The pleasures of taking things slowly

vsrs_au

After 5 months playing ESO, I slowly came to realise I was playing it the wrong way . I was always looking forward to the next quest, the next zone, the next skill to be unlocked, and it was starting to affect my enjoyment of the game. I had an epiphany, and realised if I keep going like this, I'll complete the zones and challenges too quickly.

Now I play by several go-slow rules:

• listen to the whole dialogue, instead of speed-reading the text and replying before the NPC has finished speaking.
• watch the NPCs and their expressions when they speak to me, instead of just focusing on the dialogue.
• search all book cases for lore books, and read them when I find them. I did this when playing ES5: Skyrim, and always enjoyed finding out more about Tamriel and its many amazing creatures and events.
• pay more attention to the scenery, and don't just gallop everywhere on the horse to the exclusion of all else. I take screendumps occasionally, and have started using them on random rotation on one of my PC's monitors.
• have more fun in the towns and cities. If I find someone playing a lute or dancing, I'll put aside my current endeavours and play and dance with them.
• don't let the need to complete a quest stop me from putting right wrongs wherever I find them. In other words, never let a hostile NPC alone, seek them out wherever I find them.
• change the skill sets occasionally, to change my approach to battle. As a sorceror, I've created skill sets (using the Dressing Room addon) for all of the following, and I try to randomly change between them, to give my combats a bit more variety, so I don't get too used to just one of them:
• • Daedric Summoning
  • Dark Magic
  • Storm Calling
  • Destruction Staff
  • Restoration Staff
  • Psijic Order
  • Mages' Guild
  • Soul Magic

Since I started doing this several weeks ago, I've been enjoying the quests a lot more, secure in the knowledge that it will be a long time before I complete all the zones, and during that time more zones will be added, so here's hoping I never run out of zones. I love interacting more with Tamriel, and I am happy playing the game.

That is all.

Coatmagic

Welcome to Tamriel >^^<

AcadianPaladin

Big fan here of 'It's the journey, not the destination.' For example, my elf's mare spends more of her time walking than running. Surprisingly, I get plenty of inquiries while playing: 'How do you make your horse walk instead of run?'

xgoku1

Congratulations, you have achieved CHIM.

If you're on PC, N'Tak Dialogue is a great addon to use to really immerse yourself in the dialogue. It has a lot of options including centered camera, optional written dialogue hiding, etc.

On my quester I try to do 1-2 quests a day MAX, and collect all rare fish in the zones. This process takes me around 1-1.5 month to clear a zone, so I actually develop some familiarity. Also, walk everywhere and no wayshrines.

Now doing Cadwell Silver, reckon there's 2 more years of content remaining. Feelsgoodman

DreamyLu

Welcome to my world!

I chill in this game, free of any stress, doing only what I feel for, taking my time at things, never grinding... It's very comfortable.

As said in another thread some days ago: the only stress we can feel/have is the one we set to self by having too many objectives. But there are no obligations in this game. None at all, for nothing. It's just choices we make. So let's take it easy and give priority to enjoying the fun.

Tandor

DreamyLu wrote: »

Welcome to my world!

I chill in this game, free of any stress, doing only what I feel for, taking my time at things, never grinding... It's very comfortable.

As said in another thread some days ago: the only stress we can feel/have is the one we set to self by having too many objectives. But there are no obligations in this game. None at all, for nothing. It's just choices we make. So let's take it easy and give priority to enjoying the fun.

This.

I base my playstyle on (a) not wanting to burn out on a game, and I never have, and (b) the recognition that judging by the constant barrage of negativity from those who rush to the "endgame", it isn't all it's cracked up to be so why worry about getting there?

To coin a phrase, a MMORPG is for life, not just for Christmas !

menedhyn

Go-slow is my default and has been for years. I part-rushed a game once and it very nearly ruined it for me. Now my characters stubbornly walk across Tamriel from place to place, stopping to buy or sell in towns, to pick a few pockets or chests, to admire the scenery, to watch the netch grazing, or like you to simply listen to what folks have to say. Content is released far quicker than I can complete it, and to this day I still have most of Tamriel to explore.

May your days of adventuring be many and rewarding @vsrs_au

Grandchamp1989

Like a lot of people I got a job that demands results, high pressure, big workloads and I kinda takes those bad habits with me in my "free time".

As a consequence I usually lose interest unless I'm focus on a specific task at hand like finishing a specific quest/zone/achivement/dungeon/trial etc.

It really does take away from my enjoyment of the game, but I think my brain has a hard time to switch off the work brain when I finally can relax..

