How this game should HAVE been

socomhdsb16_ESO

This is my OPINION on how this game should of been made.

There is no denying that Elder Scrolls Online did not live up to its expectation during its launch and I still don't feel the game is living up to the series expectation which will in my opinion, will result in a lot of disappointing fans on its initial launch on the next generation console as people are going to expect Skyrim online or something like that.

This is coming from a person who have played Morrowind, Oblivion and with over 1000 hours in Skyrim + a mod creator. I play Skyrim with mods and in my opinion, Skyrim is already a 10/10 game and with mods, its like 100/10.

What the developer should of look upon when developing this game is really look into why people LOVE the Elder Scroll Series. Perhaps they did but I refuse to believe this as the game turns out to be almost nothing like the Elder Scroll series. Its like a paint and I know a lot of you guys are gonna say that its unfair to compare this game to a single player game but being an MMO has its advantage to. The fact that you could play with your friends... fight against other players.. and more. WOW
1.) QUEST
Skyrim is fun because the quest were fun and when I play the quest on Skyrim, the stories and game play just makes me want to play the game. And ESO quest to me just seems like a chore to do which makes me not want to do them. The quest is like any other MMORPG quest out there. Go here, do this, go to this guy, then do this and that. There is very little to make you believe its different and I do appreciate the voice acting. ESO has a wealth of quest, even more than Skyrim for sure but I just prefer quality over quantity. I would rather this game release with medium amount of GREAT story driven and beautifully laid out quest than abundant mediocre quest that just seems like you're doing the same quest over and over again.
2.) Graphics
Graphics should of been beautiful. I can't understand how people can say this game has beautiful graphics, I just can't. It is an MMORPG yes but there are MMOS out there that have far better graphics than that of Skyrim itself such as Black Desert Online. I understand that MMO needs to appeal to large crowd out there, and that is the reason why it can't have good graphics but... it should of been flexible. If a computer can't handle the extreme graphics, they could put it at the lowest graphical setting!
3.) Developer should of looked at some of the popular mods on Skyrim and think "why is it popular?"
They really should. Modding is a big part of the Elder Scrolls community and developers should of gotten an idea of what to implement into ESO from just modding alone. For example is the dodge combat system that allows characters to body dodge. No I'm not talking about the roll dodge that we have in this game, I really meant your body moving to dodge an attack from an enemy swing. Or a mod that enables Skyrim to have more of a real sounding sword swing to make the game feel more heavy and real. Like every attack feels like you're actually swinging that sword. Heck Bethesda could do it! They adding housing system into the game because they saw that there was a popular player owned house mod.
Or Revenge of the Enemy mod that enables monsters to be smarter than the default Skyrim AI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eOtn9Ur6YY


4.) Game play
Should of been more like Skyrim. You can't forward power attack or backward power attack in this game, its just 5 buttons that you click. Skyrim is a lot harder than this game. When your fighting a giant in Skyrim, you're fighting a GIANT in Skyrim. An enemy that could swing its weapon and freaking send you 10 feet flying in the air. What I'm trying to say is this game should of been somewhat challenging but it isn't. Its easy and feels like I'm playing a difficulty easier than easy.


Overall You need to understand that I wanted this game to be successful I really did. Supported this game from day 1 when it was announce! Supported it on YouTube. When I first heard of ESO, my heart was pounding. I love Elder Scrolls and I love MMO so this was literally the thing that I needed but it just didn't turn out to be what people expected.

If the developer is planning to make Elder Scrolls Online 2, then I really hope it will be more like the Elder Scroll series. If you think about it, there is nothing wrong with Skyrim online. They could simply put the difficulty on some quest a lot harder to encourage team play.

Epona222

I hate myself for this, and the mods will probably remove this post, but I think you meant to say "should HAVE". There is no such phrase as "should of".

socomhdsb16_ESO

Epona222 wrote: »

I hate myself for this, and the mods will probably remove this post, but I think you meant to say "should HAVE". There is no such phrase as "should of".

I guess... English not first language.

