The Long Term Future of ESO, A Constructive Analysis

kelisw1ub17_ESO

I agree with all your points. I am personally having allot of fun in the game and its been great exploring, but I am often annoyed not to know who I'm questing with, fighting next to ect with the lack of nameplates. I have to turn zone chat off because of all the gold spammers and i don't know who it is running around me, no way to recognize anyone. It feels very impersonal.

Chat bubbles are always something i turned off when i played other games, but having them as an option would be fine with me, if I could just turn them off. (Though I might keep them on since zone chat is ruined with gold farmers.)

Mikjak

I'd like for the nameplates to be an option, not that i would personally use it (atleast not all the time). But i have been in the situation a couple of times where i would have liked it, and i can't see much trouble as long as people are able to turn it on/off. The same goes for the chat bubbles.

The guild store, while i think it is a very good thing, there are absolutely room for improvement, i read someone saying something about player stores, which i thought could just as well be guild stores, that said some limiting to keep it from becoming close to a general ah-system is needed.

Finally the marking system, is something i find really bad. Now i wasn't a beta player and don't know how the raids are going to be, but if there are healer adds or something needs to be focused down fast, well that is something that can be learned by trying, failing and then trying again. Marking system, while being able to not be used, will probably become "needed" anyways. Just like in wow, u don't need to use dbm or other boss mods, but most guilds, atleast all those i've ever saw had it as a requirement.

Having optional stuff is fine, but having optional stuff that becomes mandatory is not. Its basicly the same as saying there are no "cookiecutter" specs, but if you don't have "the best abilities" then you can't come.

Korah_Eaglecry

SoulSeekerUSA wrote: »

@Audigy, all those things were fine 15 years ago but that is the point, we are now 15 years beyond that. I want quality of life type things available in a current MMO, I don't care to go back to those times. I don't understand why anyone would? Especially the geeks that play this game, people it is s video game, cutting edge stuff. That is like getting a $5,000 stereo system and listening to records.

Then go back to a game that provides these 'quality of life' things that you so desperately need for fun.

Stop trying to force your needs onto the game and its community. People demanding these additions have NOT provided any sort of valid reasons for Zenimax to change course besides 'I cant play without this stuff'. Not every game is going to be for you. And you should not demand that it abandon the demographic it did set out to provide a service to so it can appease you.

kijima

Chat bubbles, if anything are ugly and kill immersion. At least for me they do. I don't speak for everyone, and I understand this but I think my thoughts are shared with quite a few and not a small minority.

I really hope the chat stays how it is. Nameplates though, I like that idea.

Shimond

I think I've seen it all now. It's one thing to say you want chat bubbles for whatever reason (usually rp, understandable). It's another to say lack of it is going to be the death of this game.

kelisw1ub17_ESO

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

SoulSeekerUSA wrote: »

@Audigy, all those things were fine 15 years ago but that is the point, we are now 15 years beyond that. I want quality of life type things available in a current MMO, I don't care to go back to those times. I don't understand why anyone would? Especially the geeks that play this game, people it is s video game, cutting edge stuff. That is like getting a $5,000 stereo system and listening to records.

Then go back to a game that provides these 'quality of life' things that you so desperately need for fun.

Stop trying to force your needs onto the game and its community. People demanding these additions have NOT provided any sort of valid reasons for Zenimax to change course besides 'I cant play without this stuff'. Not every game is going to be for you. And you should not demand that it abandon the demographic it did set out to provide a service to so it can appease you.

How is that forcing anyone if its an option that can be toggled? Can you explain the 'need' to not have a nameplate option? I can explain very clearly the need to have them. This is a massive multiplayer game and for it to function as such people need a way to recognize and interact with each other. If only 5 people played this game, then maybe nameplates would not be needed. Although I have had trouble even in a small group telling who is who to do a trade or something because they were all breton males in heavy armor.

Gohlar

I have noticed one thing about a segment of the ESO community. They are anti-choice. It's their way or the highway. Options are bad.

