WHY ESO DOESN'T FEEL LIKE A TES GAME - SOLO PVE

SRIBES

I think the majority of people that have played ESO share the opinion that it really lacks some elder scrolls elements. I've made a list of why I believe ESO does not feel like a TES game when doing solo PvE. Keep in mind some of these things may not all be possible in a MMO and are just opinions, they are things I feel like would have made the solo PvE experience more TES like.


•Zones: If it weren't for zones I think ESO would feel much more like a TES game. The world free and open for you to explore. Since there are zones it takes out that feeling, which is something Elder Scrolls games have always been great at. It makes the world feel so much smaller.

•Mobs: I know mobs/trash are in many MMOs but if Zenimax had made no mobs but so NPCs where spread out and there were more of them but only sometimes groups of them it would make for a much better experience. They also all look the same for the most part. You see a bandit, there is a female version and a male version. The variety in enemies in past elder scrolls games were great; You could see a high elf bandit but an argonian or khajiit right by their side.

•Looting: You can't loot everything you see off a monster. Let's say that you kill a bandit, you will normally just pick 1-2 gold off his body and a sword or something. In previous TES games you could get everything off a corpse they had on. It would become much better if you could loot all the gear he had on. To stop farming it, they could make the price be lower.

•First Person: It feels super clunky and unplayable to some degree since some skills like immovable will cover up the whole screen and it doesn't even feel like first person.

•Epic Moments: There are very little "epic" moments I have seen in ESO. If they had parts where you can look over a whole plain of oblivion from a sigil tower, or see all of vivec from a floating meteor, and looking at all of skyrim from the throat of the world it would feel more TES. These are some of the parts that make a TES game. Some of the boss battles or endings to quests don't feel very rewarding at all either. I know some of the events in zones zeimax tries to make epic just end up seeming silly. I hate how NPCs will fight each other and the fight won't even seem intense. There won't be many NPCs in times when they try to make moments seem large and bad ass. I hate angry joes review on the game because I feel as if he barely played the group and PvP content which this game does amazing but he said in the review the game lacks "Wow moments"

•Weather: I haven't really seen weather change in the game at all. I liked when there were sandstorms/ash storms in morrowind and it was hard to see, I liked when it rained in swampy parts of Cyrodiil in oblivion, etc. I also liked how the night sky lit up in shivering isles in Oblivion that was one of the most beautiful things to me in oblivion. I feel like there should be more diversity of weather and a more "beautiful" night sky. I feel like the weather should impact the player somehow also or give the a special feature. Rain makes your characters clothes/armor wet or appear darker, sand storms/snow storms will make the player put his/her hand over there face when running/walking/riding mount to prevent it from getting in their eyes.

•The choices you make don't seem to impact the world/SPEECH SKILL: In Morrowind you started off as a nobody, even peasants would mock and make fun of you as you walked by. You worked your way up by doing heroic quests and that made the people of that area like you more, which this doesn't seem to be the case in ESO. Everyone is kind to you throughout the entire game and it feels like your decisions don't even matter. It even seems like you don't have many times in the game when you make decisions. One thing that worked well in morrowind and skyrim was the fact that you had a speech skill line. You could bribe/admire/taunt or even intimidate people to get them to like you more or give you information. The less people in the town like you, the less quests they will offer you. Some shop keepers may not even trade with you or some NPCs refuse to talk to you.

•Side objectives in dungeons: In morrowind there were slaves kept in dungeons and such to where you would have to go out and explore the dungeon to find the key then free the slaves. I know because of the alliance there aren't
many slaves. It would add an interesting objective to dungeons and once you rescue the slaves that the badits/monsters were keeping they would go out and live in a town or village and praise you whenever you walk by them in the town.


•It's to easy: The solo gameplay just feels way to easy. It even feels like zos is holding your hand to some degree which I feel like they should give you a tutorial kind of thing then throw you out into the world and not help you at all. The game is also so damn easy and considering it's a MMO it's even easier since other players can help you. I think if it was 2x as hard in solo content it might not even hard enough.