But this is just my opinion and I know the developers are probably going to remove this from the forum and a lot of haters are gonna come and hate.

Epona222

socomhdsb16_ESO wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

I hate myself for this, and the mods will probably remove this post, but I think you meant to say "should HAVE". There is no such phrase as "should of".

I guess... English not first language.

But this is just my opinion and I know the developers are probably going to remove this from the forum and a lot of haters are gonna come and hate.

Oh OK, I see the error a lot from people in the part of England that I come from, because our accent/dialect naturally shortens 'should have' to 'should've', which sounds a lot like 'should of' - given that you made that error, I would have assumed that you came from south east England

MercyKilling

I will agree that there's not enough of the single player ES games in ESO...but there's also not enough MMO in ESO as well. For instance:

The ability to create your own chat channel.
Guild membership being on a per character basis instead of an account basis.
Solo only and group only missions. That should never have been considered, much less implemented.


These are a few of the things that tick me off, personally. I do have a laundry list, however.

Psychobunni

Skyrim was my least favorite TES game I didn't/don't want Skyrim online, I was looking for a good mix of the TES line in whole and MMO qualities. As it stands the games seems too solo to me.

Daemons_Bane

Psycho, what makes skyrim the least favorable game.? Curious :-)

OtarTheMad

There are things lacking in this game no doubt. However with the content that was suppose to be out already (see last year's Quakecon) and things announced a few months ago (Spiral Skein, TG questline, DB questline, Abah's Landing, Clockwork City) It seems to me that ZOS is preparing for a lot of DLC's already, or at least some beefy ones. You look at all the content that they promised already and the content they teased a few months back... it keeps me interested in the game.

Is PVP hurting? Yes. Is the lack of things to do right now at VR 14 annoying? Yes. Are the VR zones a real grind? Absolutely. However, maybe with the game now overhauled ZOS can focus on what it really wanted to do all along... give us content.

socomhdsb16_ESO

Psychobunni wrote: »

Skyrim was my least favorite TES game I didn't/don't want Skyrim online, I was looking for a good mix of the TES line in whole and MMO qualities. As it stands the games seems too solo to me.

Yeah a few of my friends liked Morrowind or Oblivion better simply because it had better spells or the game play is over all better.

Playing Skyrim with mods made the game so much better for me. Playing on Legendary with revenge of the enemy mods.
WOW the experience is great. Although it made some enemy to hard to solo, like dragon priest literally had hundreds of more spells like summon flame atranoch (however you spell it) which made me think that an online woulda been great cause I could have a friend help me kill it.

Daemons_Bane

What I miss the most from morrowind has got to be the assassination writs and throwing weapons.. getting those back would be swell

Psychobunni

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

Psycho, what makes skyrim the least favorable game.? Curious :-)

Well I bought it for console hot off the press, big mistake as they didnt have bug fixes even available yet. (lesson is patience lol) so I had things like dead companions lying around and couldn't advance quests. Little things like the college instead of the mages guild. Mostly the game just seemed so easy compared to Oblivion and ofc Morrowind. It just didn't click with me and I never even finished it

Daemons_Bane

I think the complain I hear the most is directed at the story of the game.. it seems rather flat and dead, especially compared to morrowind.. lacking consequences too

Glurin

1.) QUEST
To be fair, ESO did do a really good job of limiting the "Kill ten rats" or "Collect fifteen eyeballs from the eyeless zombies" quests. But realistically, most quests are going to have a "go here, do this, kill that" format out of necessity. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement of course.

2.) Graphics
ESO has some of the best graphics for an MMO on the market even now, a year after it's launch. It's not just about reaching a larger audience though. MMOs, by nature, put a lot more stress on the graphics system compared to single player games. Not so much in quality, but quantity. A lot more can be happening at any given time. Also, there are a whole lot more assets that need accounted for, both in time and money and client hardware specs. There is simply more different kinds of stuff, and more of it, in MMOs that could be on the screen at any given time.

