The Gold Road Chapter – which includes the Scribing system – and Update 42 is now available to test on the PTS! You can read the latest patch notes here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656454/
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Vvardenfell - A review of the first Chapter of ESO
Carbonised
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It's been almost a year since I wrote my "Why this game needs Vvardenfell DLC and how I hope it will be" post. Well, we did get Vvardenfell, though as a Chapter and not a DLC (not gonna go into that discussion here btw).
Lots of things have happened since then, we had One Tamriel, Homestead and now Vvardenfell. Seeing as I have spent the last week or so doing all the PvE content of the Chapter, I thought I would give my own personal, highly subjective and most likely biased review of the Chapter. Read it if you like, ignore it if you don't like it. But if you cannot participate in constructive dialogue and debate, feel free not to reply to this particular thread, it is probably not meant for you anyway.
My basis for this review is that I have currently gone through 98 % of the content of the Chapter, including most of the achievements. I pretty much only need to run some more of the dailies to finish off those, gather the last motif chapters, and then there's the trial, Halls of Fabrication. I've run it a few times on normal, but I'm not really going to go into detail on that, as that is not the focus of the review. Who is this review for? Ultimately feedback for the devs, if they care for my opinion of their latest release. And also anyone who might not have bought the Chapter yet, and seek some more in depth information of what value they get for their money.
Collector's Edition and Preorder
Let's start off with the Collector's Edition and Preorder exclusive items. This was really a mixed bag. I liked the dwemer pet, it has some unique animations and such to set it apart from the vanilla one. Didn't much care for the dog nor the horse. Vanilla pets and mount with just dwemer scrap tagged onto them. And horses and dogs for a Vvardenfell Chapter? Come on, couldn't you have stayed with the theme and offered a kagouti or guar mount, and a nix pet or netch or whatever. Morag Tong converter was nice enough, but like the Imperial one it suffers under not really having any use. This again highlights the dire need for a transmog system or wardrobe system. We want it, you know we do, make it happen.
The Warden
Not going into detail about the class, I don't play one, I don't intend to either. I think that mixing the Vvardenfell zone with this class was somewhat of a mistake. The Warden is more themed around Bosmer tree mage/Spinner/druid on one hand, and a frost mage on the other hand. Neither goes well with Vvardenfell and Morrowind. There are no bears on Vvardenfell (well, except the million of bear ults everyone drags around), so in order to make them feel more "Vvardenfell-esque" you added some Shalk and Cliff Racers and Fetcherflies to their skills, thus completely breaking with the theme of Bosmer/Spinner/Druid and Ice mage both. I feel like it would have been a better idea to separate the Vvardenfell zone from the Warden class, and focus on making a more traditional Warden type character with animations/pets themed around wolves, hawks and other animals more fitting for the druid theme and ice mage theme. Oh well.
The zone
Next, off to the real deal here, the Vvardenfell zone itself. Now in my original post I applauded you for your team's ability to make breathtaking zones with great visuals and atmosphere, well you just blew me away with this one, once again. I LOVE the Vvardenfell zone. From the swampy boglands around Balmora to the volcanic lava around Red Mountain, this whole zone just emmanates quality to me. I love the way you are using much more of the worldspace to build your areas, in 3D altitude with high cliffs, crags, mountainsides and other obstacles, instead of just boring flat zones with a couple of trees and bushes for variation. Vvardenfell is a true 3D zone you can explore both in length and in height. Vivec city is amazing, I love the cozyness of Balmora, I love, love the volcanic areas with newly coagulated lava that still ooze flame and give off steam, I love the new animals and monsters such as the Hungers, the Nix Ox and the Cliff Racers. And I also love the new music, as always amazingly made by Brad Derrick. I look forward to hearing the tracks in their full length when they will be made available later on, instead of now currently being cut off by frequent battle music. This is truly a zone that I want to make my Dunmer's new home, and I probably wouldn't venture out of it at all, if the daily writs didn't force me to go to Belkarth still.