•Level Scaling: Morrowind did not have level scaling but there were also no requirements on gear. Oblivion and skyrim had scaling. If ESO had it, it would make it so exploration isn't punished. Some areas would still be harder than others but not to much harder so it's still possible to explore.

•Fast travel and the map: Fast travel should be more limitied imo. I think you should only be able to fast travel to towns and safe villages to make city life seem much more alive. It would be nice if at starting towns there were wagons/stilt striders/boats to travel to specific towns/villages and have acsess to that to port to. I know skyrim and oblivion had this and ESO does also but it makes it a bit more boring; removing cave/delv/bosses, etc on the map. It would make for better exploration. You would have to try and remember things and use towns as a base.

•Guards and how towns should feel alive: I remember in morrowind when guards would see you getting attacked by something and run out to go help you. Or you could ask them for directions or rumors and they would tell you information on the area. If towns had a system where NPCs had different dialogue and conversations and city audio sounds it would feel much more alive. I'm not sure if it's possible or not but if NPCs had time schedules where they would go home or different places of the city it would feel much more TES like.

•More depth to characters: There are some great characters you can get attached to in ESO and previous TES games but I feel like there are not enough. Characters that tease you and have a sense of humor like thieves guild members but also more serious and epic characters like Martin Septim from oblivion. I honestly think if some of the old voice actors and soundtracks from previous games were implemented into ESO so many more players would enjoy the solo questing experience.

•Things that aren't part of TES but would fit it in an MMO environment: Things like being able to ride on the back of your friends horse would be great.. Or other mounts like a Khajiit species mount, guars, etc. there are other things as well but I think i've bored you all enough with my wall of text.

Breg_Magol

Good points. I gave u an awesome!

eserras7b16_ESO

Good points. And I don't think Zenimax hasn't done it because it's not possible, it's just because it's a lot of work (and the game came out incomplete) hoping all this starts being implemented.

Tandor

The points are valid in themselves (with the possible exception of the one about the weather, I love the rain, thunder and lightning effects), but I'm personally very happy with the way they've converted the single-player TES games into a multi-player TESO. It's not Morrowind Online, Oblivion Online, or Skyrim Online, and I wouldn't want it to be. Nor is it another standard MMORPG clone, which again I wouldn't want it to be. Rather, it's a good compromise between all those things.

I can't comment on the PvP or group content as they don't interest me, but from a strictly solo PvE point of view (which is what the OP is talking about) I think ZOS have done everything I was hoping for - good storylines, entertaining quests, exceptional graphics, very smooth performance, and plenty of TES lore for those who want to read the books and look a little deeper into the background to the quests/storylines. The phasing as quests develop has been extremely well implemented.

I'm not for a moment saying they got everything 100% right, but they certainly did a pretty good job and I'm enjoying the game enormously. There's nothing in the OP's list that would particularly enhance the game for me, although I can appreciate the points being made.

Jitterbug

April called. It wants its thread back.
Nah, just kidding. Good write up.

Alphashado

Short answer- it's an MMO. Many of the things you mentioned (more lootable items, severe weather, etc) all put stress on the server. A single player game has one outside entity- you. An MMO has hundreds of thousands of customers that all expect a smooth running game. It's a give/take situation. You will never have as many details in an MMO as you see in an RPG. It's the sacrifice you make in order to play with thousands of other people.

Edit: I'll add this. ESO has it's issues. And I am not bashful expressing my opinion about them. But in regards to level of detail and overall world interaction, it's pretty damned good for an MMO.

I've played almost every major MMO released in the last 20 years, and none of them even come close to the amount of interactive detail that ESO has. Just as one example, you can go anywhere in the game, dig through every container, and find some kind of loot. That in itself is a unique accomplishment for an MMO.

kongkim

Do not agree on the First Person. Think its super cool and one of the things that do i keep playing as its not like other mmo games.

