the game feels a little... bland?

Androconium

craybest wrote: »

they help us connect with our characters, npc's and the world (the ingame world, that is)
that is not lost resources, since it's something most game companies try to obtain.
secret world legends is a short game and doesn't get much more actual story content, but i can assure you, that lots of people who play it feel veyr attached to their characters because of wathcing them in cinematics and how they react to things aroud them.

Ripley, she doesn't have bad dreams; she's just a piece of plastic.

Waffennacht

Go play anthem, you'll know the definition of bland with the best graphics ever

ThanatosXR

I dont even do landscape quests unless its a delve or something. I litterally just play battlegrounds, group dungeons+overworld and guild quest which usually end up explore the world better so I do the delves and other content around the guild quest goal. I also do the main questline its a boring drag but gotta get all the skill lines. A few overworld quests are good though.

furiouslog

I think the engine limits what is possible in creating more variety in the environments, but beyond that, I think they've done a great job implementing the world as intended. Aside from delves, which do get very samey after a while in the base game, the zones really convey as much variety as is possible. There is more variety in ZOS's Nirn landscapes than there is on Earth, within the limitations of the game engine. I loved seeing Morrowind again having loved everything about ES3, and it totally met my expectations. But on the other hand, I actually swam around the Topal house, and the craggy rocks on the back side of the island were super lazy, super low polygons with pixelated low res textures. If I'm going to fork over $100 for a virtual space, they could at least put in the effort to create the nuanced details, and it was why I didn't buy it.

I have a pretty good PC, and it is underutilized within ESO. If the game wants to stay relevant long term, they'll eventually have to bite the bullet and upgrade the graphics significantly, but I'm sure the development cost is prohibitive and they will not make that business decision until ESO is dead or near-dead, at which point they'd probably make a new game, or the tier 2 technology is cheap enough to implement a visible upgrade. WoW upgraded their stuff over time and kept account continuity because they are the #1 MMO in the world, so the volume/cash is there, and if the investment is anticipated to pay off, it moves forward. ZOS is apparently making enough money on their current business model, so taking on a big project to make more immersive graphics/design with an uncertain payoff is probably not a sound decision, with the opportunity cost being new content for existing players that has a more predictable revenue stream.

I do find the quests immersive, and when I solo, I take the time to read everything, and check out the lorebooks when I find them, and I find it all much more deep and compelling than WoW, but not as much as ES3 or ES5. Maybe that's part of the problem - high expectations were set by preceding efforts.

alanmatillab16_ESO

I see where you are coming from but this is an mmo. For a player to be able to play with their friends the quests have to be generic without much in the way of consequences. Any computer based game has creative limitations that do not exist in pen-and-paper games, a computer RPG quest comes down to:

Breadcrumb
Kill X Y number of times
Kill X for Y number of items
Interact with NPC or Item.

In a single player CRPG you can write consequences into those quests because only 1 player is affected.

TequilaFire

You can have cinematic cut scenes in single player games but they don't work well in a live MMO because they don't sync between multiple players at the same time.

drkfrontiers

Witcher III is a one-of-a-kind type of game for immersion. Nothing can beat it in my opinion.

Elder scrolls immersion is broken by the fact that there is so little variety of voice acting for one.

seipher09

*Story/quests are great.
#Graphics I find beautiful
#Love all zones but AD as everything was the same.
*Classes are all unique, with having own trees weapon skill trees are awesome.
#The game has open world thieving and assassins unlike any other game very unique.

But what do I do in a game the most? Combat of course. I find the combat to be the easiest in any mmo I've ever played and to top it off feels bland. I feel it's just not quite fluent and smooth and that's always bothered me so I get bored fast.

Gw2 on the other hand has excellent combat forever I found everything else rather bland so that bored me to.

Gw2 and Eso need to get together and make a game.