That said, there are a few issues that detract from the overall positive feeling I have for the Vvardenfell zone. The whole "Vivec city still being built" comes off to me as a cute idea to save time and effort building the whole city. What we get are 3 cantons and some outskirts, while everything else is just a large construction yard. I realise that you spent a lot of effort trying to build a whole zone such as this and make it all as good looking as you have, but I would rather have waited a bit longer and have a more fully fleshed out Vivec city, in its full glory. There are plenty of other things you could have added in the remaining space, not every city on this game has to be "clothier, armorer, inn, mage guild/fighter guild" and copy pasta ad infinitum. Sure, Vivec got its library and hall of justice too, but that's the only 2 things that set it apart from every other city in the game.
This also ties in with another related issue, namely all the locked off doors in Vivec city, Balmora and other settlements. This is such a huge disappointment. I realise again that you did this due to time/budget contraints, but really .. There is already a huge shortage of recipes/furnishings of Vvardenfell, the chests and safeboxes have a disappointingly low droprate of anything, having all these locked off doors turned into small homes with some containers and a safebox would have not only increased the chance to get some of these furnishings and recipes, it would also have made the city and settlements appear more alive and fully fleshed out.
The content, the quests, the lore
Well, I suppose no one really plays MMOs for their quality of questlines. However, I still feel that most of these quests were just fillers and somewhat unengaging. This is not particular to Vvardenfell, but to ESO in its entirety. Let me elaborate. Maybe it's the fact that this is an MMO and not a single player RPG, and maybe it's just too hard to accomodate the multiplayer part, but the lack of meaning of choice really hurts my overall impression of the quests and their writing. Giving me the choice at the end of a quest arc to keep or not keep some NPC I just met 20 minutes ago and have no relationship with whatsoever, and whom I will never see in the game again, doesn't mean anyhthing to me. It's not a choice, at least not a choice that matters. Pretty much every good western RPG game since the time of Planescape and Baldur's Gate have accomodated the choices and consequences thereof upon to player story as one of their main attractions. But that's not the only explanation. Japanese RPGs are famous for their emphasis on storytelling, and less so for their accomodation of player choice. Final Fantasy is a series I have played very much, and in the golden era of FF (FF 3, 7, 8, 9) you had very little choice, if any, and the stories and characters were still captivating and enthralling. Why? Because they focused on the aspect of storytelling, of writing, of setting up a drama, of emotion and feeling that something mattered. I don't think the writing team of ESO manages this very well. There is something about much of the dialogue and writing that strikes me as shallow and somewhat infantile. Like you're focusing more on delivering one-line punches and tongue-in-cheek humor, instead of focusing more on telling a story that matters. Is this the famous dumbing down of the RPG genre that others have talked about before? ESO's immediate predecessor is Skyrim. Skyrim is a world of seriousness, it's in the dialogue, the writing and the stories. There is very little "dumb humor" in Skyrim (though it does happen here and there). There are larger issues at hand, the political differences of the Stormcloaks vs. the Empire, a people's fight to free themselves from the yokes of servitude. The clashing of cultures when immigrants from a world torn asunder find themselves in foreign lands. The internal power struggles and political differences between the various provinces and their leaders, the looming threat of the Thalmor in the background and so on. Skyrim is a game that takes itself serious, where most of the people you come across, from Ulfric Stormcloak to just your local blacksmith seem like people, with backgrounds, wishes, desires and fears. At least to me. Very few of the ESO characters really stand out as people to me. Most of them I have long forgotten once I have fetched whatever thingy they wanted me to fetch for them. Most of them appear to me as "functions" instead of "people". Like "woman I can sell stuff to", "guy that gives me motif dailies", "random NPC you can kill and loot for fencing goods".
The dialogue is also very meager, a few lines at most, only describing whatever fetch quest this or that NPC has for me, and maybe a one-liner that's supposed to be funny (but most likely isn't).
I'm not a 14 year old kid with attention span trouble who's allergic to character depth, but I do feel like your writing and dialogue is under the impression that I am. When I was a 14 old kid, however, I was fascinated with the drama and the pathos of the early Final Fantasy games, I wept with them and felt their joy, I delved deep into the human psyche and the "what if" scenarios of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights (the better part of the series, anyway), and I didn't feel the need to be talked down to. Now I'm an adult, but I still don't feel the need to be talked down to. Engage me and challenge me, please. Your beautiful world that clearly has lots of love and care poured into it deserves to be populated by people that feel real and engaging, instead of just MMO functionalities that happen to be packed in the pixels of an NPC.
