Questions from a player who might possibly return.

Thunder

I can't believe it's been 5 years since I sat there excitedly clicking the log in screen every 5 minutes to see if the servers were live yet. I had so much hope for ESO, but alas it turned out to be a huge disappointment. I played until the launch of the first expansion, a PvE zone they placed smack dab in the middle of a PvP zone. Not only did I have zero interest in PvP, I certainly wasn't going to pay gank squads to kill me, giving them all the shiny I just acquired in the PvE zone. I quit on the spot.

So my first question is how do they handle PvP and PvE now? Can you entirely opt out of PvP while still having full access to all PvE content?

My second question is about cap. ESO was super grindy on day 1. You had to level through your entire zone, then through a 2nd faction's entire zone, and finally a 3rd faction's entire zone... just to get started. Then there were these points you had to grind that had no cap, but the more you got the slower they were earned. If ESO has continued this grind trend then I imagine to get even a single character to whatever the cap is called would take months, if not years of extensive play.

What about auction houses? Do you still have to travel all over the world to try to find the thing you are looking for? Do you still have to try to get in exclusive guilds with absorbanent fees to try to sell something? Originally they didn't even have auction houses, but there was so much outcry from the community they decided to implement auction houses, but they decided to put a little twist in their AH system. They decided to let the richest players entirely control all the markets by creating a bidding system where the price to have exclusive control over the auction house was so high that average players could never dream of recouping the fee let alone make any gold for themselves. Did they ever move to a centralized AH run by the game instead of the richest players? If not, can anyone open their own AH now or do you still have to outbid Amazon for the right to exclusively control the entire market?

I guess that's it. Those were the 3 strikes that had me cancelling my subscriptions just months after the launch.

green_villain

1) no
2) 1-50 is easy(4-5 hours of GRIND), Champion points(0-810) is grindy much more than before but they account wide
3) no global AH and its perfect

everlastingodeb17_ESO

Don't return, go play elsewhere, the server is a total piece of crap, garbagw.

haelene

1 : Still balanced together. The only things that are locked behind PvP content are some very minimal quests in Cyrodill and some achievements, but for the most part all PvE content is separate.

2 : Game is still grindy, but only if you're a person who absolutely has to be top level. Right now the level cap is 810 CP, but anything after 300 is kind of pointless with diminishing returns every level. Other things are grindy now though - like jewelry crafting, motif's have been broken down into pages, ect. The good news is that since one tamriel you can go anywhere and do anything at any level because of level scaling.

3 : Yes, there's still separate guild stores instead of one combined auction house and guild's still have to bid. There are still guilds that focus on money making and require fees, but there are many many more that do still trade and that don't require any fees. Frankly, if I am being honest, bots control the mat economy now, but there are ways to make money if you focus on selling other things.

Thunder

Thanks for the answers! Kind of what I figured.

AlnilamE

1) Cyrodiil and Imperial City are mostly as they were. In IC, you now lose 50% of your Tel Var Stones to both player and mob death, as opposed to the 80% to players 20% to mobs it used to be (or was it 90/10? I can't remember)
In the next expansion, IC will have it's own "campaign" so you don't have to ride through Cyrodiil to get to it.

2) Vet levels have completely removed and now when you get to 50, you start earning Champion Points. These apply to your entire account, and any character above 50 contributes to the account-wide CP pool when earning XP. In the beginning, XP was a flat 400k per CP, but they changed it a while ago to be a sliding formula, so lower end CP are super fast to earn, while the folks near the cap (currently 810 CP) earn them more slowly, and there is a 1.5x multiplier for CP above the cap. This helps newer players catch up. There are also activities like the Daily Random Dungeon from the group finder that grant a nice chunk of XP and can be done once a day per character.

3) We still have guild traders (which I like) and the bigger guilds still own town spots, while smaller guilds own out of town spots. The UI was recently improved, so you can now use text search to find items. There are some pretty nice trade guilds out there that focus on more than just selling stuff.

Also, with One Tamriel, all the zones became the same level (CP 160) and the players are scaled to the zone, like they were in Cyrodiil. This makes it a lot easier to play with friends, regardless of level differential. All zones are unlocked and you don't have to progress through them linearly (though that still is advised if you are questing because the stories are tied together).

They have added Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood, and there are a number of DLC zones, along with the Morrowind and Summerset expansions.

Vasoka

I don't understand the "professors" who claim that not having a global AH (like literally every single normal MMO btw) is a good system. It actually boggles my mind. It's the biggest bonehead move of this game if we are to be honest.

WoW has an AH, SWTOR has a global AH, GW2 has a global AH, BDO has a global AH, ESO has this farce system of going through 10000 loading screens in hopes of finding the item you need SOMEWHERE in the world.

Why?

1) No changes in imperial city/cyrodil, you still have to pvp.

2) Vet levels were reworked, you have CP now which you get from all activities in the game, all the way up to 810.

The above rant answered your question 3) already.

haelene

Vasoka wrote: »

I don't understand the "professors" who claim that not having a global AH (like literally every single normal MMO btw) is a good system. It actually boggles my mind.

The reasoning I've heard is that in a system like this it's harder for a few people to take control of the market and define prices in a way that reduces competition from the average player.

Thunder

Vasoka wrote: »

I don't understand the "professors" who claim that not having a global AH (like literally every single normal MMO btw) is a good system. It actually boggles my mind. It's the biggest bonehead move of this game if we are to be honest.

At first I didn't care so much about the lack of an AH. There were trading guilds, and their intention was that you form a community with those people in that guild for your general trading needs. This wasn't a terrible idea actually. Let's say on day 1 you joined a trading guild, after a couple years you would have hundreds, possibly thousands of trades with these same people. While in other games you might want to sell Item of Awesomness for the absolute top dollar you could get, within your trading guild you might cut Fred a deal because you cut you a deal on something else last week.