Always play in First Person.

Lord_Kreegan

A lot of what you suggest can actually be implemented client-side; people think everything has to be done on the server, but that's because in general they don't have a clue about distributed processing methods. That being said:

Zones - I hate zones. I've always hated zones. Ever since the first Dungeon Siege game came out doing away with zones, I've despised zones. But, it's the engine they chose to use... when companies quit using bad engines, then we'll cease to see zones.

SPEECH/character reputation - I'm somewhat baffled they didn't implement something of this nature. We have conversation choices that are irrevocable (come up in red), but they have no impact on gameplay. If my character say this, he's a nice guy and the NPC gets a slap on the hand. If my character says that, the NPC dies... so? Does subsequent gameplay change? Nope. Probably this is so everyone has the same in-game opportunities (i.e., don't cut out quests for some players but not others), but if it has no impact on gameplay, why bother having the multiple dialog choices?

Scaling - While I prefer no scaling at all (ala Morrowind), if you're going to have scaling then IMHO Skyrim did it right and Oblivion did it wrong. In Skyrim, the mobs were at the level at which you first encountered them; however, if they were too hard, you could come back later after you leveled and the mobs would still be AT THAT ORIGINAL LEVEL. In Oblivion, they were-scaled to your new level if you came back later; you never felt like you were becoming a more powerful character. In Oblivion, when dealing with the Daedric mobs, you wanted to encounter them as early as possible (at the lowest level possible) because they were much weaker at those levels; they were very difficult later.

"Scaling" should be left to the Argonians; "re-scaling" is when they shed their skins... okay, I acknowledge that it's a dumb joke...

Bloodfang

•Zones: If it weren't for zones I think ESO would feel much more like a TES game. The world free and open for you to explore. Since there are zones it takes out that feeling, which is something Elder Scrolls games have always been great at. It makes the world feel so much smaller.

Zones: I'm dreaming for a day when they add whole Tamriel. And if they just let us explore whole Tamriel without loading screens (except caves, houses etc.).

It's too early to predict but I'm thinking that is their Main Goal. Making whole Tamriel without loading screens + scaling quests to your level.

•Mobs: I know mobs/trash are in many MMOs but if Zenimax had made no mobs but so NPCs where spread out and there were more of them but only sometimes groups of them it would make for a much better experience.

Mobs: I'm pretty sure TES games had mobs..By that I mean randomized npcs..Many times you'd just see bandits, skeletons etc. Not much changed in ESO, only perhaps there is way more mobs you have to kill. Which I consider better.

•Looting: You can't loot everything you see off a monster. Let's say that you kill a bandit, you will normally just pick 1-2 gold off his body and a sword or something. In previous TES games you could get everything off a corpse they had on. It would become much better if you could loot all the gear he had on. To stop farming it, they could make the price be lower.

Looting: Many bosses you meet in trials, veteran dungeons etc. would drop nothing then? I don't get it how some spiders are able to drop epic items, but I don't question it. Why? Because it's just an MMO, it's supposed to work that way. Also I don't want to see other undressing mobs as they kill them..

•First Person: It feels super clunky and unplayable to some degree since some skills like immovable will cover up the whole screen and it doesn't even feel like first person.

First Person: It's hard to play it in the hardest content (not impossible). Though I wouldn't say it's unplayable, it's actually pretty good.

•Epic Moments: There are very little "epic" moments I have seen in ESO. If they had parts where you can look over a whole plain of oblivion from a sigil tower, or see all of vivec from a floating meteor, and looking at all of skyrim from the throat of the world it would feel more TES. These are some of the parts that make a TES game. Some of the boss battles or endings to quests don't feel very rewarding at all either. I know some of the events in zones zeimax tries to make epic just end up seeming silly. I hate how NPCs will fight each other and the fight won't even seem intense. There won't be many NPCs in times when they try to make moments seem large and bad ass.