3.) Developer should of looked at some of the popular mods on Skyrim and think "why is it popular?"
Lets take a look then, shall we?
Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Oh here we go...wait, no. Boobs. Next....

4.) Game play
MMOs have to be balanced for an average of the player base, not per individual. That's just kind of part of the package. But that doesn't mean they can't have some difficult fights. You just can't have the whole game be fights that long time veteran players would find challenging.

dodgehopper_ESO

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

I think the complain I hear the most is directed at the story of the game.. it seems rather flat and dead, especially compared to morrowind.. lacking consequences too

In fairness, how could you really have consequence in a game like this unless it was more sandbox in design? Ultimately a sandbox game would have nothing to do with the storyline they concoct as well.

sadownik

Glurin wrote: »

1.) QUEST
To be fair, ESO did do a really good job of limiting the "Kill ten rats" or "Collect fifteen eyeballs from the eyeless zombies" quests. But realistically, most quests are going to have a "go here, do this, kill that" format out of necessity. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement of course.

2.) Graphics
ESO has some of the best graphics for an MMO on the market even now, a year after it's launch. It's not just about reaching a larger audience though. MMOs, by nature, put a lot more stress on the graphics system compared to single player games. Not so much in quality, but quantity. A lot more can be happening at any given time. Also, there are a whole lot more assets that need accounted for, both in time and money and client hardware specs. There is simply more different kinds of stuff, and more of it, in MMOs that could be on the screen at any given time.

3.) Developer should of looked at some of the popular mods on Skyrim and think "why is it popular?"
Lets take a look then, shall we?
Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Oh here we go...wait, no. Boobs. Next....

4.) Game play
MMOs have to be balanced for an average of the player base, not per individual. That's just kind of part of the package. But that doesn't mean they can't have some difficult fights. You just can't have the whole game be fights that long time veteran players would find challenging.

1. Quests are plenty and there are some in main line and guild lines that are less standard but besides that ... let me just tell you that i stopped doing quests on all my 3 characters ( v7, v1, and 18) bacause when i see another "our village is under attack, go and activate those 3 stones and it will be all alright" quest i grind my teeth in frustrasion
2. graphics in eso is dull. There i said it. It is dull and repetitive and after first zone you start to see it very clearly. And dont get me started on character visuals - every MMO younger than 3 years has done it better
3. Mods, well i like that possibility in single pleyr games but i do understand its MMO so no mods here and im ok with that.
4. True but on the other hand you also cant have the whole game so easy there is no challenge at all. I would be ok with lvl 1 -50 as prolonged tutorial but the situation in which you just need to get that 1 -2 essential skill on each character to roll through the content with such ease.

Wicked_Wolf

I'm sorry but in my opinion, your entire post translates to "this game should have been just like Skyrim, and since it's not, it's bad". I will agree with one thing, I fully expect many console players to complain about this exact thing and that is unfortunate.

Glurin

Wicked_Wolf wrote: »

I'm sorry but in my opinion, your entire post translates to "this game should have been just like Skyrim, and since it's not, it's bad".

Pretty much describes every negative review of ESO when it launched.

Tierbook

1. Skyrim's questing was pretty bland outside 2 or 3 of the main quest lines.... Theivs guild, Dark Brotherhood and the main quest anyway. Personally I'd say ESO does questing better.
2. Let's be honest Skyrim looks like crap without mods, and the color scheme is even more muted than ESO.
3. I never paid much attention to mods unless they made the game look better, most of the mods either were there for the sake of a joke or to try to make ESO seem realistic to an extent an MMO can never do.
4. I like ESO's gameplay, it's not as good as Skyrim from an attack perspective but the game is still young

BigM

LOL want Skyrim go play Skyrim or better yet wait to play ES 6.

Darkonflare15

I my opinion I would not even compare a game that trying by two separate things. It is trying to be a known single player game with mmo elements. So I considered this game to be a hybrid game it should not have two much from each source or it will loose its identity. At launch this game could not find it's identity too many people wanted this game to be like the Elder scrolls and too many people wanted this game to be like a mmo. Which makes sense, since it is a Elder scrolls mmo but because of this we have way too many radical changes and not enough proper direction. But because of this, this game has been split into solo/group game.