UnknownXV

First two points could be made available as toggles. Give players the option, simple as. If people want full immersion, they can have it. If they want a bit more functionality, they can have it. Great.

Guild Store is fine, though I wouldn't mind seeing local market stalls too. I dislike the idea of a global auction house though, removes any semblance of local economy which I feel brings a more.. earthy attitude to the MMO.

Tagging is important, yes. Perhaps making it a skill?

Salacious

This post, the OP, does not have valid concerns, he/she/they/it is only worried about their precious MMO aspect. Disregarding the fact that ZeniFail stated that they plan to release content updates on a "regular" basis.

This game was never really or truly designed for the WOW players or the Guildwars 2 players or the Rift players or the what ever mmo title players of the world. It was designed for the die hard ES players who - at some point - asked them selves, either out loud or in their head "what if I could adventure in Skyrim/oblivion/morrwind/daggerfall/arena with my friends?"

And this is their answer. Their are quests that are instanced, the quests in this game are phased, so that when I complete something like rescuing a nobel from a house full of thugs and come back 2 hours later, there are NO thugs there, NO players running around killing thugs. I ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING and it shows.

This game is made for those who do not want to run around collecting ten rat tails because of some reason that makes no sense, this game is not made for those who need to race to level x, to do raids and dungeons.

This game is made for the ES fans, the ones who want to know why the mages guild is doing x, why the fighters guild might be falling apart, why the political drama is affecting them or how to stop oblivion.

To say it should or it doesn't touch the MMO market is a good thing, I want to be able to do what I want, where I want, with who I want - or with no one - AND I CAN.

This game demands you explore off the beaten track and they don't punish you for it unlike other titles. This is not a "Do quest A, B, C in area 1 - rinse and repeat" game. this is "make your own adventure" - with a main story should you feel like doing that.

**** the MMO market. Seriously.

As for your little complaint about modders and new content - their will be new content - all the time. Keeping us coming back - keeping us excited.

Metella

jmido8 wrote: »

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.

I'm guessing you don't know a lot of Elder Scrolls fans? Sure there are some people who play, and enjoy, let's say Skyrim once or twice, consider that by completing the Main Quest and maybe one faction they have "beaten" the game, dust off their hands and move on to the next game (just as with many games). There are, judging by the Skyrim forums I'm a part of, and by my offline friends who are fans of the series, also a LOT of people who play hundreds, even thousands of hours, even on the console with no modding, no fancy graphics, and not even the luxury of the dev console to get out of glitches. Some people play a good 200-300 hours on one single character. Some people make dozens of characters, some short-lived DiD RPs, some great, long, sprawling stories who somehow work in all the factions. Sure, some people add in extra modded content, but many people who mod are doing it more for graphics changes, sexy armours, or things like Frostfall and SkyRe which change the mechanics rather than the content of the game. I've played around 900 hours of Skyrim (c. 20 characters) and haven't even finished the main quest, or all the faction questlines. Sure, the people who spend time chatting on a game's forum are likely to be skewed toward the more, ah, *dedicated* types, but consider that the ratio of people I know personally who have played Skyrim to people I know personally who have played hundreds of hours of Skyrim with little to no modding is 1:1 (assuming I leave myself out of the equations as I've added aforementioned gameplay mods but not more than four or five hours of content mods, if that, and that was one experiment several hundred hours ago).

This is my first MMO so I am not really in any position to comment on what makes a good or successful MMO, but fwiw I really don't want the screen any more filled with junk than it already is. I think at the moment there's a good balance -chat is fairly unobtrusive but I can use it if I want. People's names are visible if I want to know, but not flashing around in the sky all the time. (And I've so far not seen a single other character who looks remotely like mine, apparently cute, fat Orc gals with curly hair are not a popular choice... More fool everyone else.)

Pretext

Agree with OP, but not sure what he wants to happen to boost the economy. A world auction house is to be avoided at all cost.