I'm rambling on, but like I said in the beginning, this was my subjective opinion. I feel like something needs to be done with the zoning and instancing as well, somehow. As much as I "get" that this is an MMO, nothing kills my buzz more than doing the main quest, getting into Vivec's private chambers only to find there are 20+ other people standing around in a meat ring around Vivec. Off to the secret prophecy cave of Azura, only to find another 20+ people using silly emotes, spamming shard and hurricane, all dressed in nord bathtowels and jester's caps and whatnot. How am I supposed to get even a sliver of engagement and enthusiasm? Every delve is practically empty due to 20+ people running trains through them for loot drop farming. Every quest location is filled to the brim with people standing about picking their nose. I don't have all the solutions for this, I'm just bringing up the issue, you (the company) are supposed to find the solutions. Maybe all delves, pub dungs and other locations should be more heavily instanced. With a max of 5-6 people in each, instead of 50. Maybe every set item and other drop that people farm for into Oblivion should have a cooldown. After you get number 1, you can't get another until half an hour, or an hour later. Would put a brake on the frothing and gibbering farm grinding that some people seem to practise. While trying to grind my own Sixth House robe just for myself, I find 50+ other people running trains through the public dungeon, hour after hour. Several of them already dressed in their costume robe, meaning they're not even grinding for themselves any more, they're just grinding to sell. Having a cooldown on these drops would make it less appealing to grind these places for hours without end, and maybe those who actually want to just explore, maybe grind some of the loot for their own sake, would have a chance and a more enjoyable experience.
Loot cooldown and more instances. I don't mind seeing a handful or 2 of other people around, I do mind when a delve or a pub dungeon is more crowded than Rawl'kha on a Sunday evening.
The Forgotten Wastes is to me one of the most captivating and beautiful places you have created in the game. The wastelands, the volcanic activity, the 3D scaling in the main ramp room, it's just a very, very well designed area and I enjoy hanging out there immensely. Kudos to the design team behind it, your paycheck is very well deserved. To see it reduced to simply a mad farm zone is somewhat disappointing to me. And it's not just due to the intensity of new content release, most other public dungeons even in vanilla zones are overpopulated and overcrowded, since the loot and exp there is simply so good. It's a pity that these very well designed public dungeons are nothing but frantic train grinds for 30+ people, making it impossible to go there for a relaxed adventure simply to bask in the design and the feel on the places.
Vvardenfeel?
There is something about Vvardenfell that strikes me as somewhat uninspired. When you zoom out, Vvardenfell is just exactly like Wrothgar, and the other DLCs you have made so far. One story arc questline, some one-off hub quests here and there, some dailies to keep it all going and a fishing achievement thrown in as a finisher.
