New player feedback
Nerouyn
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New player here trying to give some constructive feedback. While there's a lot I like about ESO I find myself enjoying and playing it less every day. Not sure at this stage how long I'll stick around.
Here's why.
ESO has by the far the most diabolical inventory management experience of any MMO I've played. There's just so many crafting materials and the design is clearly for players to use alts for storage. Arbitrarily annoying with no added fun value but fine. That's what you want - players logging and out to juggle stuff.
However, you have classes and factions with restricted race options. As a new player I'm a bit on the fence between two factions and also need to try out all of the classes to decide which one I want to play. There's only 8 character slots so I can't create one of each profession in each faction. Obviously when I settle on a faction I'll want four characters in that faction and the four spread across the other two factions.
So I can't just straight away create 8 characters and start using them as mules. Especially not permanent mules eg. spending too much money increasing their bag slots.
There's also a bit of an issue with the character deletion restriction. I understand it's designed to minimise spam and I'm delighted to say after more than a week of playing I haven't seen any spam at all. That's semi-miraculous. But it's also seriously slowing me down in making the above decisions.
First thing I do when I start playing a new MMO is make some temporary characters with names I like, so those names are there when I want to use them. Doesn't work so well with ESO. Plus there's a bit of a lighting issue with the character creation screen. I've only found it to be a problem for Argonians which are one of my two preferred races, but their colouring can look very different out in the game world. In the worst case I had one which I thought looked great in the character creation screen but made my eyes want to vomit once I had him in the world. The colours seem to be more saturated in the game world.
So I have to wait 24 hours to get a new deletion so I make a new one and hope I get something I like. I'm still going on that.
Meanwhile I find myself compelled to just make levels as quickly as possible on my first character so I can a) park him as a crafting alt and b) have him farming money to buy inventory horses/slots for all my other chracters. That is massively detracting from the game's fun value.
Two suggestions.
1) Overhaul inventory management. Completely unhook it from alts. Take that out of the equation and most of the issues I talked about cease to be a problem.
2) I wouldn't suggest removing the character deletion restrictions. The absence of spam in ESO is fantastic. But maybe have a warning screen appear for new players describing the system and how it works so they know - rather than needing to go googling for that info after they find themselves stuck and waiting, waiting, waiting.
Here's why.
ESO has by the far the most diabolical inventory management experience of any MMO I've played. There's just so many crafting materials and the design is clearly for players to use alts for storage. Arbitrarily annoying with no added fun value but fine. That's what you want - players logging and out to juggle stuff.
However, you have classes and factions with restricted race options. As a new player I'm a bit on the fence between two factions and also need to try out all of the classes to decide which one I want to play. There's only 8 character slots so I can't create one of each profession in each faction. Obviously when I settle on a faction I'll want four characters in that faction and the four spread across the other two factions.
So I can't just straight away create 8 characters and start using them as mules. Especially not permanent mules eg. spending too much money increasing their bag slots.
There's also a bit of an issue with the character deletion restriction. I understand it's designed to minimise spam and I'm delighted to say after more than a week of playing I haven't seen any spam at all. That's semi-miraculous. But it's also seriously slowing me down in making the above decisions.
First thing I do when I start playing a new MMO is make some temporary characters with names I like, so those names are there when I want to use them. Doesn't work so well with ESO. Plus there's a bit of a lighting issue with the character creation screen. I've only found it to be a problem for Argonians which are one of my two preferred races, but their colouring can look very different out in the game world. In the worst case I had one which I thought looked great in the character creation screen but made my eyes want to vomit once I had him in the world. The colours seem to be more saturated in the game world.
So I have to wait 24 hours to get a new deletion so I make a new one and hope I get something I like. I'm still going on that.
Meanwhile I find myself compelled to just make levels as quickly as possible on my first character so I can a) park him as a crafting alt and b) have him farming money to buy inventory horses/slots for all my other chracters. That is massively detracting from the game's fun value.
Two suggestions.
1) Overhaul inventory management. Completely unhook it from alts. Take that out of the equation and most of the issues I talked about cease to be a problem.
2) I wouldn't suggest removing the character deletion restrictions. The absence of spam in ESO is fantastic. But maybe have a warning screen appear for new players describing the system and how it works so they know - rather than needing to go googling for that info after they find themselves stuck and waiting, waiting, waiting.
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Curragraigue✭✭✭✭✭
✭Inventory management is the bane of my ESO existence. It becomes a little easier when you can afford more bank space to swap things between toons and more bag space for each toon but prior to that it is a pain.
I have deleted all trophies (which I hate doing), sell off extra materials and have crippled my hoarding ways to try to combat this problem. Unfortunately there have been many threads asking for an inventory management fix but ZOS seem determined not to change it. So unfortunately you will need to get used to it.PUG Life - the true test of your skill
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Tanked to Undaunted 9+ Mag and Stam of every class using Group Finder for 90+% of the Vet Dungeon runs1 -
Nerouyn✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Curragraigue wrote: »It becomes a little easier when you can afford more bank space to swap things between toons and more bag space for each toon but prior to that it is a pain.
Yeah I get that, but the point I was trying to make in my OP is that this is a bad design interaction.
Alts being extra storage + character deletion restriction + needing to try out different classes / factions before you can start pouring money into alts to turn them into mules = massive clusterBLEEP for new players.Curragraigue wrote: »I have deleted all trophies (which I hate doing), sell off extra materials and have crippled my hoarding ways to try to combat this problem.
Also did both of those a few days ago - after googling to make sure trophies were junk. Helped a little.Curragraigue wrote: »Unfortunately there have been many threads asking for an inventory management fix but ZOS seem determined not to change it. So unfortunately you will need to get used to it.
Well no, I don't. No-one does. Players always have the option of leaving. I might just play through the main story for one or two factions and leave it at that.
There really is a lot to like about the game but I am enjoying and playing it less every day (not at all today) because of these issues. After just a little over a week it's reached the point of being more chore than fun. That's a bad scenario for a subscription MMO. If they want players to stick around they can't afford a silly problem like this.
And it is silly. This game design element is annoying in and of itself, creates the problems I described and adds no value. The only benefit from their perspective might be with the one horse feeding a day they're hoping to keep players subscribed a few months longer to max their storage.0 -
Rodario✭✭✭✭✭I feel your pain, as I was feeling the same way in the beginning. Spending more time with inventory management than actually playing the game.
I thought about creating a mock guild, fill it with inactives and use the guild bank for personal storage. I didn't go through with it because there was a bug that made guild banks inaccessible at times, so I didn't trust the system.
I ended up buying the game again and using the second account for storage.Edited by Rodario on October 8, 2014 9:19AMVictoria Lux - Templar Tank
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