Pang

Well they've got Adventure Zones on the horizon coming "soon" and the RvR PvP is always running so I'm not as worried about the long term right now. Will wait for further judgement to see what ZOS's version of raid content looks and plays like to see if its sustainable long term or not.

Geezer5000

speech bubbles are necessary and important. It doesn't matter for which part of the game (RP, PvE, AvA).

rynn21_ESO

A lot of good points were made.
There DEFINITELY needs to be nameplates. Sometimes I still mistake players for NPCs, and you're right. No one wants to hover their mouse over a helpful player to find out their player name.
As for chat bubbles, that can be a good and bad thing. It's good for all that you mentioned, but imo it should be optional. There would be nothing more annoying than having those gold spammers running around with paragraphs -feels like it- of repetitive text.

Audigy

kelisw1ub17_ESO wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

SoulSeekerUSA wrote: »

@Audigy, all those things were fine 15 years ago but that is the point, we are now 15 years beyond that. I want quality of life type things available in a current MMO, I don't care to go back to those times. I don't understand why anyone would? Especially the geeks that play this game, people it is s video game, cutting edge stuff. That is like getting a $5,000 stereo system and listening to records.

Then go back to a game that provides these 'quality of life' things that you so desperately need for fun.

Stop trying to force your needs onto the game and its community. People demanding these additions have NOT provided any sort of valid reasons for Zenimax to change course besides 'I cant play without this stuff'. Not every game is going to be for you. And you should not demand that it abandon the demographic it did set out to provide a service to so it can appease you.

How is that forcing anyone if its an option that can be toggled? Can you explain the 'need' to not have a nameplate option? I can explain very clearly the need to have them. This is a massive multiplayer game and for it to function as such people need a way to recognize and interact with each other. If only 5 people played this game, then maybe nameplates would not be needed. Although I have had trouble even in a small group telling who is who to do a trade or something because they were all breton males in heavy armor.

In an MMO nothing is optional if it comes to customization sadly. Look at wow, if you want to raid you must have all those addons that world first guilds use. Not because you cant play without them, but because the community thinks that they are necessary, just like people here in this thread think they are necessary to play.

That leads to a demand that everyone in your group also has TS, Skada, DBM etc. and that those trolls will keep harassing players who don't play on the top of those s tats.

Right now nothing of what was suggested is needed. You can ID every person if you want to by looking at them or hovering over them - no char looks like the other in this game either. This isn't wow where everyone looks the same, this is TESO where you can actually see a difference.

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO

Well OP, I agree with you on most of it, with a personal exception of not liking chat bubbles and perfering to watch the chat box and my feelings on the guild store.

The guild store first of all is a clunky version of the ah that doesn't seem to serve any productive point that I can see. That said I don't think we'll get an ah and I think it's possible that our trading options will become much more limited. FinCen here in the US just had a regulation go into effect where if you can trade a virtual item for real money you have to then follow banking regulations for things like terrorist lists, money laundering, etc. Now this effected games like D3, with it's RMAH far more, it could potentially effect mmo's. MMO's seem to be a grey area in this as they are in charge of the virtual item but the transfer to real money is done by a non-supported third party. How will the government treat it? I think the first sign that the government is going to treat mmo makers as a bank, every single item will become boa. I think this is probably going to happen within the next couple years and we might as well start getting used to a tradeless mmo.

Haxer

What it boils down to is "I've been playing WoW for 15 years, and this game doesn't have some things that WoW has. I want those things."

For the most part I could not disagree with you more. I appreciate that this game is DIFFERENT. If I wanted things to be exactly like "generic mmo's" than I would play those instead.

1. I'm all for improving social mechanics, like you said identifying guild members more easily. But I hope if they change anything, it would be something more thoughtful and less defacing than nameplates.

2. Speech Bubbles? Maybe. I do agree that the chat window can be hard to follow with so many different things going on in it. Not sure if resorting to chat bubbles is necessary.

3. Not having a supreme easy mode AH is the best thing this game has going for it. The Walmart AH of other games completely obliterates questing, crafting, looting, as all the best gear in the game is immediately within reach. It makes gold the supreme resource in the game, and encourages gold-farm/spam because "with $19.99 you too can have the best gear in the game in 5 minutes or less".

