The point of this thread is to help the game. I'm not here to bash it or call it a failure. With that said, after playing since the 5-day headstart and some during the beta, I have some feedback and constructive critism that I think would do the game wonders. Please don't come here and say the game doesn't need X because it doesn't bother you. I give valid reasoning for my points and explain why I think it will effect the future of the game. If you want to argue with me, please do so in a rational fashion with clear points and explanations.
What I believe is a pressing issue for ESO is its long term goal. The game is being heavily tailored for short term players (the single player rpg group), and really neglecting the mmo'ers which will make up a majority of the player base 1+ years from now. Let me explain a little better:
Throughout the beta's and now in headstart, the game has been heavily pushing immersion regardless of the effects to the mmo portion of the game. Those people who want an immersive Elder Scrolls experience, should expect as much from an Elder Scrolls title. Based on many forum posts/chat talk, it's obvious there are a lot of people playing this for the story/single player type experience. So we don't want to disregard their experience to this game. However, the ESO devs are forcing immersion gameplay which hampers the mmo experience on everyone.
It's important to cater to this story/single player crowd because it is a large crowd, but they're also the crowd who is most likely to quit once they "beat" the game. They may make a couple alts to experience the different factions but they'll only be around for so long. This is highlighted by the fact that this game can't have the type of modding community that oblivion, skyrim, and other completely single player games are allowed to have. There won't be custom content like quests, dungeons, items, ect, to bolster the re-playability.
What does this have to do with the games long term future? Well, the decisions made to increase the games immersion is severely hindering the mmo portion of this game. People are so indignant towards the "generic mmo" that they forget these "generic mmo" features are generic because they're what people love about mmo's. What's worse is that these are features the devs could easily add as being optional toggles in the settings. We even saw some of them in the settings during beta but they were removed. I'm impressed by the immersive gameplay experience they have created but it just doesn't seem like the best marketing approach. Is it really that important that people play the game the exact way they want it to be played? I don't think this is an attempt at preserving the integrity of the TES series because it's already incredibly watered down in comparison to their single player rpg's.
The largest issues at hand in regards to the long term goals are as followed:
1. Nameplates- It was a feature at some point in the beta but they removed it for immesion, that's fine because people should be allowed an immserive gameplay but nameplates are vital for a mmo community. People said it would be made as an addon but based on various forum posts, it seems like it may not be possible. So what does this mean? It means you have no way to identify friends, guildmates, or even the friendly player who saves your life when you're about to die to a monster. You could be playing right next to a guildmate and never know it if you aren't hovering over every persons name (who does that?). MMO's are popular because of the social experience. You play with thousands of players and can communicate and interact with them all.
2. Chat bubbles- Another feature that isn't in this game for immersions sake and it doesn't seem possible to make an addon for. This also plays a huge role in the social aspect of a mmo and it's almost intertwined with nameplates. It's bad enough we don't have obvious visual markers to find friends & guildmates but it's almost impossible to notice when people are speaking around you. I have tried countless times to ask nearby players about a quest using the /s but no one ever responds and you can't blame them. They have no indicators that you're talking and /s talk gets lost in the spam of this awful chat function.
3. Lack of an economy- It's debatable whether or not the guild AH will be a viable option or not. I have joined a couple 500man trading/economy guilds and the economy is not good within them. Besides crafting mats and motifs, stuff does not sell. This is because the people that join trading guilds are mostly those looking to sell, the average player doesn't have access to these guild stores making the selling market incredibly tough. Once people realize no one is buying the armors/weapons/whatever they're crafting or selling, the purchase of mats will slow down and even these guild economies will start to falter.
Based on ESO's huge money sinks (respecting, repairs, ect), I assume that the ESO devs don't really believe in the guild AH economy themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have such huge money sinks to eat up your gold. In my opinion, gold will be worthless later in the game and the game will be driven by a crude, intrusive trade system where people spam chat.
That brings me to the guild store, probably one of the worst AH's I have ever seen. It's incredibly simple and lacking in the most basic of features. This really needs updated.
4. Marking system- It's going to be hard to organize raids/ have pvp battles when you can't mark monsters/people. For the single player game, this isn't important but for any type of competitive mmo's, it's going to present problems. Again, I understand people don't want the immserion to be broken but mmo'ers need this. I don't want to wipe dozens of times in a raid because of we don't have the tools to organize the fight. Maybe "good communication" is key, but in massive battles, how are you going to tell your comrads to target the healers when there are a hundred people on screen. It'll be utter chaos, no one will know which guy to target first or they might not be able to find the guys at all.
TLDR:// Devs need to put more emphasis on the mmo functionality of this game if they want it to last overtime.
Edited by jmido8 on 3 April 2014 20:15