That's all good and well, but this is like the 4th time you're doing this. Imperial City was a truly unique DLC, with the mix of PvP and PvE content, the Tel Var stones, Molag in the sewers and such, it stands out as something special. Wrothgar was the first of these PvE DLCs or zones. Do the quests, and after that there's not much else to do than grind dailies for motifs and maybe use it as a glorified farming zone. Wrothgar at least had Maelstrom Arena in addition. Hew's Bane was the same, but with only half the locations and delves. Gold Coast the same, do the questline and then just dailies. And now Vvardenfell, after you've done the quests, it's just dailies. At least now you get 4 of them, but still. Wrothgar even had a purple fish just to add a sliver of excitement for the fishermen, Vvardenfell couldn't even have that. This is coming off to me as uninspired, and I think you need to reevalue that model from here on. If we are going to have 1 Chapter and a few DLCs every year, you need to do better than some poorly written superficial quests that are basically finished in less than a week, and then just dailies the next 9 months. Why create these beautiful and amospheric zones just to have them grow stale and old so fast? IC introduced a whole new mechanic and currency, that you could use to obtain otherwise unobtainable goods and gear, as well as a unique enchantment (Hakeijo), it also introduced the Molag event in the sewers that you could do to get loot, a skin and a pet. I will say that the Dwemer pet and Robe of Vvardenfell is a step in the right direction. Here is something you can grind and collect, and reasonably rare. But once you have the 1 you need yourself, everything from there on is only sellable to others, and eventually everyone will have them and prices will plummet to nothing. What if instead the 2 public dungeons offered a good or commodity that was more useful in the long run? Some special furnishing (there are plenty to choose from in the Sixth House pub dungeon) that you could use in your own home or sell on to others for instance. And with loot cooldown it would prevent a large scale massive farming of these. And make the mobs more of a reasonable challenge for maxed players to offset the rewards. Why not tie in with the Thief Guild as well, have some dailies that required you to break into specific Vvardenfell homes or shops or temples, and would reward you with some of the specific Vvardenfell furnishing recipes and furnishings that no one seems to be able to find the usual way? Or how about a hard-to-reach place with a timed event a la Molag Bal in IC where you couldn't just wayshrine to it, but actually had to spend some time exploring and venturing, but it would them drop something more special than a zone set-piece in prosperous. Elaborate on the fishing minigame, let us fish for a rare purple fish in Vvardenfell too, and maybe even have the fish have some kind of value other than just the achievement. Let us be able to use the special fish for furniture in our home, put it on our wall. Let us be able to fish for Vvardenfell specific aquatic and nautical furnishings as well, not just the stuff you can find all over Tamriel already. Why no Vvardenfell specific alchemy ingredient or 2, that you could only find in this zone?
Or a new trait, unique to Vvardenfell, like Craglorn has its Nirnhoned? Or a new enchanting rune, or several new provisioning ingredients and Vvardenfell unique recipes? The possibilites are plenty, but you need to think outside the box, and not simply copy/pasta the exact same functionalities of Wrothgar onto the Vvardenfell zone. I applaud the Robe hunt and the Dwemer pet, and I think it's the way to go in the future as well, but it's a small step. I also applaud the Sermons of Vivec quest and the Tomb hunter library quest and the Shrine quest, but once those 3 quests are done, there's nothing else to it. I think you seriously have to think about other ways to keep a zone like this going, than adding the usual 2-4 world boss/gathering dailies for motifs. A large and beautiful zone as Vvardenfell deserves it. Somewhere along the line it seems like focus on the new class and the new trial stole away most of your attention when it comes to content, and it's a pity that the zone suffers for it. I feel like separating the Warden, and maybe the trial, from the Chapter would have enabled you to focus more on the zone content, which Vvardenfell would have deserved.
Edited by Carbonised on May 30, 2017 3:05PM Lots of things have happened since then, we had One Tamriel, Homestead and now Vvardenfell. Seeing as I have spent the last week or so doing all the PvE content of the Chapter, I thought I would give my own personal, highly subjective and most likely biased review of the Chapter. Read it if you like, ignore it if you don't like it. But if you cannot participate in constructive dialogue and debate, feel free not to reply to this particular thread, it is probably not meant for you anyway.
My basis for this review is that I have currently gone through 98 % of the content of the Chapter, including most of the achievements. I pretty much only need to run some more of the dailies to finish off those, gather the last motif chapters, and then there's the trial, Halls of Fabrication. I've run it a few times on normal, but I'm not really going to go into detail on that, as that is not the focus of the review. Who is this review for? Ultimately feedback for the devs, if they care for my opinion of their latest release. And also anyone who might not have bought the Chapter yet, and seek some more in depth information of what value they get for their money.
Collector's Edition and Preorder
Let's start off with the Collector's Edition and Preorder exclusive items. This was really a mixed bag. I liked the dwemer pet, it has some unique animations and such to set it apart from the vanilla one. Didn't much care for the dog nor the horse. Vanilla pets and mount with just dwemer scrap tagged onto them. And horses and dogs for a Vvardenfell Chapter? Come on, couldn't you have stayed with the theme and offered a kagouti or guar mount, and a nix pet or netch or whatever. Morag Tong converter was nice enough, but like the Imperial one it suffers under not really having any use. This again highlights the dire need for a transmog system or wardrobe system. We want it, you know we do, make it happen.