Epic Moments: This is the thing I disagree the most with you. I've had more epic moments in ESO than in the whole TES series. Nearly each quest has an epic ending. NPCs like Naryu Virian, Razum Dar etc., I've never met anyone in previous TES games that I could care more about. In previous TES titles you mostly cared only about yourself, not so much about others. Heck in Skyrim there wasn't 1 NPC that really stood out, I just didn't feel anyone there.

•Weather: I haven't really seen weather change in the game at all. I liked when there were sandstorms/ash storms in morrowind and it was hard to see, I liked when it rained in swampy parts of Cyrodiil in oblivion, etc. I also liked how the night sky lit up in shivering isles in Oblivion that was one of the most beautiful things to me in oblivion.

Weather: Agreed, weather in ESO is horribly implemented. Though Coldharbour and Stonefalls have some unique weather.

•The choices you make don't seem to impact the world/SPEECH SKILL: In Morrowind you started off as a nobody, even peasants would mock and make fun of you as you walked by. You worked your way up by doing heroic quests and that made the people of that area like you more, which this doesn't seem to be the case in ESO. Everyone is kind to you throughout the entire game and it feels like your decisions don't even matter. It even seems like you don't have many times in the game when you make decisions. One thing that worked well in morrowind and skyrim was the fact that you had a speech skill line. You could bribe/admire/taunt or even intimidate people to get them to like you more or give you information. The less people in the town like you, the less quests they will offer you. Some shop keepers may not even trade with you or some NPCs refuse to talk to you.

Choices: Again disagree. There is at least 1 choice per zone that has some huge impact on the zone. Also you keep working your way up in each faction, and they accept you as one of them, they trust you, they assign you to special tasks. How much more would you want seriously? You can intimidate, bribe NPCs. It's mostly to get information faster than you othervise would, but how many other MMOs have done that? Also I noticed NPCs praising me all the time, remembering my deeds, so obviously my actions did have impact on the world.

•Guards and how towns should feel alive: I remember in morrowind when guards would see you getting attacked by something and run out to go help you. Or you could ask them for directions or rumors and they would tell you information on the area. If towns had a system where NPCs had different dialogue and conversations and city sounds it would feel much more alive. I'm not sure if it's possible or not but if NPCs had time schedules where they would go home or different places of the city it would feel much more TES like.

Towns, Time Schedule: More lively towns agree, however time schedules highly unlikely.

•It's to easy: The solo gameplay just feels way to easy. It even feels like zos is holding your hand to some degree which I feel like they should give you a tutorial kind of thing then throw you out into the world and not help you at all. The game is also so damn easy and considering it's a MMO it's even easier since other players can help you. I think if it was 2x as hard in solo content it might not even hard enough.

Solo Difficulty: It used to be more difficult, I loved it. Though solo content is still hard for many other MMO gamers. Why? Because it's still at least 10x harder than pretty much any other MMO out there. Gamers have become so much spoiled you need to hold their hand, especially MMO gamers. I played WoW for many years, solo content difficulty is non-existent..You can afk and the mob the same level as you won't be able to kill you..Really lame.

However I'm pretty sure only Morrowind was harder to play than ESO. Oblivion and especially Skyrim are much easier.

Evergnar

Level dependent zones. It's #1 on my list of things that would make the game better if they did not exist.

That being said I think they can get away with it (I don't think they'll ever change it) if they continue to implement content that brings players back to areas they have already completed and thus bringing more players together in the same area.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

It doesn't feel like a TES open world sandbox game because it is a themepark disguised as a TES sandbox game.

Remember the roving mobs in Oblivion? The imperial guards that would travel the highways?

Remember the assassin squads in skyrim that would travel across the map to find you? Which you promptly dragon shouted off a cliff and they actually took fall damage?

Now picture the silly 3 pack mobs that sit in their magic agro circle staring right at you and ignore you till you cross the threshold.