As it was intended and initially introduced, trading guilds had the potential to create a better system of trade for all involved. However, when they capitulated to public demand and created an auction house system, not only did it entirely kill this "guild" concept, it created the absolute worst system imaginable for an auction house. An auction house where the richest players can actually buy the entire auction house and have exclusive control over it? How does your average player compete with that when trying to sell something? How does your average player not get abused by this system when trying to purchase something?

I don't know if this is still a factor or not, but when they came out with these AH monopolies I decided I just simply would not use them. Except there was all this set gear in the game, and it was virtually impossible to gear your character with these powerful set items if you didn't use the monopoly house.

So yeah, I agree, it does seem incomprehensible to me that there isn't a global AH instead of the monopoly houses exclusively controlled by the game's richest players, but I do acknowledge that their original intention with trading guilds, albeit a bit naive, did have some merit.

stewhead2ub17_ESO

I dislike these "might return" posts. A simple search of the forums would answer your questions, which I suspect you already knew anyway. Regardless, you already own the game so it costs you nothing to check it out for yourself. Enjoy.

AlnilamE

Vasoka wrote: »

I don't understand the "professors" who claim that not having a global AH (like literally every single normal MMO btw) is a good system. It actually boggles my mind. It's the biggest bonehead move of this game if we are to be honest.

WoW has an AH, SWTOR has a global AH, GW2 has a global AH, BDO has a global AH, ESO has this farce system of going through 10000 loading screens in hopes of finding the item you need SOMEWHERE in the world.

Why?

For me, personally, it's immersion. We have to go to different NPC vendors to find things. We go to different guild stores to find things sold by players.

I play GW2 and the AH there is a glorified vendor for me. All I use it for is to insta sell stuff and a lot of the time, I don't even bother anymore and just vendor the stuff. In ESO, it feels like I'm trading to other players. In other games, I might as well be selling to a machine.

Thunder

Vasoka wrote: »

1) No changes in imperial city/cyrodil, you still have to pvp.

This has me wondering if perhaps I phrased my question in a light that did not allow for nuance.

Since Imperial City, the first content after launch, there have been quite a number of additional content releases, and what looks like at least a couple full expansion releases with another, Elsweyr, on its way. I know Imperial City fed PvE players to PvP players, but I'm wondering if this was an ongoing thing or did they learn their lesson when the majority of players left after their decision to feed PvE players to PvP players in Imperial City and further content allowed PvE players to do their thing without being fed to PvP players?

I'm simply not going to PvP in an RPG... ever. I get no satisfaction out of besting a foe with the superior fire power afforded by my stats nor do I wish to fall prey to a spreadsheet or gank squad alike. Imperial City was the perfect storm of terrible from my point of view. Not only did it force PvE players to enter a PvP zone, it richly rewarded PvP players to lie in wait and gank those PvE players on their way out. It's the absolute worst system imaginable from a PvE perspective.

Did all, most, or just some subsequent content follow this model of feeding PvE players to gank squads?

Tandor

Vasoka wrote: »

I don't understand the "professors" who claim that not having a global AH (like literally every single normal MMO btw) is a good system. It actually boggles my mind. It's the biggest bonehead move of this game if we are to be honest.

If you replace "professors" with "gold billionaires" then you will be closer to understanding why those players like the present system.

zaria

Only PvP content added after imperial city is battlegrounds.
And yes imperial city an PvP zone with some PvE objectives.

You will need to do some PvP to get vigor and caltrops, this is pretty fast as in 3-4 hours taking keeps with an zerg.

For an player who has not played much I say that one tamriel is the larges change in that all content is leveled to you or rather the other way around a bit how it was in cyrodil.
Leveling is way faster now, yes after you reach level 50 you have cp but they are shared among alt.

Recomend just testing it as its free if you have it

Thunder

stewhead2ub17_ESO wrote: »

1 : Still balanced together. The only things that are locked behind PvP content are some very minimal quests in Cyrodill and some achievements, but for the most part all PvE content is separate.

OH! I misread this response. Well actually I just didn't read this response in its entirety. I saw the "still balanced together" part and took that to mean you had to enter PvP zones to PvE. Now I noticed the rest of the comment and see that for the most part all PvE content is separate.

That's great news!

Tasear

1) Pve and PvP are mostly separate

2) leveling up feels more like progression, but champion system is flawed yet stable for now. Cp 160 will come to some people within a week of playing.

3) Tamerial Trade center website is good enough. Otherwise we don't need a global auction house. It would ruin encomony.

Thunder

zaria wrote: »

Only PvP content added after imperial city is battlegrounds.
And yes imperial city an PvP zone with some PvE objectives.

You will need to do some PvP to get vigor and caltrops, this is pretty fast as in 3-4 hours taking keeps with an zerg.

For an player who has not played much I say that one tamriel is the larges change in that all content is leveled to you or rather the other way around a bit how it was in cyrodil.
Leveling is way faster now, yes after you reach level 50 you have cp but they are shared among alt.

Recomend just testing it as its free if you have it

Thanks for your response, I'm definitely going to give it a go.

Emmagoldman

There has been a plethora of pve zones and content added. Tons of new dungeons and trials. All pvp sets can be purchased from other players, so if you are that type of player (i love pvp myself) you may need to pvp for about 2 or 3 hours to unlock vigor. Pvpers have it way worse though as the need pve for undaunted passi es and gear

The game has dramatically improved and I highly recommend it. I feel it is the best mmo currently on market.

There are for sure things to improve, like the servers, however, zos is working on a major update. Balance is slowly improving with time, however, its an mmo so never perfect. If you are into overland questing, you will also have plenty to do.

Huyen

You can have my spot on the servers. I'm done for this year.