High Isle exposed a flaw in ESO but what is it?

danno8

Northwold wrote: »

The game is almost impossibly difficult to understand for a new player.

You are bombarded with content, that you can play in random order even though some of it is serialised. You'll then find you've broken the stories. The very existence of the main quest isn't advertised, even though it's *designed* to take players by the hand and get them to level 50. Zones like Craglorn are instadeath for a new player but nothing tells them that. Some of the stories plain don't make sense, referring to not being able to get to a zone that the player can literally pop in a wayshrine and go to in minutes, because of the game's history. Nothing is clearly explained (I remember trying to walk into a trial at level 10 or something).

It's an utter, utter mess. I started with Morrowind after Summerset released and I gave up twice within a couple of days each time because playing it was just unpleasant and alienating. I literally sat there thinking "how can people play this it's empty, random and incomprehensible". There is no structure to it, so you pop from meaningless story to meaningless story because you've never had the grounding that players early in the game's life had, feeling more and more confused and uninvolved.

I only came back -- almost a year later -- when I found out online the main quest existed, and then under protest because when I'd asked online people who'd been playing the game 100 years said "duh Google it" as if you're an (i) diot for expecting a game to explain itself properly without having to trawl the internet.

So if you want to know why so many players drop out, that would be my guess. It is a horrible experience for new players. And every effort they make to improve it just tinkers round the edges and refuses to establish a true, linear introduction to the game that would enable players to get to grips with it.

Even basic features like not having every single quest, whether primary or completely pointless, use exactly the same quest arrow took years to get implemented. And the one truly beneficial change they made was not the portal cavern but the zone guide, which tells players that zone stories have a start, middle and end. That should have been common sense. But it wasn't even there when I started.

Very little thought -- or no thought -- seems to have been given to two important elements:

1) What would happen if a new players does the "go anywhere, anytime, do anything" philosophy *when they first step into the game*. The answer is: incoherent story chaos that the player isn't in a position to understand and will make them hate the game. (This is how I had seen the Silvenar married before I'd even met the Silvenar, and they were talking to me like I was their best mate -- seriously, if you want to give new players a headache and make them wonder if your game has bugged out, that is how you do it. Or by letting them meet Darien for the first time not at the beginning but when he's in full himbo mode, again, chatting to you like he's your best mate, when his introduction to your story has been not far off "you must like this person who is not that far from being a (r) apist".)

There is a fix to this that, even with ESO's engine, should be achievable: if a player tries to start a story out of order, give the player the option and the quest marker to go to the beginning of it. In main quest stories, giving the player the option to start the main quest.

2) What happens to new players when they run up against DLC content as *a new player*. The game doesn't explain that Wrothgar is a DLC zone, that Craglorn has no connection to the basic world, that if you follow the nice lady in Daggerfall she will take you, not to the fighters guild quest, but to a DLC zone. Quests are named with semi-poetic, meaningless titles rather than saying "This is the starter quest for the Greymoor DLC chapter". For a new player, it, again, creates an incoherent nightmare. I started, after dabbling in Morrowind, in Craglorn because it was pretty and for a fair time I thought the entire game was nothing but group content.

(You will also note another problem with this -- if players start in the latest chapter, they may play 20-30 hours without ever leaving it because that is what they think they're supposed to do. And the game used to FORCE players to start in the new chapter, and still makes that possible. So why would they ever even IMAGINE that there even *is* a main quest when they have already played what they thought was the start of the game??)

The way the game plays almost feels institutionalised -- in the sense that the developers are so familiar with their own creation, that they know every nook and cranny, that they forget that new players are not in that position. It plays fine for players who have been playing for years. Existing players don't walk into an alliance capital and face a fractal pattern of quest arrows. Existing players don't need to worry about quest orders because when they get a new chapter it's the only new content they have. Existing players don't need to be told the difference between base and DLC zones and its significance because they already know (how is a new player supposed to know that Auridon existed at the beginning but High Isle came last year, for example?? And that actually matters in terms of knowing which zone content you can play without breaking something.). But put a new player in that experience and the game just collapses.

This post deserves an Awesome, Agree and Insightful.

Even as someone who has played through all the content a few times, after taking over a year off and picking up where I left off with a younger character, it is still confusing to see all the prologue quests ever present in town.