The Warden
Not going into detail about the class, I don't play one, I don't intend to either. I think that mixing the Vvardenfell zone with this class was somewhat of a mistake. The Warden is more themed around Bosmer tree mage/Spinner/druid on one hand, and a frost mage on the other hand. Neither goes well with Vvardenfell and Morrowind. There are no bears on Vvardenfell (well, except the million of bear ults everyone drags around), so in order to make them feel more "Vvardenfell-esque" you added some Shalk and Cliff Racers and Fetcherflies to their skills, thus completely breaking with the theme of Bosmer/Spinner/Druid and Ice mage both. I feel like it would have been a better idea to separate the Vvardenfell zone from the Warden class, and focus on making a more traditional Warden type character with animations/pets themed around wolves, hawks and other animals more fitting for the druid theme and ice mage theme. Oh well.
The zone
Next, off to the real deal here, the Vvardenfell zone itself. Now in my original post I applauded you for your team's ability to make breathtaking zones with great visuals and atmosphere, well you just blew me away with this one, once again. I LOVE the Vvardenfell zone. From the swampy boglands around Balmora to the volcanic lava around Red Mountain, this whole zone just emmanates quality to me. I love the way you are using much more of the worldspace to build your areas, in 3D altitude with high cliffs, crags, mountainsides and other obstacles, instead of just boring flat zones with a couple of trees and bushes for variation. Vvardenfell is a true 3D zone you can explore both in length and in height. Vivec city is amazing, I love the cozyness of Balmora, I love, love the volcanic areas with newly coagulated lava that still ooze flame and give off steam, I love the new animals and monsters such as the Hungers, the Nix Ox and the Cliff Racers. And I also love the new music, as always amazingly made by Brad Derrick. I look forward to hearing the tracks in their full length when they will be made available later on, instead of now currently being cut off by frequent battle music. This is truly a zone that I want to make my Dunmer's new home, and I probably wouldn't venture out of it at all, if the daily writs didn't force me to go to Belkarth still.
That said, there are a few issues that detract from the overall positive feeling I have for the Vvardenfell zone. The whole "Vivec city still being built" comes off to me as a cute idea to save time and effort building the whole city. What we get are 3 cantons and some outskirts, while everything else is just a large construction yard. I realise that you spent a lot of effort trying to build a whole zone such as this and make it all as good looking as you have, but I would rather have waited a bit longer and have a more fully fleshed out Vivec city, in its full glory. There are plenty of other things you could have added in the remaining space, not every city on this game has to be "clothier, armorer, inn, mage guild/fighter guild" and copy pasta ad infinitum. Sure, Vivec got its library and hall of justice too, but that's the only 2 things that set it apart from every other city in the game.
This also ties in with another related issue, namely all the locked off doors in Vivec city, Balmora and other settlements. This is such a huge disappointment. I realise again that you did this due to time/budget contraints, but really .. There is already a huge shortage of recipes/furnishings of Vvardenfell, the chests and safeboxes have a disappointingly low droprate of anything, having all these locked off doors turned into small homes with some containers and a safebox would have not only increased the chance to get some of these furnishings and recipes, it would also have made the city and settlements appear more alive and fully fleshed out.