You can see how each update they try please each type of player. Vet areas was made intentionally to be group areas hence why Craglorn was a group specific quest area. 1-50 was suppose to be solo in general because the story makes much since playing solo than group. You could do quests solo but you have dolmens, world bosses, public dungeons, and group dungeons for groups. This was balance. Despite this people wanted to group up all the time which led to grouping problems which came from people making different decisions in quests which separated them from their groups. This is the problem with having too many consequences in a mmo game it separates people while in single player game it is ok.

Now the vet areas was hard because you needed more people to get through this area. These areas are now easy so people can level through these areas solo because people were use to the solo experience from 1-50 areas and were bit not ready for the difficulty change. These areas were suppose to get you ready to group up for adventure zones but this fail because of the solo feel of the game in the early stages.This also sparked the rush to Craglorn to grind up to vet 12 as fast as possible because people did not want to level through the vet areas because they were too difficult. These problems cause more even more problems.

This separated the four classes from each other. Dks and sorcerers could with their tools get through the harder content because they had a lot better skills to deal with it. While Night blades had weak defenses and could not survive long from all the mobs and Templars kept running out magicka to use their moves which made them a sitting duck when they ran out resources. Now there were players who made it through the content with all classes but causal or people who just did not want to deal with the difficulty could not.

This is why ZOS continue to buff up characters with the champion system, soft cap raise, Gear buffs, the removal of soft caps, and Class buffs and nerfs. This is why the game is so much easier now then at launch. Players has so many ways to get though content at a fast rate thanks to all of these boosts and the weakening of the vet content. I think now they should boost some the group content that once needed a group that can now be easily solo thanks to boosts. Like world bosses, public dungeons, and Dolmens.

In my opinion, it felt like ZOS did not know who to do cater to this group or cater to this one. Right now I think they have a better idea of what they want to do hence the reason why they are not making as many changes right now.The justice system introduce proves that they want to make the game more ESO like and the Dragon star Arena, Trials, more vet dungeons proves that they want to make the game more mmo ish. I think ZOS have to find the right blend instead of having too much mmo or too much of single player experience.

Epona222

BigM wrote: »

LOL want Skyrim go play Skyrim or better yet wait to play ES 6.

I hope TES6 has better guild questlines than Skyrim, because they were just dismal.

DDuke

Sadly, "Skyrim Online" is exactly what the developers seem to be turning the game into.

If anything, the game needs more MMO elements (Progressive Raiding, BGs & Arenas etc)


But if they wanted to implement more TES elements, I wish they'd implement those from the best part of the series, Morrowind, not some dumbed down console action game.

Robo_Hobo

I actually really like ESO's quests more than Skyrim's, the storyline of them I mean - naturally mechanics can't be like how Skyrim's was due to it being an MMO. I've not played all of Morrowind, and never played Daggerfall/Arena (yet) but atleast as far as what I've seen from Morrowind, then all of Oblivion and Skyrim, I've kinda noticed the story-driven aspects of the game kind of died down over the games - while other aspects of the game improved. That's not to say I disliked any of them, just, I could kinda notice more attention to storyline in the previous ones.

To me the 'attention' actually improved between Skyrim and ESO. It's kind of hard for me to pinpoint what it is about it that actually improved between the story aspects of the quests in Skyrim and those in ESO, but it's quite noticeable for me regardless. In general, anyway, some parts of Skyrim's quest do go beyond ESO's - but the average, I feel, is a bit lower than ESO's. I'm not sure how I'd compare it to the attention of Oblivion's, maybe about even, but Morrowind still passes it up. Just my opinion of course. Only talking the story-driven aspects, not mechanics or anything else.

Sure you can go and dumb down everything to go "kill this", "collect this", "talk to this person" but you can do that with virtually any quest in any game. It's the purpose, the story to go with it that makes those actions seem meaningful. If someone skips over dialogue or doesn't pay attention to the storyline of it, of course they're going to see the quests as repetitive and boring - I'd be a bit worried if they didn't, actually.


