Things that vex me.

Phinix1

To preface, I love the game for what it is good at. The graphics are excellent, the quests are often at least mildly interesting, voice acting is excellent, great musical score, and the combat has a lot of potential, and it IS a lot of fun, when the stars align and everything goes right.

That said, and even after playing since per-release, and off and on now as I spread my time between several other titles, it is not without some glaring drawbacks that somehow continue to plague ESO, preventing it from becoming the sort of genre leader it could have been (or could still be).

BUGS!

Good god, the bugs! Bugs that never should have existed. Bugs that go MONTHS without even an acknowledgement of them being looked at. Bugs that take months to fix even after they are acknowledged. Game breaking bugs. Combat bugs. Immersion disrupting bugs. Quality of life bugs. Crashes due to bugs. Bugs in the bugs. You get the idea. The game has a lot of bugs.

Like the real life kind, you crush them and two take it's place. They span the universe, infinite as the stars!

Bad design decisions.

If you have the Wrothgar expansion, get a group and go do the Poachers world boss fight. You will see immediately that this game extends the offensive RNG gear drop with RNG trait gimmick right into combat "mechanics" which is simply unacceptable.

I am a veteran gamer, have raid tanked in Rift, WoW, and others and am no stranger to difficult mechanics. But what ESO consistently plays are NOT difficult mechanics, they are tedious, RNG insta-death mechanics with no helpful telegraph and a TERRIBLE visibility mark that would be missed by all without a 12ms ping and Cylon eyes.

Take this Poachers fight. The boss Echatere will fart out three or four little circles that move away from it at a fast speed. If you get hit by one with under 18k health, you are instantly 1-shot (even through shields in my case so the actual damage may be higher). There is no visual telegraph of which directions these will be going (sorry melee!), and the mark on the ground when they show up is so thin and feint red against the reddish-brown dirt that you really can't see it even when it does show up.

I have absolutely no desire to engage in veteran dungeons, trials, arena, or other "challenging" content because all I expect are cheesy insta-gib mechanics like this that rely on dumb luck, attrition runs, and meta-of-the-moment mechanic skipping and not player skill based on REAL mechanics and player knowledge of them. "I know it's coming but I don't know when or where" is not a skill mechanic, it is a ritual sacrifice to RNG Beelzebub!

Lack of needed UI elements.

I understand the excuse that "it's an immersion title." That is fine, but what you are really saying is "my devs are too busy/lazy to code the OPTION to have essential things like ENEMY NAME PLATES which you can turn off if you want, for immersion.

Don't force things on the player, give them the OPTION. Having enemy name plates is not going to give someone an unfair advantage over someone that prefers to game without them, but it will make targeting the random humanoid NPC's in the mass of humanoids like on the same example boss fight a little more immersive than "just mash your attacks until one hits an enemy."

Stupid unnecessary frustrations.

Environment critters that suck in your attacks like a black hole when you aren't even facing their direction, or when they are 40 feet away behind and to the left of what you are aiming at. ZOS apparently thinks this is "cute" or funny because it has been reported since beta and still has yet to be fixed.

Old McDonald had a bank? WHY does ZOS refuse to disallow trolls bringing out every annoying vanity pet while standing at the bank or crafting stations? Because they think it's "cute and immersive" to purposely annoy people with a pig or monkey running around a professional establishment, like that is realistic at all? No, because it is just one more stupid annoyance that doesn't need to exist and so does.

Too many of these silly quality-of-life niggling decisions that just make me want to log off sometimes because it's like ZOS is drawing a big bold highlight under the tendency of some people to be annoying or seek attention.

U mad brah?

I still enjoy the game for what it's worth, but I don't think it will ever rank in the category of titles I have devoted serious effort to learning raid mechanics and doing progression with a dedicated team so long as the mechanics are so RNG and the drops are so RNG. It is fun to level and craft and do dailies for a while when new content comes out, but the longevity of the game suffers due to these many avoidable annoyances.

ladyonthemoon

Well, don't play it then.

Phinix1

ladyonthemoon wrote: »

Well, don't play it then.

You missed the part about me loving the game for what it is good at.

Telling someone "well go live in Russia then" because they disagree with a current US president's policy on one thing or another isn't really constructive.

Xendyn

Well yeh, unfortunately I can agree with quite a bit of that.

Bugs - not much I can disagree with there.

I love the combat in here, doubt I'll ever be able to go back to a cd/target assist game again.
That said, I see where you're coming from but I'm one of those players that's just happy to get thru stuff if I can find some compatible laid-back players to run with.

UI - yes, I've never understood the lack of options here. Then on top of it to let it be done by addons that then affect the game performance. Serious lack of effort and foresight there.

I think they should just have achievements for accidental rat, spider and frog killing lol.

They are working on improving the QOL and overall I like what I've been seeing since Rich took over as Creative Director.

I'll stick around for awhile and see if they can cure some of the warts on what is really a beautiful game.