The content, the quests, the lore
Well, I suppose no one really plays MMOs for their quality of questlines. However, I still feel that most of these quests were just fillers and somewhat unengaging. This is not particular to Vvardenfell, but to ESO in its entirety. Let me elaborate. Maybe it's the fact that this is an MMO and not a single player RPG, and maybe it's just too hard to accomodate the multiplayer part, but the lack of meaning of choice really hurts my overall impression of the quests and their writing. Giving me the choice at the end of a quest arc to keep or not keep some NPC I just met 20 minutes ago and have no relationship with whatsoever, and whom I will never see in the game again, doesn't mean anyhthing to me. It's not a choice, at least not a choice that matters. Pretty much every good western RPG game since the time of Planescape and Baldur's Gate have accomodated the choices and consequences thereof upon to player story as one of their main attractions. But that's not the only explanation. Japanese RPGs are famous for their emphasis on storytelling, and less so for their accomodation of player choice. Final Fantasy is a series I have played very much, and in the golden era of FF (FF 3, 7, 8, 9) you had very little choice, if any, and the stories and characters were still captivating and enthralling. Why? Because they focused on the aspect of storytelling, of writing, of setting up a drama, of emotion and feeling that something mattered. I don't think the writing team of ESO manages this very well. There is something about much of the dialogue and writing that strikes me as shallow and somewhat infantile. Like you're focusing more on delivering one-line punches and tongue-in-cheek humor, instead of focusing more on telling a story that matters. Is this the famous dumbing down of the RPG genre that others have talked about before? ESO's immediate predecessor is Skyrim. Skyrim is a world of seriousness, it's in the dialogue, the writing and the stories. There is very little "dumb humor" in Skyrim (though it does happen here and there). There are larger issues at hand, the political differences of the Stormcloaks vs. the Empire, a people's fight to free themselves from the yokes of servitude. The clashing of cultures when immigrants from a world torn asunder find themselves in foreign lands. The internal power struggles and political differences between the various provinces and their leaders, the looming threat of the Thalmor in the background and so on. Skyrim is a game that takes itself serious, where most of the people you come across, from Ulfric Stormcloak to just your local blacksmith seem like people, with backgrounds, wishes, desires and fears. At least to me. Very few of the ESO characters really stand out as people to me. Most of them I have long forgotten once I have fetched whatever thingy they wanted me to fetch for them. Most of them appear to me as "functions" instead of "people". Like "woman I can sell stuff to", "guy that gives me motif dailies", "random NPC you can kill and loot for fencing goods".
The dialogue is also very meager, a few lines at most, only describing whatever fetch quest this or that NPC has for me, and maybe a one-liner that's supposed to be funny (but most likely isn't).
I'm not a 14 year old kid with attention span trouble who's allergic to character depth, but I do feel like your writing and dialogue is under the impression that I am. When I was a 14 old kid, however, I was fascinated with the drama and the pathos of the early Final Fantasy games, I wept with them and felt their joy, I delved deep into the human psyche and the "what if" scenarios of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights (the better part of the series, anyway), and I didn't feel the need to be talked down to. Now I'm an adult, but I still don't feel the need to be talked down to. Engage me and challenge me, please. Your beautiful world that clearly has lots of love and care poured into it deserves to be populated by people that feel real and engaging, instead of just MMO functionalities that happen to be packed in the pixels of an NPC.
I'm rambling on, but like I said in the beginning, this was my subjective opinion. I feel like something needs to be done with the zoning and instancing as well, somehow. As much as I "get" that this is an MMO, nothing kills my buzz more than doing the main quest, getting into Vivec's private chambers only to find there are 20+ other people standing around in a meat ring around Vivec. Off to the secret prophecy cave of Azura, only to find another 20+ people using silly emotes, spamming shard and hurricane, all dressed in nord bathtowels and jester's caps and whatnot. How am I supposed to get even a sliver of engagement and enthusiasm? Every delve is practically empty due to 20+ people running trains through them for loot drop farming. Every quest location is filled to the brim with people standing about picking their nose. I don't have all the solutions for this, I'm just bringing up the issue, you (the company) are supposed to find the solutions. Maybe all delves, pub dungs and other locations should be more heavily instanced. With a max of 5-6 people in each, instead of 50. Maybe every set item and other drop that people farm for into Oblivion should have a cooldown. After you get number 1, you can't get another until half an hour, or an hour later. Would put a brake on the frothing and gibbering farm grinding that some people seem to practise. While trying to grind my own Sixth House robe just for myself, I find 50+ other people running trains through the public dungeon, hour after hour. Several of them already dressed in their costume robe, meaning they're not even grinding for themselves any more, they're just grinding to sell. Having a cooldown on these drops would make it less appealing to grind these places for hours without end, and maybe those who actually want to just explore, maybe grind some of the loot for their own sake, would have a chance and a more enjoyable experience.