The developers need to take some time classifying quests and developing options for new players who want to experience the game in it's proper chronological order.

Compared to other games in this genre, the new player experience is awful, and being told that "Google is your friend" is an alienating and immersion breaking response that will only make people want to go somewhere else.

Jaimeh

Vhozek wrote: »

On the Bethesda main channel, the video has 3 million views, the video where the guy appears for a few seconds has 1.4 million views, and a later video where the fight starts early on has 4.7 million views. No other video around the same time frame, including about ESO, has anywhere near those views except for the Skyrim Anniversary Edition concert video and Starfield Gameplay Reveal (5 Million).

It sounds to me like they need to capitalize on this "trailer knight" guy.

More cinematic trailers with the Breton Hero would be great, agreed!

I think the game attracts plenty of new players, and the community is very welcoming and helpful for the most part. But the new player experience, despite the devs efforts to make it smoother, will be confusing to some extent given how massive the game is right now. I think the biggest hurdle is the quest chronology, the 'start where you like, do what you want' philosophy is not as helpful for a new player imo, even if it allows them to play anywhere with their friends, etc., because knowing what storyline to follow can get extremely overwhelming. I think the tutorial should go into the main quest right away and then give players the option to either continue the quests in their alliance or in the current chapter zone.

Foxtrot39

Jaimeh wrote: »

Vhozek wrote: »

On the Bethesda main channel, the video has 3 million views, the video where the guy appears for a few seconds has 1.4 million views, and a later video where the fight starts early on has 4.7 million views. No other video around the same time frame, including about ESO, has anywhere near those views except for the Skyrim Anniversary Edition concert video and Starfield Gameplay Reveal (5 Million).

It sounds to me like they need to capitalize on this "trailer knight" guy.

More cinematic trailers with the Breton Hero would be great, agreed!

I think the game attracts plenty of new players, and the community is very welcoming and helpful for the most part. But the new player experience, despite the devs efforts to make it smoother, will be confusing to some extent given how massive the game is right now. I think the biggest hurdle is the quest chronology, the 'start where you like, do what you want' philosophy is not as helpful for a new player imo, even if it allows them to play anywhere with their friends, etc., because knowing what storyline to follow can get extremely overwhelming. I think the tutorial should go into the main quest right away and then give players the option to either continue the quests in their alliance or in the current chapter zone.

I doubt they can capitalize on him further considering main antagonist don't really stay alive unless they're immortal by the end of the main quest

phaneub17_ESO

danno8 wrote: »

I spam Unstable WoE for the repeat explosion. It's actually a pretty viable front loaded AoE option. You can then use it as a dot as well if needed in other scenario. Saves bar space.

Fine, do that with the base, unmorphed version because that's what I usually see from new players.

danno8

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

I spam Unstable WoE for the repeat explosion. It's actually a pretty viable front loaded AoE option. You can then use it as a dot as well if needed in other scenario. Saves bar space.

Fine, do that with the base, unmorphed version because that's what I usually see from new players.

No, I refuse, lol.

I agree the game does a pretty poor job of explaining...well anything really. Hybridization has just added to the confusion. Stamina skills scales the same off of weapon or spell damage and vice-versa? It just has no solid logical flow. You either somehow know or you don't. You're in-the-know or you are not. Go google it.

And that's an area that has much room for improvement.

CiliPadi

I could not stand the High Isle story line. The over use of the word DEAR drove me nuts.

kumenit_taeynav

personally, ive been playing tes games for about 10 years now and started playing eso back in 2021. if eso wasnt a tes game i really dont think i wouldve stayed beyond maybe a month at most for the sake of attempting to get my moneys worth.

i completely agree with everyone whove complained about quest saturation and a lack of direction above me here. it always seemed so noisy to walk through Davon's Watch when i was getting a hang of which quests to pick up and which ones to ignore for a more chronological experience. on my very first toon i tried picking up all the quests that were available and wound up getting lost in Shadowfen while on the Murkmire prologue within a week of starting to play eso; i didnt want to be in Shadowfen bc i still had quests back in Stonefalls to complete and without any decent tutorials on basic things like wayshrines or boatswains i had to run all the way back to Stonefalls. after that i somehow got lost in Coldharbour which i felt was way too far ahead in the timeline compared to where i was in Deshaan. i just deleted that toon and started all over again.