Then they hate you till they get too far away and rubber band back to their magic parking spot with full health and forget about you again. Even if they fell off a cliff.

Notice a difference?

zaria

Zones is pretty much required because of megaserver.
Megaserver is an far better solution than using lots of separate servers you log into, megaserver had problems in the start but this is mostly solved now.

Its an very limited times you actually cross an zone border and not teleport over.
Even WOW has zone boundaries between areas to separate areas with different levels and terrains. Yes you can fly over them and if you ride its no loading screen.

I say getting rid of loading screens then entering houses would be far better.
House loading was needed in the single player games because all the clutter but its far less of it in ESO.

Mobs could have been handled better and more dynamic, this would make the game more interesting, you might get harder fights but many could be solved by tactic.
Loot, here done to avoid too much farming also to avoid people stopping and sorting trough inventory all the time.

First person would have weakness anyway because you can not see behind you.
Guards I agree on, they should help, this might stop you from getting loot or xp.

Agree on reputation, that would be cool, like how the npc comments about thing you have done.

Difficulty, yes its a tad easy, it might depend on class and build, found my alt templar far stronger than my sorcerer. this might also be that I know more of how the game work.

Teiji

What the original poster said about guards -

"...you could ask them for directions or rumors and they would tell you information on the area.

I think this is reasonably important, being able to ask a guard for directions -> crafting areas -> Blacksmithing = [Blacksmithing station is in location X]

Then it's likely that the player will always recognise the icons on the map in the future. I find the maps easy to read but I remember when I first started I wasn't sure where to go for a few things.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

Most elements of single player rpgs simply will not work in a mmo. I think alot of people came expecting a coop version of skyrim. This is just a TES skinned MMO pretty much like all other mmos.

manny254

Trying to resist the urge to say "No sh*t Sherlock."

timborggrenlarsenb16_ESO

eserras7b16_ESO wrote: »

Good points. And I don't think Zenimax hasn't done it because it's not possible, it's just because it's a lot of work (and the game came out incomplete) hoping all this starts being implemented.

Or because they are lazy as with almost anything else around content!

Neizir

I 100% agree with your first point about zones. Zones honestly make the world feel small and enclosed, and it would be a great favour just to simply get rid of zones and integrate them into a huge game world with little to no loading screens, just like every TES game has done in the past.

Level-dependent zones are also a nuisance. ZOS should do it like Skyrim where mobs, chests etc. scaled to your level. If ZOS can do level scaling in Cyrodiil and in dungeons then there's no reason why they can't do it in all the other zones. I'm not asking to remove levels but just add mobs that scale to your level in every other zone. ZOS already does basically the same thing in Cyrodiil, so there's no reason they can't do it everywhere else. It would really help ESO be more like a TES game.

Here is what ZOS generally must do about exploration and leveling: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveling

As for other facion's zones, either just keep Cadwell's Silver/Gold quests or introduce a different system where World PvP is enabled and you can go there whenever you want, and you're able to do quests that benefit your own faction e.g recon missions or what would REALLY be epic, add a few keeps to the faction PvE areas in the game that your faction can attack with both NPC soldiers and player soldiers, not just PvP in Cyrodiil. Along with the Justice System it would really help create a genuine sense of danger in the world. It should be toggle-able, though.
World of Warcraft actually has this exact thing, but only in certain zones and only one zone allows you to use siege weapons.

I really do hope that ZOS adds these things to the game, and if so, make sure they're ready for the console release. The things I mentioned above aren't hard to add since all the fundamentals are already in the game.