4. Don't need tools to prevent actual communication between players. Marking, pings, party spell bars. Now you actually get to challenge yourselves, talk to each other before an encounter, react and adapt when things go bad.

And no, I don't think they have to make this WoW in order to keep people interested. I'm someone who has been waiting for this for years, because I don't want the same thing we've always had. I don't want the tab-targeting, number popping, AHing, craft grinding, raid rinsing, thing that we've been offered a million times for over a decade.

I want something different, and I finally...finally got it. Please stop trying to ruin that by pressuring dev's to go back to the way it's always been.

Korah_Eaglecry

kelisw1ub17_ESO wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

SoulSeekerUSA wrote: »

@Audigy, all those things were fine 15 years ago but that is the point, we are now 15 years beyond that. I want quality of life type things available in a current MMO, I don't care to go back to those times. I don't understand why anyone would? Especially the geeks that play this game, people it is s video game, cutting edge stuff. That is like getting a $5,000 stereo system and listening to records.

Then go back to a game that provides these 'quality of life' things that you so desperately need for fun.

Stop trying to force your needs onto the game and its community. People demanding these additions have NOT provided any sort of valid reasons for Zenimax to change course besides 'I cant play without this stuff'. Not every game is going to be for you. And you should not demand that it abandon the demographic it did set out to provide a service to so it can appease you.

How is that forcing anyone if its an option that can be toggled? Can you explain the 'need' to not have a nameplate option? I can explain very clearly the need to have them. This is a massive multiplayer game and for it to function as such people need a way to recognize and interact with each other. If only 5 people played this game, then maybe nameplates would not be needed. Although I have had trouble even in a small group telling who is who to do a trade or something because they were all breton males in heavy armor.

This is the choice Zenimax went with. It reflects that none of these things are necessary for an MMO. People keep pointing out how its necessary for social aspects yet everything in game has proven otherwise. That its not necessary. People still interact, people still help each other. Those looking to whisper or interact still find a way. This isnt WoW/Rift/STO/NWO/GW2/SWTOR. Trying to point at them and claim that those functions that were applied there doesnt necessarily mean its essential. This game was purposely created with the the purpose of feeling as immersed as you would if it was any other Elder Scrolls game.

As for 'having trouble with whos who' youre obviously choosing to ignore the fact that if you scrolled your mouse over a person. Youd know who they were. But if you admitted to that fact. Youd be opening a hole in your 'i need nameplates' argument.

kelisw1ub17_ESO

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

As for 'having trouble with whos who' youre obviously choosing to ignore the fact that if you scrolled your mouse over a person. Youd know who they were. But if you admitted to that fact. Youd be opening a hole in your 'i need nameplates' argument.

When there are 20 other people around them or even if a rat runs in front of their name you can not always see it. Especially annoying in dungeons when someone says ok everyone follow so and so and your in a large group and people go 4 different directions because they followed the wrong person (because they couldn't see the name, see). Happened last night repeatedly.

johnnyvonrotten

I don't really agree that immersion and MMO gameplay are mutually exclusive - I feel like this is actually representative of where more MMO's are going with time - something closer to a standard single-player game, just with many people.

Nameplates could be added, but I'd say only as an optional feature. Don't make it mandatory.

Personally, I'm coming more from the single player ES side of things, granted, but I fully intend on being here for quite some time. My desire with past titles, especially with Skyrim because of the environments, was to just *live* there. To spend years on end there. To find a way to keep playing after I'd finished the quests, where I could set up shop or something and just hang around, maybe occasionally go off on some adventure.

ESO lets me do that... mostly. I can go through the storyline, and afterward have a group to do PVP and dungeons and the like with, but spend a lot of time crafting and just... *being*, if that makes any sense.

It's all about the journey for me, less about the grinding.

