and aesthetic, despite being suboptimal.
5. Immunity phases. I hate them. "Oh no! The boss is suddenly immune! Kill these portals that have slow-spawning enemies so you can fight the boss again!" Hate it. Hate hate hate.

duagloth

Same song second verse as with every DLC. Scribing is not spellcrafting, grinding to this degree is abhorrent.

Destai

Positives
So far, I am finding it hard to find anything that stood out as more than neutral. I guess the delves and dungeons were fun. They had a good balance between interesting terrain and easy to navigate. The art assets were strong as always.

The music also was very well done. Brad Derrick is such a talented composer, and I felt more emotionality from some of his musical work than anything in the story.

I also like the zone achievements having some cosmetic rewards. I was especially pleased with the earnable house; hopefully they keep doing that.

I have yet to try the trial, but I have heard good things.

The crafting area was also nice.

Negatives
Story
The story is…um…well, I didn’t care for it. Like so many of the stories since 2020, it just feels rushed and awkward. They have this trend where they introduce really cool ideas and themes, only to rush through the resolution.

I liked the whole idea of the Recollection, but they felt forced into the overall narrative. If anything, I would’ve preferred the Recollection arc just been it’s own story. Get into topics of imperialism and displacement rather than yet another world ending story that ultimately doesn’t matter because of the dragonbreak.

Ithelia showed some promise as her arc matured; her introduction felt a bit off to me. And the end, just made me feel like the whole story was for naught.

Scribing
I really wanted to like this system. I gave a few skills a chance after slogging through the story. The cast times felt way too long and given the rarity of the ink drops, I didn’t wanna waste materials experimenting. I really hope this system matures, but I don’t see myself getting into it right now.

Zone exploration
I was so excited to explore the zone initially. The whole West Weald was one of my favorite places in Oblivion. While the wood elf encroachment was visually pleasing, it ruined the chance for any nostalgia. Skingrad, and most of the zone tbh, had way too many locked doors and off limits areas. I have no reason to revisit the zone. Not much too explore, not many furnishings to chase.

Overall, this probably the chapter I care the least about. Greymoor had antiquities and an overall massive chunk of content. Blackwood had a decent story and a year’s worth of solid content. Really liked the enemies. High Isle was gorgeous. That whole YLS had strong content, despite the story quality. I still go back to those zones. I don’t think I will do that for Gold Road.