The few times I have been able to relax with the game it completely blows my mind how gifted Zos art team really is. The scenery on max graphics PC is stunning, and there's lots of little stories being told through the scenery IMO.

I sometimes wish I could enjoy the world more as a casual player but I've come to learn that I'm not great at quickly adapting.. But yeah, I agree OP. Fine points.

TheImperfect

It really is the best way to play as you get a much fuller experience going through the game. I think you see things on each go through a zone that you may have missed even if you take your time so if you're rushing then you probably miss a lot.

VDoom1

Welcome!

ESO is a big game and has a lot of stories. The best piece of advice, smell the roses. The quests aren't going anywhere, take your time and enjoy the story. Get to know the characters.

ESO is also a very beautiful game, so by all means just stop and look around every now and then.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Agree with all, the game is best when you don't treat it like an XP treadmill. I would add to the OP's list:

-Get Reshade, it ramps up the beauty of the world to gale force 42
- Do one or 2 quests at a time but no more than that.
- if you are targeting a zone, leave the main questline to last and instead explore the zone, picking up quests as you go.
Exploration is much more satisfying.
- Continually set little goals that appeal to you at the time, feel free to change, but when in a questline take it to the end
so the story doesn't become fragmented or forgotten, turning into a mindless quest entry to pump for xp in the future.
Rotate between crafting, skills, exploration, simple xp farming in open world, gathering, guilds, pvp, pve etc. see next point.
- prioritize getting every skill and skill point in game that's useful for your class, pvp, pve and crafting. With that in mind you
feel more empowered to experiment with skills, knowing eventually you can have every skill, and skill point discoveries
become incredibly satisfying like this.
- Get a house that appeals to you early and furnish as you go.
- play first perspective if you really want to feel the world.
- Don't buy any gear until CP 160, makes drops interesting.
- prioritise maxing bag size and consider buying the merchant companion.
- Get a Companion asap, another level of gameplay.

I could keep going

SeaGtGruff

Once I stopped running around trying to do all of ESO's content as soon as possible, and settled into a relaxing daily routine of play, it actually transformed the way I look at playing the other Elder Scrolls games.

Saxhleel

Wow, there are more people than I thought that play ESO as an RPG. I usually only see people running up to a quest important NPC, and 2 seconds later they sprint to a journal, and .6 milliseconds later they sprint into the horizon. It might be just me, but I've seen only 2 other people who have walked somewhere.





Also doing this may be bad for you if you've played previous games as most of my time spent on Vvardenfell is pointing out the inaccuracies. There are a lot.

Wandering_Immigrant

I try to play this way, I really do, chill is my default mode in life. But as someone who has 18 characters, each with their own needs and wants, I have a long to-do list. And as I have little game time throughout the week, there's always 'just one more thing' I want to get done real quick before I can get to that point, otherwise I'd make no progress at all.

I am sometimes able to get there though. My crafter is often an outlet for relaxing and taking in the scenery. I like doing surveys. I pick a zone where I have at least one of each type and go through all of them for that zone. I'm not zipping from wayshrine to wayshrine when I do this, I'm traveling through the whole zone, primarily on foot, while collecting the other nodes I see along the way. I'll also stop and clear any fishing holes I see and usually stop at the random encampments I come across to appreciate the work put into them while I loot the containers.

Master writts are another way. While I am in two higher tier trading guilds with full service guild halls, I usually opt to do my writts in the wild tracking down and traveling to each set's zone location, including those in Cyrodiil and IC, which can make master writts day quite the adventure for my crafter.

Another casual activity I like is housing. Now, I don't do a lot of housing, I only have a few fully decorated homes, but when I do get inspired by an idea it can take up the majority of my time. It usually starts with a grand idea for a section of a particular home, often a cobble project, and since I don't like to leave things unfinished I spend the next month or more slowly adding to the rest of the home to fill it out. I think Alpine Gallery took up a good amount of my time for about 4 or 5 months before it was really fleshed out. And even still I add to it, just today I cobbled together a grill pit in Pirharri's squatter's camp she has out back using the broken urn from the luxury furniture vendor. And that house only got started because some pillars I found inspired me to want to build a bridge going across the top of the waterfall, that's it, that was my entire plan going into that home, and somehow Pirharri got a squatter's camp out of it. While working on homes I'm also paying extra attention to the details in the game's environments while doing other activities looking for further inspiration and ideas to flesh the home out. So this has a natural way of slowing down everything I do.