ESO's world is still several orders of magnitude bigger than Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind combined, and even then there's still room to spare. Exploration should be a big thing in ESO, not a punishable act.
TL;DR:

• Remove zones and integrate them into a giant game world, with loading screens only for Coldharbour and to instances not in overland Tamriel e.g Mages Guild, islands, delves, dungeons etc. The explorable overland world alone, including Coldharbour, will be about 100 sq km if Cyrodiil is 27 square km and the other 16 normal zones (15 faction zones and Craglorn) are each 3 square km, and 1 square km each for the noob islands and about 20 square km for Coldharbour, and altogether this clocks in at 73 square km for all of the non-Cyrodiil zones and Cyrodiil measuring 27 square km, totalling 100 square km . That is big. Don't forget this is just the overworld area.
• All mobs will now scale to your level, and their levels will not be visible since they are about the same power level as you. Bosses and minibosses are also scaled to your level but they will, of course, be tons more powerful than you since they're bosses.
• Add PvP to every zone aside from Coldharbour (Lore reasons) and the noob zones e.g Bleakrock, Bal Foyen, Betnikh. 3-4 keeps are now in place per region and they can be attacked and defended. If you are in enemy territory you will not get any sort of base camp, so you will have to go to a nearby wayshrine and relaunch an attack if you're defeated. Holding keeps will give you buffs and the keeps have wayshrines, vendors and stables among other conveniences. You can opt in or out of this PvP, and you will not see enemy players if not flagged although you can still see enemy-held keeps and sieges.
• Keep Cadwell's quests for players that want it, but also give the option for PvP-focused quests in enemy territory, for example, socuting missions or keep assaults.
• Before you do all of it, please minimize server lag!

If ZOS does this, again it would be great if it were in for the console release in order for the console players, most of which may never have played ESO before, to have the best initial impressions.

I hope my feedback reaches the development team, and I hope it's taken into consideration. Thanks

AlexDougherty

Neizir wrote: »

ESO's world is still several orders of magnitude bigger than Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind combined, and even then there's still room to spare. Exploration should be a big thing in ESO, not a punishable act.
TL;DR:

• Remove zones and integrate them into a giant game world, with loading screens only for Coldharbour and to instances not in overland Tamriel e.g Mages Guild, islands, delves, dungeons etc. The explorable overland world alone, including Coldharbour, will be about 100 sq km if Cyrodiil is 27 square km and the other 21 zones are each 3 square km (1 square km for the noob islands and about 20 square km for Coldharbour) and altogether this clocks in at 73 square km for the non-Cyrodiil zones and Cyrodiil measuring 27 square km, totalling 100 square km . That is big. Don't forget this is just the overworld area.

This would require a rewrite of the game, it would be nice, but it won't happen, and would probably cause huge lag for everyone. At the minute the game each area is essentially a different server (which is why you get the loading screen between areas) and lag in one area doesn't transfer to another. But if all the area's are amalgamated then everybody suffers together.

[*] Add PvP to every zone aside from Coldharbour (Lore reasons) and the noob zones e.g Bleakrock, Bal Foyen, Betnikh. 3-4 keeps are now in place per region and they can be attacked and defended. If you are in enemy territory you will not get any sort of base camp, so you will have to go to a nearby wayshrine and relaunch an attack if you're defeated. Holding keeps will give you buffs and the keeps have wayshrines, vendors and stables among other conveniences. You can opt in or out of this PvP, and you will not see enemy players if not flagged although you can still see enemy-held keeps and sieges.

Might work if it's in a special PVP zone, which is seperated from PVE so lag doesn't start affecting us when we are doing quests or killing Bosses.

[*] Keep Cadwell's quests for players that want it, but also give the option for PvP-focused quests in enemy territory, for example, socuting missions or keep assaults.

I have no objection to PVP missions in the area's so long as I'm not obliged to take part.

[*] Before you do all of it, please minimize server lag!

All of your suggestions would actually increase lag, so it would be one step forward two steps back. Not actually against all of them, but the intregrated areas would be horriffic (due to the lag it would create IMO).

Neizir

@AlexDougherty WoW and GW2 among many other MMOs manage to do it, so i don't see why ESO can't. I know that WoW and GW2 were initially designed that way but surely it can't be that hard to implement it into ESO? All they're essentially doing is merging the current 22 zones together to create 5 giant zones in total (Ebonheart Pact, Daggerfall Covenant, Aldmeri Dominion, Cyrodiil, Coldharbour). A loading screen for Cyrodiil and between the faction areas may be necessary in order to lessen lag.

