I had an old thread where I compiles some of my thoughts that were locked due to 2 not fully thought through sentenses. I think it was harsh since I really put some effort into making some constructive critisism that would benefit the game and general playerbase in the long run. I do think it is a good game and a potential wow killer but it lacks in some fundamental areas and fails to hook me for the long run.
So here it goes (if you read my old post you already seen some of this but some things are new). Everything is ofcourse my own opinions, but I played games since I VIC20 and most of the MMOs out there.
ESO Strong points:
Graphichs - The game is pure eyecandy
Quests - Quests can be repetetive in mmos because most bols down to go there kill this. Eso made the best out of it, good/fun/engaging dialouges, voice acting it was good before and they could have left it at that and it would still have been fine but no... 7 months in they add lip sync.. awesome.
Lore-Lots of books and rich lore.
Character creation - awesome
Skills and attribute system - Really good, allows for lots of different builds
Parts of the crafting system
Some other fluff
ESO Improvement potential (Area by area):
Crafting system
Pro
I like it takes RL time to learn new traits. I like the most part of gathering of nodes concept.
Cons
Risk vs reward messed up. You find purple motifs in bank. You find "nada" in dungeons. As someone pointed out this might change with justice system..but still.
I like there is a chance to find a purple recipe in a drawer but the droprate should be much higher on mobs/bosses or something that is a risk to you.
Armour/weapons boring as ***. All crafters can do all stuff.. Set items is bound to crafting locations. This is good from a casual player perspective and I do like this kind of system but there should also be blueprints to other items that drop very rarely from mobs so crafters can differentiate... As it is now everyone can do everything.. Kind of takes away the whole point of guildshop NPCs. Same stuff everywhere and if 1 trading guild sells item x for 10000 gold next guild wont sell the same item for 500g so its not much different pricing either.. I would have preferred a system where I know that Guild A have the Crafter B that usually offers very cool firestaffs.. or Guild B that have some sweet light armour.
Set items >>>>>>> all other items. There are really no viable options to set items. The 5 Piece award is something cool which makes you less willing to trade one (the 5th) piece from a set item for something else. This makes it so once you have your 1 or 1.5 set you can forget about gold (other than goldsinks or the entire loot system because there are no good alternatives).
Thoght: There is a fine balance between having options between fun loot and turning the game into a itemgrind (which we dont like). You also shouldnt have dropped loot >>> crafted loot because that makes crafting obsolete. However I would like to see loot drops (white/green) with cool stuff (ability changing stuff) that needs a crafter to upgrade to be viable. Maybe you need to find the white sword X and to upgrade it you need a crafter with 8 traits but you must also find the gem eye of the basilisk to upgrade it to green.. for upgrade to blue you need a crfter with 9 traits but also find a piece of the rare metal y... When upgraded to gold the sword is on par with crafted golds but also offers something unique.. like when you stun someone they turn into ice for the duration of the stun or some other cool visual. Im not asking for uber items just fun variations.
Loot
Pro
no loot is better than crafted items (almost)
Cons
see my thoghts about set items
No variety
Not much fun loot apart from some achievement loot.
Very wierd risk vs reward system.
Spend 10h in a trial for a purple subpar item that is better off deconstructed or very easily craft yourself the best item for your build using materials you find in any drawer..
As I said I dont want to turn the game into an item grind but c'mon you need to throw the PvEers atleast a small carrot... Loot should be (after upgrade that needs a skilled crafter) on par with crafted sets.
PvE
Pro
Cool quests, challanging sometimes.
Cons
new scaling system, forced grouping, phasing, lousy rewards.
Before as a solo player you had the option of setting your own difficulty for the game. If you wanted a true challange you went to higher lvl caves and got your arse handed to you by the boss. Best part was you could run and train and then come back and open a can of whoopass on that boss that killed you over and over.. Muahaha whos laughting now evil soulharvester.¨
With scaling you become more and more powerful but you would never notice because so does averyone else.. Please make an option to unscale content.
The quests are cool and all and I would have loved to enjoyed it all on 3 different characters. Now I did all with my main so the replay value for alts is extremly low.. and thinking of having going through the vet content with a second character is too much for me to bear. I hope the champion system will be like when you level to 50 you are finished levelling, then no matter which alt you play you get exp for all characters towards champion points. (So when you earn a champion point each of your lvl 50 alts will get 1 point). This way you are not forcing the players into certain builds because once they finish the main story for their realm (reach lvl 50) the player can play any of his alts without loosing out in the CP system.