If there was one thing that ESO could have done better with it's quest presentation though, and I know this is quite heavily due to it being an MMO and not single-player, but a lot of the animations and 'events' all seem too similar, the engine or something it runs on - going to another plane is just some small portal every time, stuff like that. Nothing much too out of the 'ordinary' happens when explaining what goes on in a quest.

Oh, and it would help to have a quest list, and better guiding system/soft-restrictions so you don't accidentally do a quest that's supposed to take place later on in a questline than the quest you're currently on. At the very least a warning, was no way for me to know how to get back on the 'track' once I fell off of it. So I kinda went out of order a bit when I started.

Sausage

Stop beating the dead horse.

MercyKilling

Glurin wrote: »

3.) Developer should of looked at some of the popular mods on Skyrim and think "why is it popular?"
Lets take a look then, shall we?
Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Oh here we go...wait, no. Boobs. Next....

I'm going to really tear this fallacy to shreds by simply posting a link. It's already pre-filtered to the most downloaded mods. It's also filtered to include female, male, nudity and adult oriented mods.
Out of the top twelve mods, only one is a nude mod, and even then..it has an option to download a "modest" version.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/searchresults/?src_order=3&src_sort=0&src_view=1&src_tab=1&src_language=0&src_showadult=1&ignoreCF=0&page=1&pUp=1

Please stop disseminating false information.

JD2013

I am actually replaying Skyrim at the moment. I haven't played it since late 2012.

The thing that I found with Skyrim is that basically everything was handed to you on a plate, you could become an indestructible God like being that couldn't be touched by anything at all. The quests were far less immersive than those in ESO, Daedric quests (with the exception of the really fun Clavicus Vile one) were very uninteresting, the world, whilst beautiful (especially with mods) was rather static (oh, another dragon fight. Yay.) and it was so laughably easy to join and become the head of every single Guild in the game without any conflicting interests. (Thieves Guild "you failed the sneak test? Come meet with us anyway!)

That's not to say I don't like Skyrim. I do. But I rather think we look at that game through rose tinted glasses.

This game was never ever meant to be Skyrim Online. It's simply not designed that way. And as for the graphics not being great, it's far better looking than vanilla Skyrim. Far better range of different landscapes (See Grahtwood, Auridon, Shadowfen, even Eastmarch and The Rift are prettier than vanilla Skyrim) and often cause me to just stand in game and look at landscapes.

Is ESO without flaws? Goodness no. Absolutely not. There are definite ES staples that are missing (most notably for me as a mage character, the different schools of Magic) Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild (confirmed to be coming) and I would certainly like for there to be more random occurrences in the world, better Daedric quests, much bigger delves and Dwemer ruins, things like that.

But don't let Skyrim nostalgia blind you

PBpsy

MercyKilling wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

3.) Developer should of looked at some of the popular mods on Skyrim and think "why is it popular?"
Lets take a look then, shall we?
Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Boobs. Next. Oh here we go...wait, no. Boobs. Next....

I'm going to really tear this fallacy to shreds by simply posting a link. It's already pre-filtered to the most downloaded mods. It's also filtered to include female, male, nudity and adult oriented mods.
Out of the top twelve mods, only one is a nude mod, and even then..it has an option to download a "modest" version.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/searchresults/?src_order=3&src_sort=0&src_view=1&src_tab=1&src_language=0&src_showadult=1&ignoreCF=0&page=1&pUp=1

Please stop disseminating false information.

Funny enough that list is shows one of those old problems with TES games since Morrowind on pc. Will we PC players ever get a TES game without sub-par interface from the box?


Come to thing of it, this is one of those aspects that ESO lived down to the standards of its predecessors.

sadownik

JD2013 wrote: »

I am actually replaying Skyrim at the moment. I haven't played it since late 2012.