Tandor

Neizir wrote: »

WoW and GW2 among many other MMOs manage to do it, so i don't see why ESO can't.

Totally different games, with totally different engines and server structure.

kongkim

I really never had a problem with zones. and the zones here are even big or even huge. When moving around questing you really never zonem only when going to ny quest areas.
The loading when going in to houses etc. worked well in all other TES games. And like how it works. Its no game breaker so really don't see a problem.

danno8

Oblivion and Skyrim at the moment you step out into the world....was scary! You could die very easily if you were not careful. Mobs could come out of nowhere and could swarm you quickly and you know you had no chance.

In an mmo though this is just not the case. Mobs are super easy on level all the time. They always come in neat little packs of 1-3 as to never be overwhelming.

There is a reason people try to fly through the leveling process in mmos, because as good as storytelling and questing can be, it is just never truly threatening or challenging. And if it is (like VR levels pre VR nerf) people complain until it is made to be easy.

driosketch

Zones: Valid argument. They went theme park instead of sand box for the design, though I have to say it hasn't really stopped me from going out and exploring. You're able to avoid most mobs that are too high for you so you can discover nearly every location in the game if you want to explore badly enough.

Mobs: not sure what the criticism here is exactly.

Looting: True, though you also had an encumbrance based inventory, so you couldn't exactly loot more than 2-3 sets at a time. Different invetory system, different loot system.

First Person: Admittedly an afterthought for them, there is definitely room for improvement. On the plus side, like with the addition of the FoV slider, they are willing to update it.

Epic moments, weather, choices: I'm going to have to say a lot of this may be due to a lack of observation of your part, or perhaps a difference of opinion. If you are looking for epic views, there are plenty if you are willing to climb and explore. I don't know to which quest/boss fights you are referring to, so I don't know if I share your opinion on them. Also true, many of the battles are set pieces that remain in stalemate. However, in a few, like the daedric attacks in Firsthold, the enemy will win the battle if you don't hurry and intervene.

Weather changes, are you telling me you never noticed when it rains? And as someone above mentioned, you get stuff like ash falling in Stonefalls.

Now many of your choice won't effect gameplay, but some decide which characters,

like Gloria in Glennumbra

, you see alive later on. Choices in the story arc quests will effect how the characters feel about you. Even when it doesn't seem like that big a deal, NPCs will at least comment on you actions from time to time if you pay attention to the things they say. Some will even differ in their opinion of your actions. There's still a persuasion and intimidate passive in game that will effect some quests. Your fame and infamy are also something that will make a return with the new justice system.

Guards, hopely will become more active with the new justice system as well.

Too easy, matter of opinion mainly. Though an MMO has to cater to wide range of players, and they have nerfed a lot of the content, especially the solo stuff.

Scaling: they've already implemented this for the instanced stuff. Scaling in the open world of an MMO would be pretty difficult given the wide range of player levels.

Characters: this is where we differ the greatest. I love many of the characters in ESO. I get immersed in their stories, and ESO's story writing is what makes this feel like an Elder Scrolls game to me.

Other: different mounts are apparently planned for later updates.

TheLaw

Some good points, some silly points that would never work in an MMO and some points that make me think you haven't experience all the content yet.

AlexDougherty

Neizir wrote: »

@AlexDougherty WoW and GW2 among many other MMOs manage to do it, so i don't see why ESO can't. I know that WoW and GW2 were initially designed that way but surely it can't be that hard to implement it into ESO? All they're essentially doing is merging the current 22 zones together to create 5 giant zones in total (Ebonheart Pact, Daggerfall Covenant, Aldmeri Dominion, Cyrodiil, Coldharbour). A loading screen for Cyrodiil and between the faction areas may be necessary in order to lessen lag.