Loot cooldown and more instances. I don't mind seeing a handful or 2 of other people around, I do mind when a delve or a pub dungeon is more crowded than Rawl'kha on a Sunday evening.
The Forgotten Wastes is to me one of the most captivating and beautiful places you have created in the game. The wastelands, the volcanic activity, the 3D scaling in the main ramp room, it's just a very, very well designed area and I enjoy hanging out there immensely. Kudos to the design team behind it, your paycheck is very well deserved. To see it reduced to simply a mad farm zone is somewhat disappointing to me. And it's not just due to the intensity of new content release, most other public dungeons even in vanilla zones are overpopulated and overcrowded, since the loot and exp there is simply so good. It's a pity that these very well designed public dungeons are nothing but frantic train grinds for 30+ people, making it impossible to go there for a relaxed adventure simply to bask in the design and the feel on the places.
Vvardenfeel?
There is something about Vvardenfell that strikes me as somewhat uninspired. When you zoom out, Vvardenfell is just exactly like Wrothgar, and the other DLCs you have made so far. One story arc questline, some one-off hub quests here and there, some dailies to keep it all going and a fishing achievement thrown in as a finisher.
That's all good and well, but this is like the 4th time you're doing this. Imperial City was a truly unique DLC, with the mix of PvP and PvE content, the Tel Var stones, Molag in the sewers and such, it stands out as something special. Wrothgar was the first of these PvE DLCs or zones. Do the quests, and after that there's not much else to do than grind dailies for motifs and maybe use it as a glorified farming zone. Wrothgar at least had Maelstrom Arena in addition. Hew's Bane was the same, but with only half the locations and delves. Gold Coast the same, do the questline and then just dailies. And now Vvardenfell, after you've done the quests, it's just dailies. At least now you get 4 of them, but still. Wrothgar even had a purple fish just to add a sliver of excitement for the fishermen, Vvardenfell couldn't even have that. This is coming off to me as uninspired, and I think you need to reevalue that model from here on. If we are going to have 1 Chapter and a few DLCs every year, you need to do better than some poorly written superficial quests that are basically finished in less than a week, and then just dailies the next 9 months. Why create these beautiful and amospheric zones just to have them grow stale and old so fast? IC introduced a whole new mechanic and currency, that you could use to obtain otherwise unobtainable goods and gear, as well as a unique enchantment (Hakeijo), it also introduced the Molag event in the sewers that you could do to get loot, a skin and a pet. I will say that the Dwemer pet and Robe of Vvardenfell is a step in the right direction. Here is something you can grind and collect, and reasonably rare. But once you have the 1 you need yourself, everything from there on is only sellable to others, and eventually everyone will have them and prices will plummet to nothing. What if instead the 2 public dungeons offered a good or commodity that was more useful in the long run? Some special furnishing (there are plenty to choose from in the Sixth House pub dungeon) that you could use in your own home or sell on to others for instance. And with loot cooldown it would prevent a large scale massive farming of these. And make the mobs more of a reasonable challenge for maxed players to offset the rewards. Why not tie in with the Thief Guild as well, have some dailies that required you to break into specific Vvardenfell homes or shops or temples, and would reward you with some of the specific Vvardenfell furnishing recipes and furnishings that no one seems to be able to find the usual way? Or how about a hard-to-reach place with a timed event a la Molag Bal in IC where you couldn't just wayshrine to it, but actually had to spend some time exploring and venturing, but it would them drop something more special than a zone set-piece in prosperous. Elaborate on the fishing minigame, let us fish for a rare purple fish in Vvardenfell too, and maybe even have the fish have some kind of value other than just the achievement. Let us be able to use the special fish for furniture in our home, put it on our wall. Let us be able to fish for Vvardenfell specific aquatic and nautical furnishings as well, not just the stuff you can find all over Tamriel already. Why no Vvardenfell specific alchemy ingredient or 2, that you could only find in this zone?