Mettaricana

Eso is bland by a large margin. Sure there delves tris quests farming... but thats it... there is no time killers no secret areas to explore npcs are as 2D as you can get once your done questing and grouping theres no meat left on the games bones. I remember way back them talking about horse racing and we never saw word of it again.. overall once the game basics are done its just boring i can't exactly pick a direction and wander without finding ever thing i already seen before...

rpa

Mettaricana wrote: »

Eso is bland by a large margin. Sure there delves tris quests farming... but thats it... there is no time killers no secret areas to explore npcs are as 2D as you can get once your done questing and grouping theres no meat left on the games bones. I remember way back them talking about horse racing and we never saw word of it again.. overall once the game basics are done its just boring i can't exactly pick a direction and wander without finding ever thing i already seen before...

For time killers you get marvellous loading screens and hardcore inventory management challenge. For exploring mysterious secrets areas there is the trading system. For endgame to do after doing everything there is the housing.

(I guess housing is pretty good in this game. But it does feel bit limited and inconvenient after Wildstar and Minecraft).

psychotrip

dazee wrote: »

Not everyone is going to like the art design of ESO, but its traditional elder scrolls style with better looking characters overall. Some may praise it for its realism, some may dislike the realism since why do we play games if not to get AWAY from reality.

I prefer the look of FFXIV to ESO, and the style of the buildings, its just cleaner and nicer. But ESO does some things no other mmo lets you do, which is why I play.

In what way is it traditional elder scrolls style? Other than Skyrim, which games are you referencing? Because Oblivion had a much more colorful pallette. Vvardenfell is a land of ash, so it gets a pass. Even then the environments and wirldbuilding were far more interesting.

craybest

about zones variety and them feeling the same, is for example, in gw2 when you go to a swamp, there's a green/yellow tint in the screen, everything looks damp and humid, music changes. it's art direction.
same in movies, if you see the lord of the rings, each tie there's a swamp scene, it will mostly not have a bright blue skie and birds singing. it's going to be visually "evil".
in here the most changes I've seen is coldharbour, and that in some graveyards it's always cloudy, but since even clouds are very light (instead of some dark grey rain clouds) the difference can't be all that noticed.
it's why rivenspire is a favorite zone for many many people, it's one of the zones that looks most different, and has more personality.

Dhaylen

Could not agree with you more...

I'm an Altmer, but the High Elf cities are soooo bland, its crazy.
Something about the color palette, I don't know - but Morrowind was a welcome change as was Orsinium.

Orsinium has mountains as high as what the areas in ESO Skyrim feels like they should have had.
(I mean going through the high mountains to Riften in TES V feels - awesome - ESO skyrim feels flat)

Summerset - was hoping for a different feel then Auridon... but, yes, the buildings all feel the same - even comparing to those up in Skyrim and HighRock. (I know its 'different' but the character of the layout all feels the same - especially indoors... minus the items trying to sell it as culturally different like banners, rugs, etc.)

I go in - its beautiful, but I end up getting bored and just stop.
But its not all because of the graphics, which are fine... (and actually quite diverse in some areas, but nothing matches that experience in TES V of every dungeon feeling alive and different... when I went in expecting it to all be the same.)

No my issue is with 'day to day life' in game.

1* Assassins/Thieves quest.
- Go in, and kill off people, just to have them respawn and spot you.
- Go in, be directly behind someone hidden, have them 180 on you and spot you
- Have to get below 5 people seeing you, but the above gets you almost each time... annoying as can be - and I quit playing for awhile each time, as it just feels weird. NO RESPAWN in a SINGLE PLAYER QUEST DUNGEON... PERIOD.

So, you may say I 'suck', fine - but I still don't enjoy it - no more than I do in Conan Exiles Dungeons.
(I like DDO- Eberron... you can clear the whole thing, and know you cleared that thing.)

note: I didn't even get to actual Dungeons, but just the Assassins and thieves quest.

2* Whats up with Morrowind and the trailer with assassins, Morag Tong? Dang, thought I was getting some update to the Assassins quest, at minimum, or a whole new guild to join - lol! (Nope, only if it was single-player and we had a mod, maybe.)
Kinda sad actually.