trying to get any useful information on even some of the most basic mechanics and activities and whatnot just from the game itself felt like pulling teeth to me in my early days. ive got a lot of anxiety so asking a potentially very stupid and obvious question publicly in zone chat really didnt feel like an option to me, i didnt wanna get mocked bc i was struggling to level up my vampire toon and wanted guidance among other seemingly simple things that dont get explained well if at all. im a very frequent player and theres still stuff i dont understand! like whats direct damage? do any of my abilities deal direct damage? what effect does direct damage have in combat?

due to my previous experience with tes games i knew UESP exists and has pages on eso mechanics and quests. fans outside of the game was honestly my biggest saviour with my lack of knowledge and anxiety. it wasnt any 2 sentence long tutorials provided in-game that taught me about bounties and their cool downs, what crafting inspiration is and why it matters, how to get around via boatswains, or that i should be upgrading my mount every day. now UESP absolutely has its limits, seemingly moreso with eso over some of the other tes games, but its certainly helped with making this jumbled mess we call a game into something i can actually play and understand.

my suggestion when it comes to prologue quests would be to give them their own icon instead of sharing the same icon with every other side quest. maybe even add in a note to the dialogue, whether its something at the end of the npc dialogue or part of your own dialogue options, to make it more clear that youre starting a prologue quest for a specific dlc that will likely lead you away from anything nearby. maybe have the quest giver blab on about whatever it is they want you to do and finish it off with "(Start <Quest Title>, <DLC Title>'s Prologue)". i think thatd help not just the new players who might want to focus on zone quests or the Planemeld story but also help some of the more experienced players such as myself who want to start a specific prologue but still have some difficulty finding the correct one bc there really are a lot of prologue quests grouped up in the alliance starter cities

shadyjane62

FluffyBird wrote: »

If I were a new player, I'd most likely think that High Isle has nothing to do with Elder Scrolls and is horribly boring. And if that was my first zone, I'd think that ESO is some generic mediocre MMO.

I was Day one player here. It was really great starting Coldharbour. Now they start people in later areas and its wrong. Everyone should start Coldharbour and progress to beginner area of your faction.

I don't know how many times we are in a later area like Elsweyr and when people drop in new they don't have any idea what to do.
I hate not knowing what to do or where to go first. If I had been a recent player I would have left the game after two days.

Vhozek

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

personally, ive been playing tes games for about 10 years now

bro played Skyrim and has been playing TES games for 10 years LOL
TES players starving man, we need a new game lmfao

chessalavakia_ESO

Vhozek wrote: »

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

personally, ive been playing tes games for about 10 years now

bro played Skyrim and has been playing TES games for 10 years LOL
TES players starving man, we need a new game lmfao

Earlier this month they announced it'll be 5-6 years for the next one. I think it will be interesting to see how similar it ends up being to other titles considering the length of the gap.

Vhozek

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Vhozek wrote: »

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

personally, ive been playing tes games for about 10 years now

bro played Skyrim and has been playing TES games for 10 years LOL
TES players starving man, we need a new game lmfao

Earlier this month they announced it'll be 5-6 years for the next one. I think it will be interesting to see how similar it ends up being to other titles considering the length of the gap.

There's 6 unused portals at the end of the starting tutorial for ESO and it seems like it's 1 expansion per year. They'll probably align the last expansion for ESO with the release of TES6.

rpa

Vhozek wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Vhozek wrote: »

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

personally, ive been playing tes games for about 10 years now

bro played Skyrim and has been playing TES games for 10 years LOL
TES players starving man, we need a new game lmfao

Earlier this month they announced it'll be 5-6 years for the next one. I think it will be interesting to see how similar it ends up being to other titles considering the length of the gap.

There's 6 unused portals at the end of the starting tutorial for ESO and it seems like it's 1 expansion per year. They'll probably align the last expansion for ESO with the release of TES6.