JD2013

I'm sorry but I can't take you seriously when most of this is dripping with personal bias, and having played WoW for a long time before I came here, the combat here is much much better. I've had no troubles with learning boss mechanics. The AOE circles are not faint. I grant you that some of the one shot mechanics can be frustrating. You have to pay attention. Block. Dodge. Standing and spamming attacks is not an option in this game.

The UI is getting updated. Nameplates, scrolling combat text etc all coming. (Yes I likely know you'll just say "but it should have been in by now!!!"

You mention niggling quality of life decisions - like what? Elaborate please.

Pets in a bank - really, of all the things in the game to get annoyed by, I rather think that this is the smallest thing. I saw plenty of pets and summoned things in places in things like WoW.

Bugs? I certainly agree this game has bugs. But none that I've come across are game breaking. Maybe I'm just lucky?

Sausage

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-GB/discussion/232187/elderscrolls-onlines-future-good-or-bad-rewiew#latest

Above guy says graphics are the worst and this guys says they are excellent, who to believe?

Guys needs to realize MMORPGs needs to be think as whole, they are massive games, and they cant excel at everything. So, yeah, please L2Review.

Spearshard

There are some really annoying bugs I've come across, and my personal favorite was when I sent a bug report and it went to the CS team. There was one yesterday for the dark shade covers dungeon, tried to do its quest but it won't update past the "clear the altar" objective. It does seem strange that they didn't at least make some of the usual mmo combat norms options like the combat text. I find it clutters the screen and I'm happy with my ftc dps meter nestled out of the way. But that's just me, could have avoided this by just adding the option, turn it off or on. And the combat in this game is by far the most fun I've ever had in a game. While I disagree about the rng of red circles, they can be difficult to see with all the craziness going on in battle with pulses going off, ppl and npc's grouped. Still, if you get one spotted it's bc you either need to tweak something in your build, or you know you are a full on glass cannon (and really no offense that's what I did so I have to pay really close attention to what I'm doing). All in all, they got a lot of things amazingly right, though there are a few things keeping this game from being the genre defining game it could be (bank tab just for the Goliath number of mats, locks for items so you don't accidently decon them, loading screens so long I can cook a meal, obscenely bad rng for items like undaunted sets <if rng gods hate you you never see the set you want, we'll past 2 months on nerien for me>, and lag in cyrodiil).

kevlarto_ESO

Play what you enjoy, I have never played a game in my many years of gaming where I liked the whole game, I did what I enjoyed and if nothing was improved, I moved on, that's about all you can do.

MornaBaine

Phinix1 wrote: »

To preface, I love the game for what it is good at. The graphics are excellent, the quests are often at least mildly interesting, voice acting is excellent, great musical score, and the combat has a lot of potential, and it IS a lot of fun, when the stars align and everything goes right.

That said, and even after playing since per-release, and off and on now as I spread my time between several other titles, it is not without some glaring drawbacks that somehow continue to plague ESO, preventing it from becoming the sort of genre leader it could have been (or could still be).

BUGS!

Good god, the bugs! Bugs that never should have existed. Bugs that go MONTHS without even an acknowledgement of them being looked at. Bugs that take months to fix even after they are acknowledged. Game breaking bugs. Combat bugs. Immersion disrupting bugs. Quality of life bugs. Crashes due to bugs. Bugs in the bugs. You get the idea. The game has a lot of bugs.

Bad design decisions.

If you have the Wrothgar expansion, get a group and go do the Poachers world boss fight. You will see immediately that this game extends the offensive RNG gear drop with RNG trait gimmick right into combat "mechanics" which is simply unacceptable.

I am a veteran gamer, have raid tanked in Rift, WoW, and others and am no stranger to difficult mechanics. But what ESO consistently plays are NOT difficult mechanics, they are tedious, RNG insta-death mechanics with no helpful telegraph and a TERRIBLE visibility mark that would be missed by all without a 12ms ping and Cylon eyes.

Take this Poachers fight. The boss Echatere will fart out three or four little circles that move away from it at a fast speed. If you get hit by one with under 18k health, you are instantly 1-shot (even through shields in my case so the actual damage may be higher). There is no visual telegraph of which directions these will be going (sorry melee!), and the mark on the ground when they show up is so thin and feint red against the reddish-brown dirt that you really can't see it even when it does show up.

I have absolutely no desire to engage in veteran dungeons, trials, arena, or other "challenging" content because all I expect are cheesy insta-gib mechanics like this that rely on dumb luck, attrition runs, and meta-of-the-moment mechanic skipping and not player skill based on REAL mechanics and player knowledge of them. "I know it's coming but I don't know when or where" is not a skill mechanic, it is a ritual sacrifice to RNG Beelzebub!

Lack of needed UI elements.