The thing that I found with Skyrim is that basically everything was handed to you on a plate, you could become an indestructible God like being that couldn't be touched by anything at all. The quests were far less immersive than those in ESO, Daedric quests (with the exception of the really fun Clavicus Vile one) were very uninteresting, the world, whilst beautiful (especially with mods) was rather static (oh, another dragon fight. Yay.) and it was so laughably easy to join and become the head of every single Guild in the game without any conflicting interests. (Thieves Guild "you failed the sneak test? Come meet with us anyway!)

That's not to say I don't like Skyrim. I do. But I rather think we look at that game through rose tinted glasses.

This game was never ever meant to be Skyrim Online. It's simply not designed that way. And as for the graphics not being great, it's far better looking than vanilla Skyrim. Far better range of different landscapes (See Grahtwood, Auridon, Shadowfen, even Eastmarch and The Rift are prettier than vanilla Skyrim) and often cause me to just stand in game and look at landscapes.

Is ESO without flaws? Goodness no. Absolutely not. There are definite ES staples that are missing (most notably for me as a mage character, the different schools of Magic) Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild (confirmed to be coming) and I would certainly like for there to be more random occurrences in the world, better Daedric quests, much bigger delves and Dwemer ruins, things like that.

But don't let Skyrim nostalgia blind you

Please explain then where is difficulty in ESO? Its all just time consuming thats all. Boring quests? hell yeah Skyrim had those but not in hundrets. Guilds that are easy to join and max out? Well tell that to my vampire sorc who also is a very prominent figure in fighers guild.

And while we are at it can someone explain to me how a person without a soul have a skill that "in tooltip" maks your soul explode?

Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011. ESO was released in 2014. You seem like a smart guy so you know what 3 years make in gaming industry right?

I understand that Skyrim is a single player game and has many faults but dont let love for ESO blind you. And no smiley

Daemons_Bane

Maybe your soum can explode, as a hint to that we will get it back? :-) anyway, I still want the Morag Thong back into the game :-) could be an exciting competitor to the black hand.. They seem more classy in some ways, more legit

Gidorick

Some of your complaints do read very much "It's not Skyrim so it's bad"

A couple of points you made that I can agree with:

Not so much the graphics but the characters and armor in ESO leave much to be desired. I actually really like the character aesthetic of ESO. It's just realistic enough and just cartoony enough for my tastes. Let's discuss this in the context of the game you mentioned, Black Desert Online (BDO).

The BDO character creator is outstanding and moving forward, ESO lean a lot from the character creator of BDO. Not all of the features are needed but things like moveable tattoos and scars are pretty great. The hair and cloth in BDO is simply amazing. The armor in BDO is also WORN by your character, unlike ESO where a good deal of clothing/armor is a texture on your character. It has always irked me that my character's heavy plate armor stretches and contracts when he's swinging a hammer at the blacksmith station. Unfortunately, these are things that I really don't think ESO can change without a great deal of work on ZOS' part. It would require a 100% complete redesign and reimplementation of the character creation, character modeling and armor systems. But you know... maybe that will be needed at some point.

The fighting mechanic in ESO is quite different from other TES games but this is one area where I concede that this is an MMO so there are some design choices that have been based on MMO design sensibilities. I would have preferred that the 5 slot system be treated more like an "action" slot where we could level up spells from different schools of magic and different power moves with weapons. The system is close enough to keep me satisfied and again... it would be too much work to overhaul the system, and that's what it would need: A complete overhaul with complete rebalancing of the entire game. I don't see that happening. Ever.

The rest of your complaints could be addressed with a player quest creation utility. If players could make their own quests we would see some amazing content be created. As it is, we're just stuck with what ZOS puts out... once a year.

Lastly, I personally hope "Elder Scrolls Online 2" never exists. I hope for ESO to grow, expand, improve and change. There is the ENTIRE world of Nirn out there to explore. I hope EOS lets us do that.

freespirit

Two words......

Oblivion Gates!!

Dark Anchors are all well and good BUT I loved the gates, their varied maps and their level of difficulty......

I think there are some real possibilities for both solo and group play with them too.