Or a new trait, unique to Vvardenfell, like Craglorn has its Nirnhoned? Or a new enchanting rune, or several new provisioning ingredients and Vvardenfell unique recipes? The possibilites are plenty, but you need to think outside the box, and not simply copy/pasta the exact same functionalities of Wrothgar onto the Vvardenfell zone. I applaud the Robe hunt and the Dwemer pet, and I think it's the way to go in the future as well, but it's a small step. I also applaud the Sermons of Vivec quest and the Tomb hunter library quest and the Shrine quest, but once those 3 quests are done, there's nothing else to it. I think you seriously have to think about other ways to keep a zone like this going, than adding the usual 2-4 world boss/gathering dailies for motifs. A large and beautiful zone as Vvardenfell deserves it. Somewhere along the line it seems like focus on the new class and the new trial stole away most of your attention when it comes to content, and it's a pity that the zone suffers for it. I feel like separating the Warden, and maybe the trial, from the Chapter would have enabled you to focus more on the zone content, which Vvardenfell would have deserved.
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DaveMoeDee✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Carbonised wrote: »The content, the quests, the lore
Well, I suppose no one really plays MMOs for their quality of questlines.
False. Many people, like me, consider the storytelling and lore 90% of why we are here.
Some of us play this game because it is an Elder Scrolls game, not because it is an MMO. Heck, I even play Elder Scrolls Legends sometimes, but probably wouldn't give it the time of day if it was not TES IP.
Regardless, very insightful review. Thanks for the post.3 -
Carbonised✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭DaveMoeDee wrote: »Carbonised wrote: »The content, the quests, the lore
Well, I suppose no one really plays MMOs for their quality of questlines.
False. Many people, like me, consider the storytelling and lore 90% of why we are here.
Some of us play this game because it is an Elder Scrolls game, not because it is an MMO. Heck, I even play Elder Scrolls Legends sometimes, but probably wouldn't give it the time of day if it was not TES IP.
Regardless, very insightful review. Thanks for the post.
Thanks for your words. Well, I too play ESO for the questlines and the TES feel. I do feel like we're somewhat outnumbered at times, 'cause usually when you bring up some weak RPG elements or story elements, people just throw a "it's an MMO, go play a single player RPG or get over it" in your face.
I know I'm not the only one, however, and I'm glad to hear that you too enjoy these elements of the game, even if it is an MMO =p1 -
Lokryn✭✭✭✭Nice review. I agree with about 80-90% of what you said. The game needs more variety and it needs more cinematic story telling.1 -
Carbonised✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭One thing I didn't touch on too much in the original post is something that has increasingly annoyed my with the Morrowind DLC. Seemingly aware of the rather limited content of the DLC, the devs have decided to hide many of the cosmetics behind a huge wall of enormoud RNG and droprates on the atomic scale of smallness.
The costume and pet from the 2 public dungeons are easy to grind compared to most other Morrowind content.
Buoyant Armiger motif first didn't seem to be in the game at all, no one found it. Now a few pages have been found here and there, but despite what is in the patch notes, people have opened tens and tens and up to hundreds of chests in the zone without even a single motif drop.
Purple rare Vvardenfell furniture recipes are also extremely hard to come across. Despite having opened dozens of safeboxed, looted hundreds of containers and stolen and killed scores of NPCs, I have not found a single blue or purple recipe, and neither have many other people.
The furnishing flowers and mushrooms that were supposed to drop with picking up alchemy nodes are also pretty much non existant. I have personally picked up more than 1k+ of each ruby mat, along with the same amount of alchemy flowers, and I have only gotten 2 green furnishing plants, that were rather dull. Looking at all the popular guild traders across the server, I have also only seen 3-4 green and a single blue plant. This is for content that has been out a couple of weeks now, and that has been grinded extremely extensively by everyone.
I feel that this is a cheap and artificial way to make the content 'last' longer. I already wrote a long post about the variable ratio schedule (RNG) and its abuse, and I dislike seeing the devs gong even further in this direction, instead of actually making content that is fun to do and that lasts longer.
Come on here, a blue plant to put in your garden to look at and that does nothing whatsoever shouldn't be harder to get than the maelstrom weapon you want ..
All in all it feels like a cheap push into the Crown Store to buy this stuff instead, and leaves me with a bad taste in the mouth. Morrowind was already extremely expensive, I shouldn't have to pay you the same amount once again just to be able to enjoy it fully.1