I understand the excuse that "it's an immersion title." That is fine, but what you are really saying is "my devs are too busy/lazy to code the OPTION to have essential things like ENEMY NAME PLATES which you can turn off if you want, for immersion.

Don't force things on the player, give them the OPTION. Having enemy name plates is not going to give someone an unfair advantage over someone that prefers to game without them, but it will make targeting the random humanoid NPC's in the mass of humanoids like on the same example boss fight a little more immersive than "just mash your attacks until one hits an enemy."

Stupid unnecessary frustrations.

Environment critters that suck in your attacks like a black hole when you aren't even facing their direction, or when they are 40 feet away behind and to the left of what you are aiming at. ZOS apparently thinks this is "cute" or funny because it has been reported since beta and still has yet to be fixed.

Old McDonald had a bank? WHY does ZOS refuse to disallow trolls bringing out every annoying vanity pet while standing at the bank or crafting stations? Because they think it's "cute and immersive" to purposely annoy people with a pig or monkey running around a professional establishment, like that is realistic at all? No, because it is just one more stupid annoyance that doesn't need to exist and so does.

Too many of these silly quality-of-life niggling decisions that just make me want to log off sometimes because it's like ZOS is drawing a big bold highlight under the tendency of some people to be annoying or seek attention.

U mad brah?

I still enjoy the game for what it's worth, but I don't think it will ever rank in the category of titles I have devoted serious effort to learning raid mechanics and doing progression with a dedicated team so long as the mechanics are so RNG and the drops are so RNG. It is fun to level and craft and do dailies for a while when new content comes out, but the longevity of the game suffers due to these many avoidable annoyances.

Wow...you hit on almost ALL of my own personal pet peeves. Well done! Of course we know ZOS cares frak-all about what we forums posters have to say but at least it's "comforting" to know I'm not the only one! LOL

NoMoreChillies

Phinix1 wrote: »

Bad design decisions.


I am a veteran gamer, have raid tanked in Rift, WoW, and others and am no stranger to difficult mechanics. But what ESO consistently plays are NOT difficult mechanics, they are tedious, RNG insta-death mechanics with no helpful telegraph and a TERRIBLE visibility mark that would be missed by all without a 12ms ping and Cylon eyes.

Take this Poachers fight. The boss Echatere will fart out three or four little circles that move away from it at a fast speed. If you get hit by one with under 18k health, you are instantly 1-shot (even through shields in my case so the actual damage may be higher). There is no visual telegraph of which directions these will be going (sorry melee!), and the mark on the ground when they show up is so thin and feint red against the reddish-brown dirt that you really can't see it even when it does show up.

Did you tank WoW and Rift with DPS setup as well?
Tanks here work best with 30k + HP.

Phinix1

NoMoreChillies wrote: »

Did you tank WoW and Rift with DPS setup as well?
Tanks here work best with 30k + HP.

In the case of the example I mentioned I was playing my stamina Sorc, not my tank. It was more to illustrate the plight of melee in these insta-gib situations, and mentioning my raid experience was intended to point out I am no stranger to difficult mechanics with a bit of a learning curve.

Also, I pity anyone with even the slightest color blindness, as with lights flashing and particle effects going off, those tiny thin circles ARE absolutely near impossible to see even if there were a telegraph like every other game, which there isn't, and I am hardly the first to mention it. I scarcely go a day without hearing someone complain about the lack of adequate telegraphs to insta-gib abilities.

Ranged at least have a chance to see them coming. Melee, if it spawns on you and you are a DPS, you pretty much just die.

Maybe I am looking at it wrong, and ZOS intends dying frequently and having team mates rez you to be an integral part of combat. There ARE a lot of CP passives related to resurrection.

Saucy_Jack

I don't have anything to add except props to the OP for the Battlestar Galactica shout-out.

NoMoreChillies

My stam Sorc has 21k HP
I sacrificed some dmg for some HP, so yes i have lower DPS but you cannot do DPS when dead anyway

Qyrk

Also just a point for the poachers WB encounter. It really is a L2P issue. Just a tip, it's a front conal attack - if you're getting hit and dying, you shouldn't be in front anyways, but rather attack from behind. I thought this is a general rule of thumb for many boss fights in many mmorpg if you're melee. If you've been in other games, you should know this by now. That poachers encounter should provide safety if you're behind the boss; if it faces you, get behind him. But then again if your 'group' doesn't have a tank or someone to taunt him a certain directions, you're pretty much at risk anyways. Just my 2c

usmcjdking

You know, when they announced the Maelstrom Arena was going to be difficult, I about pulled out my copy of Ninja Gaiden Black (which I beat through and through and was ranked in the top 10 in the world on reawakened Alma no Ninpo, no elixirs no deaths) to get the ol' fingers moving again.

Went to go check out what vMA was about and got cheesed on the 5th boss. Maybe difficult and challenging means something to other people, but to me it means I need to be moderately geared and make no mistakes, not some incredulous BS of do y damage in x amount of time or fail.