Besides the things I do on my crafter, I also have seven characters who are under 50 still. I've always preferred to take my time leveling and I was actually playing for about a year and a half before finally hitting 160. Of course, after hitting 160 with that first character I did crunch down on the next few to get them there as well, but once I had a few 50s under my belt I went back to levelling slowly with the rest. Now I'll occasionally hop on one of these lowbies to do some lighthearted questing and skilling up and just feeling the character out when I can get around to it. During these sessions I'm fully exploring areas looking for lorebooks sans add-ons or guides and / or looking for owned containers to level ledgermaine. I find just being on a low level character makes everything feel a little less serious so I'm able to just play on them without feeling a need to be optimal. I still try to be somewhat efficient with basic things, like filling my skillbar only with abilities that still need levelling, but that actually leads to some whacky setups that are far from optimal, which is part of the fun of lowbies for me.

Most of the time though, I'm on a maxed out character with maxed out needs sprinting full speed toward some objective, trying to beat the clock in hopes that maybe I'll have time for some of these laid back activities before the end of the weekend. Unless of course just one more thing I can knock out real quick occurs to me, in which case I'll just do that first, it'll only take a minute, right?

xgoku1

Wandering_Immigrant wrote: »

I try to play this way, I really do, chill is my default mode in life. But as someone who has 18 characters, each with their own needs and wants, I have a long to-do list. And as I have little game time throughout the week, there's always 'just one more thing' I want to get done real quick before I can get to that point, otherwise I'd make no progress at all.

Honestly I don't think slow gameplay focus like mentioned in this thread is viable if you have 18 alts.

It's the big caveat of treating ESO like an RPG rather than an MMO: you have to decide that some things are not for you.

If we take TESV as an example; I consider an alt in ESO as the equivalent of doing a replay of Skyrim. While I appreciate having the option, I've never done 18 runs of Skyrim over 10 years and I don't see myself doing that for ESO. There's other games on the backlog too.

For me, the system that works so far is: 1 Main and 1 Quester, on my Main (also a Crafter) I do MMO-ey things, farm dailies, endeavors, achievement points etc. On my Quester, I play a completely different playstyle: no wayshrines, run everywhere (no sprint), completely different, minimal addon setup with Circonian's, listen to all dialogue, 1-2 quests max per day + zone clearing + fishing.

Apart from these, I have 9 leveled alts that I use for doing writs for money. I don't use them for anything except for writs. 4 alts for storage when no ESO+. Leveling the alts to 50 was annoying, but since they exist only for doing writs, I never farmed skyshards etc. or did any RP on them.

Housing is a very time-consuming minigame and is very much endgame MMO stuff. I drew the line at 1 Crown house, fully furnished (Tel Galen). It's small, but Notable and still took me ages, and a LOT of gold.

For Endeavors, I put a limit at 8000 seals to grind for (=1 Apex for my Quester)

TLDR: ESO is a buffet, and you're on a diet. Gotta skip some stuff.

Castagere

Good for you vsrs_au. That's the way I have played since launch. But be aware that you won't enjoy groups if you play that way.

PurpleScroll

I have played this way since starting over 5 years ago. I now have over 11,000 hours played in ESO and I still play it daily for several hours and not be bored. I mostly play one character too, that's because she's a Khajiit and a vampire, two of my favourites in the TES universe.

There's so much to enjoy in the game that I just really prefer taking my time - even with dailies, I will just walk/run to each location within the daily and enjoy my time in the whole TES universe. When playing as a stage 4 vampire, I enjoy the consequences of my actions - NPCs refusing to talk to me, guards trying to kill me if I use a vampire skill around innocents, I even make outfits around how Khajiit look at stage 4.

There's so much to do in ESO that it is really the best to take your time.

WiseSky

This one gets it !

Here is some Addons you can use to tweak the game if you wish

hands0medevil

Opened the thread because of the title, realized it's about the game, left

vsrs_au

Thanks for the replies, everyone

I installed the 2 N'Tak addons, they're not bad.

WiseSky wrote: »

This one gets it !

Here is some Addons you can use to tweak the game if you wish

I already had the dialog addon, and just installed the darker nights addon, because I miss the ES5:Skyrim nights. The nights in ESO are odd, because even in the middle of the night, it's just not that dark.

joseayalac

I play in a similar way to OP, and it's the greatest recommendation you can give to maximize the enjoyment you can get from this game. When I'm exploring a new zone I try to not gallop with my mount, jogging is the fastest I go in order to have time to check stuff out.

And also like to make RP skillbars to keep things fresh and flavorful, instead of always having a super min/maxed veteran content setup. It makes the easy encounters on overworld more enjoyable.

Yesterday I ran Fungal Grotto by myself because I wanted inspiration for a DnD campaign I'll be hosting this weekend, it was a slow run checking out the details and every corner of the dungeon and speaking to every NPC. And I just realized how much I've missed after years of fast running the dungeon.