@Neizir It's virtually impossible to do it after you've built the game, I agree that they could have designed the game that way, but they didn't.

In order to remove the borders, they would have to rewrite the game. I'm not against the game borderless, but it needs to be made that way in the beginning, it can't be added afterwards.

SRIBES

TheLaw wrote: »

Some good points, some silly points that would never work in an MMO and some points that make me think you haven't experience all the content yet.

I'm just curious what points were good, silly, and you thaught I haven't experienced the content yet.

Elsonso

Zones. I don't expect them to rework the game to eliminate zones or the associated loading screens. I think that ESO is largely built off of tools and engine components used by the latest TES and Fallout single player games. These are all zone based and include loading screens.

The map for ESO is much larger than the maps for the TES and Fallout games since (and including) Morrowind. It is probably larger than all of those maps combined. Making this game zoneless using the in-house tools would have probably broken them, adding months to the development time.

To the credit of ESO, they did manage to get rid of the "city zones" that were added in Oblivion and have been a feature in every TES and Fallout game since then. Even within cities, a lot of the ESO building interiors are still in the same zone. The doors are just teleporters to a hidden location, often just below the map.

Zones are so much more than just a way to organize the data into manageable chunks, though. The MMO recipe that ESO followed, and many other MMOs have followed, uses zones to break the game down by level of diffculty. A massive open world that scales to the player is OK for single player games, but that is harder to do with an MMO and can lead to a boring world. Making a massive open world featuring a central low-level core that gets more difficult as the player expands out can easily backfire and seem like a constraint or too hard to play.

Since the data management aspect of Zones goes well with the leveling aspect of Zones, the use of Zones is pretty much a no-brainer.

I just wish they could have eliminated the loading screens between zones.

First Person. I play in both, for training purposes, but first person is home. It is definitely in need of some love from the developers since not all of the information needed to play is conveyed clearly. When I roll, all I see is a head bob. If I am stunned, 3rd person gets a crouching posture but first person simply loses all control. There is a difference with CC that I can break with WSAD and by holding both mouse buttons and I am not sure what the clues for that are in first person. It is important to keep "Active Combat Tips" turned on ("Always show") so that the game tells me which to do.

First person is fine for AOE as long as you remember to have the ground visible and not be staring up into the sky. I would like some better indication when things are happening behind me other than the red arrow.

I feel a little like 3rd person is cheating a bit with regards to showing me stuff that is out of my line of sight, particularly behind me. This is why I focus on first person.

Weather. This should be a cue from the server and not a client eye-candy thing. When it is raining it should be raining for everyone in the immediate vicinity. Once they solve that, they can have all the ash storms, dust storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards that they like.

Leeric

Because its not made by the same people....
boom end thread lol

Mandragora

AsweetRoll wrote: »

•Mobs: I know mobs/trash are in many MMOs but if Zenimax had made no mobs but so NPCs where spread out and there were more of them but only sometimes groups of them it would make for a much better experience. They also all look the same for the most part. You see a bandit, there is a female version and a male version. The variety in enemies in past elder scrolls games were great; You could see a high elf bandit but an argonian or khajiit right by their side.

I see mixed groups of bandits all the time even when it doesnt belong there really, so Im not sure where did you get your experience.

Audigy

I always hear zones and I honestly don't know what people are talking about.

ESO doesn't have any zones or big loading screens, I played through most of the story now especially in Beta and there are hardly any loading screens.

Its just like WOW is, you can travel from A to B without the required of a loading screen unless you change the continent.

AOC has loading screens, GW2 had them but ESO?

AlexDougherty

Audigy wrote: »

I always hear zones and I honestly don't know what people are talking about.

ESO doesn't have any zones or big loading screens, I played through most of the story now especially in Beta and there are hardly any loading screens.?

Um, Deshaan, Glenumbra, Auridon, Grahtwood, A'kiir Desert, these are all zones.