Go through the content, then the Clockwork city, and its useless being there - loved it... but Morrowind was so short lived.

Summerset, better with content, but the flow of that content... can be off, if you know what I mean.

3* Bag space
I swear there are a 100 craftable items as you walk from point A to point B just so you run out of room for actual items and then are pushed to a monthly membership giving you a bigger bag - unlimited - for crafting.
Even when you do this, its amazing how much you can/cannot craft in comparison. Dont like the limit on bag space and push for the monthly.

4* Housing... oh, God, got a beautiful house with Summerset - good luck making it look nice.
That's fine, though - but what about storage? I mean, no wardrobes, etc., practically no functioning furniture - go back to TesV and give the furniture and its functionality... please... even if its limited, its absurd how much you can't actually do with the 'pretty things' you do get in game.

5* Storlines…
One of the cool things about the mail is stories from traveling companions giving you material...
but at some point - it switches, by glitch or not, to another character all together - and your follower, Pacrooti, becomes a scam artist trying to sell you cards to unlock 'goodies' from the store.

Yeah... it feels it lacks character, you could have followers - like the Inigo mod for TesV, that would be awesome.

It feels bland as its trying to hold back on several areas, mentioned above, and loses some players inbetween.
Im not even looking forward to the Elsewyr expansion, as I was hoping for all of blackmarsh - why?
My god, it was a breath of fresh air and different - I loved the small DLC they came out with.

But the 'plains' again... (face-palm)
you know, speaking of the TES game series, I can see Tes 6 being something that I will hope someone mods Skyrim to.
Sure, they are going to go up in graphics, but they are scanning in Desert Rocks, and the trailer looks so bare...
I mean... high mountains, thick forest, raging rivers... Big mushrooms, etc. Diversity, my fine folks. I live in the 'stinking plains' in real life and don't need this stuff in game.

So... ESO is a love hate relationship.
It is consistently beautiful, some times feels bland - but mainly because of the actual time and interaction in game, as mentioned, once finished with DLC content.

6* The characters who talk to you - please, by the love of Talos, put them in the CENTRE of the screen! Please!
- Looking left with a big blur of text covering most of the screen is so immersion breaking. (Tes V had it right with balance)
I even turn the text as small as I can, as I inadvertently end up looking at the text in the center vs the face talking.)

I realize many will not agree, and that's fine - but this is my own experience, so it is as it is...
Don't really see anything wrong with fixing things like people that flip 180 degrees and see you while you are trying to kill/rob them, and you are definitely in stealth - all cause it 'glitched'... on a frequent basis.

Same with other things, such as centering characters face on screen when talking, and having some use of furniture in your house, where you don't feel like you are a slave to the game like with a mobile game like 'tapped-out'.

7* Expansions... Why is all of Morrowind not out? Why not a follow up on BlackMarsh?
Doesn't make sense - doesn't seem the rest of Morrowind can make for its own expansion - though maybe a story DLC?
Weird...

8* Connect the world/Flying Mounts
- First, you don't like flying - fine... don't do it. lol! (Seriously)
- Second, connet the world - no loading screens, so we can fly on dragons.

Dont know, guess its the nature of an MMO.
Im not really an MMO fan - I only started with ESO as I was waiting for TES 6.
I mean, I like: Wow, GW2, and ESO - the rest are mainly single-player games that I play.

Doubt any of the above will actually change in the life of the game, but who knows.
Again, if they come out with an expansion that gives a true feeling of diversity when entering the area, I would be totally interested. (One thing I loved about WoW was how you could feel the changes in areas as you went down the map - consistent feel, but unique ambience - totally cool.)

Something else, about characters, but I cant remember right off hand... but doesn't really matter, just a bunch of rambling from an old man. lol!

Oh...
9* First person combat - sometimes can't tell Im being attacked. First person adds immersion...