I know in programming reusable code saves cost. Reusable quests (Cadwells) is a bad bad idea. High end gameplay should be stuff like craiglorn and pvp not doint all the quests of your enemy realms. You did an awesome job with the quests and if you havent forced my main to do them all I now would have had atleast 3 lvl 50 chars because I would have liked to see the other realms quests.. that would also make me less angry when my class gets nerfed because that would be a buff to one of my other chars (unless I did same class in each relm.. then I guess I would have been 3 times as pissed lol).
Solo content zone equal to craiglorn. Some players have RL and can only play casual. Trying to find a dungeon or quest group in craig can be.....timeconsuming.
Phasing is really cool until you want to group up. This gotten better but still..
Part of the problem why its so hard to find groups for craig quests/dungeons is the complete lack of reward. Throw in a rare drop mount of a skeletal horse with better runspeed and some storage for the dungeons and people would have a hard time trying to not find a group.
Trials and the concept of variety in builds
Since you measure time to complete as the only parameter you are forcing FOTM builds. You are also forcing players to use FOTM sets/items and it completly kills variety. It also encourage 1337 behaviour and can even destroy whole classes.. Sorry we dont need a sorch anymore, now we have so high dps negate isnt nessecary anylonger we just burn through instead.
Better option would to have some performance index for different builds/classes and then calculate the performance index for a group and measure the performance against that. This would make everyone welcome.
Since you are timing trials why not add timers to solo dungeons so I can compete with myself for fun? Would also give me an indication which build that suits my playstyle the best performancewise.
PvP
Pros
Cool system with destroyable walls and keep taking.
Fun combat 1v1 when no lag
Cons
Lag, weaponswapping not working good, class imbalance, to big zone now with no FC, lack of loot reward
Before removal of FC i had a good guess where the action was. Easy to respawn close to battles and quickly start killing stuff. Cons massive zergs lag.
After removal i played 2 nights. First night was awesome with quick finding of the action and lots of small group battles, 1v1 or 1v2 action. Best pvp night for me in ESO ever. The other night i was cursed with not finding the action and spend my time looking for it. Also got zerged when i finally reached a keep or by smaller groups. Worst night of PVP i had in ESO. So Im confused here.. it can be awesome but also utterly annoying. Solution? I dont know honestly. Maybe circles on the map (like in quests) that indicates enemys in that area without pinpointing exacly where they are.. or faster combat symbols on the map even if its just a 1v1 situation..
I fear castle taking is now something for the organized pvp guilds but personally I dont really care, I like killing stuff better like in 1v1.. I guess lots of other players will be dissapointed though.
Ressing - there is a thread about this, not much reward and cost a soulgem..
weaponswapping - if im only allowed 5 skills / bar out of like 100 skills then im forced to heavily rely on weaponswapping. It should be as safe to use as any of the skills on my bar... I often find lag lets the skills on my bar go off now and then but not the weaponswapping... I dont understand why since you said you cache the 2nd weapon/bar so it shouldnt be depended of lag...unles you put it serverside..which I would think would be a strange design desicion if that is the case.
laag - Allowing too many in to small space? too much effect / calculations serverside aoe hit/ blocking issues / particle effects...? Anyway lag quickly takes the fun out of the battle. Wow finally there is a single sniper I can jump.. why is nothing happening when i press all my buttons...why am i suddenly standing in the middle of an enemy zerg?
I can live with the general internet lag (ping time and so on) but there is something flawed with your code and or server setup networking. Upon respawn i cannot exit a keep through the door (well i can after a few minutes) but I can run up and jump out of the castle and then continue playing.
Sometimes i get struck with lag until I relog then its fine again.
^^ tells me something is fishy with the code rather than general internet lag.
Class imbalances - This will always be an ongoing issue. Many games make strong tanks with low dps and glass cannons with low hp and high dps. Not so many games makes classes with extremly strong tanking, really strong DPS and self healing and classes with cloth and low dps. a good rock,paper sissor would be 60-40 chance to win not 300-0. Also to get hit from stealth and instadie before you realise you were under attack (this is also related to lag). Or stunlocks preventing you from doing anything other than to stand and watch them kill you.
I know it can never be 100% fair but ZOS you need to react faster when it comes to completly OP builds.
Alot of other stuff but I have to take that later...my fingers hurt (and probably your eyes aswell).
Feel free to discuss and try to keep this as constructive as possible. My goal is to turn this game into something I want to log into every night.
Edited the title to improve chances a dev will read it