Fahstolph

I am fine with what the OP wants, I don't want it, but it's fine if they put it in as optional functionality. However as game a ender, I have a hard time with that one. I have never seen MMOs fail due to UI functionality. Most always it has been bad or no end content or major, unpopular combat mechanics changes, but never small functionality issues like this.. But maybe I'm wrong. :P

jmido8

People say nameplates, chat bubbles, and other social orientated stuff is completely trivial but it's not. I want a social experience, otherwise, this is just a single player game I'm going to beat and move on from. Lots of people want these options and they could easily be made optional for those that don't like it.

I was doing a raid in cryodiil yesterday with my guild, and it was incredibly disorganized despite us using vent. No one could find the person to follow because you couldn't tag teammates and there wasn't nameplates to watch. When we tried going into a castle with our 30 man group, we wiped because we couldn't find the npc's the guild leader was saying to kill (no npc nameplates or tagging options to clearly identify them). It's just a completely disorganized mess without these basic things and it's really turning us off of raiding and any large scale stuff which a majority of endgame content is.

mutharex

Weird I would have sworn I saw many videos of castle battles and pvp in general where people who seem organised don't have all of these problems. I should drink less

mutharex

The REAL Long Term future for ESO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwZsIUn_g6o

not chat bubbles and nametags...

wrlifeboil

Getorix wrote: »

I agree with the OP on just about everything. Immersion is great, have at it. But don't force me to be immersed with you. I want to see where the merchant npc is and not have to pan around through 50 players to find one where an E pops up and hope that npc is a merchant.

And the economy is going to need a fix really fast, those guild stores are as close to useless as can be. If they insist on this bad ah system they at least need to ban linking items in zone chat and only allow it in guild, tells and trade channel, or maybe confine it to major cities.

The devs put up so many hoops to jump through and hurdles to jump in the economy that it's not really worthwhile at this point. Trade is a metagame in many mmos but I sense frustration even among some hardcore about ESO. Maybe it'll get better when the big wave of people start hitting level 50 and VR. But even for garbage trade (of items worth 100g) that you would move in quantity, it's just not worth the effort. I'm sure a few obsessive types are doing fine but for the typical gamer selling one-seys and two-seys isn't worth the effort.

kemp.garretub17_ESO1

Gotta agree with the op while there are some players that don't want a auction house the majority of mmo players want one of some sort yes there is the guild store but you know how limiting that is. Limiting enough that people rather than sell there items on the Gstore sell it through chat spam I get that there are eq players out there who did that sorta thing and enjoyed it but I am no where near the same boat ill give the economy a few months to stabilize and see what everyones doing at max lvl but I doubt my opinion will change much

kemp.garretub17_ESO1

Kneon wrote: »

3. Not having a supreme easy mode AH is the best thing this game has going for it. The Walmart AH of other games completely obliterates questing, crafting, looting, as all the best gear in the game is immediately within reach. It makes gold the supreme resource in the game, and encourages gold-farm/spam because "with $19.99 you too can have the best gear in the game in 5 minutes or less".

.

The best gear in the games with auction houses is not within immediate reach and legitimate players don't buy gold its a challenge to work up the gold to get the items and those were actually some of my fonder moments in world of warcraft selling items other people wanted in order to buy the cool mounts and other stuff. Zenimax is competent enough to adjust supply and demand appropriately to keep people from easily reaching the top tier items and im sure they can fight off players botting/cheating for gold.

Gohlar

The game is perfect. If you see something that could be improved, you're just misguided, this isn't that kind of game. Go back to WoW.

People say perfection is impossible. They are wrong. The Elder Scrolls online is without flaw. It is perfection.

knightblaster

It's more that many of us are *very* resistant to introducing elements from other MMOs that have been deliberately left out here, for good reason.

Gohlar

knightblaster wrote: »

It's more that many of us are *very* resistant to introducing elements from other MMOs that have been deliberately left out here, for good reason.

I know, it's perfect. I mean optional nameplates? The game would be completely destroyed. We can't give players that kind of power.

I think suggesting things should be considered an exploit and removed.