I'm pretty sure starting tutorial can be redone if required. They did it so many times already it's not going to be reason to stop expansions. Consoles and PC:s rupturing from bloat or swimming pool worth of spaghetti hacks becoming unmanageable or enough players deciding to not keep paying to play this silly genre any more might be. (Of course it can be put in maint mode or killed for business reasons at any time. That's what game industry does to online games.)

SKN

Braffin wrote: »

I think there are several issues causing this phenomenon:

- Newer players experience is outright confusing the very moment they set foot in any major city. There are even questgivers around, which are imprisoned in coldharbour at the same time. Not exactly incentivising if you're interested in story.

Not to mention you get certain choices in the main-quest about what NPCs will die or not. Only for them to appear at other places in different quests anyway. Entire story-line is a mess.

Not to get started on the mess that is the teleport room tutorial. That's just downright horrendous for a new player.

Or just how DLC Quests are handled (Oh look, quests! *takes it*, oh it's an DLC about stuff that assumes I've done the other content before it; amazing..:).


ESO hates new players, that's why new players quit. I have quit, and almost quit again for this exact reason. I don't understand what's going on half the time. Had to even get an addon that points out what NPCs are DLC quests, and lo and behold, 2\3rds of city quests are just DLC starters...

Braffin wrote: »

- Group content like dungeons (especially in normal mode) is heavily characterized by an overdrawn farming culture due to the reward system. The first impressions newer players make when doing their first runs are most likely speedrunners killing off the final boss while oneself is still dying to some trashmob which said speedrunners didn't bother to eliminate.

Agree, dungeons need a solo-mode. Either by scaling enemies (to similar difficulty of public dungeons) and simplifying mechanics (where group mechanics exist), or by having AI-team mates in a group that you lead through it (similar to FFXIV).

To not overstep on grouping for rewards etc, make it either a one-time thing (forcing accepting and finishing the quest to progress, thereby locking out story-mode subsequently), or by reducing\removing rewards for doing it (so reward becomes the quest itself).

Deter1UK

Northwold wrote: »

The game is almost impossibly difficult to understand for a new player.

You are bombarded with content, that you can play in random order even though some of it is serialised. You'll then find you've broken the stories. .... But put a new player in that experience and the game just collapses.

Leveling an ALT really spotlights this.

Do the Main Quest up to the part where Abner Tharn asks you to meet in the Guildhall.

`Go to the Mages Guild and there are TWO Abner Tharns; one really obvious one trying to get you to go on the Elsewyr chapter and the Abner Tharn you are really looking for for the Main Quest - hidden in the basement!

Its ridiculous and ruins any suspension of disbelief in the game for a time.

I really think they should put Chapters on a quest board and direct players to the quest giver placed somewhere remote to aviod all the confusion.

colossalvoids

SKN wrote: »

ESO hates new players, that's why new players quit.

That's kinda hilarious considering everything nowadays evolves around new players experience, seems like zos misses the mark hugely as they're doing harm to both new players and vets alike.

rpa

colossalvoids wrote: »

SKN wrote: »

ESO hates new players, that's why new players quit.

That's kinda hilarious considering everything nowadays evolves around new players experience, seems like zos misses the mark hugely as they're doing harm to both new players and vets alike.

I certainly did quit at lv~20 when I tried ESO the first time at late 2015 because it just was confusing and annoying for a new player unfamiliar with the game. That was before One Tamriel. I only got into it again late 2018 because my game of choice died and only after giving WoW yet another long and disappointing try. I'd expect now it's just as confusing for new players but at least they do not get eaten by trash mobs as much when exploring game world.

ADarklore

Here is what I think... I think people who give up, don't have a clue what an MMO is. It is NOT a single-player game that has limited focus and limited content. It's easy to keep a single-player game on rails and provide guidance, etc... because overall the game never changes from start to finishing. With ESO, it is constantly changing, and thus, very very difficult to provide stable guidance to a player.

Furthermore, anyone who has played any MMO should know that they tend to be very complex, and you usually need to search outside of the game for guidance. So coming in and expecting an MMO that has run almost 10 years to be simple is clearly asking for confusion from the start; ESO is NOT simple for a new player.

I understand why they wanted to make the storylines accessible at any point, because if a new player comes in to join a friend and their friend is running High Isle, they will be able to join their friend in that content. But for someone coming in who is NOT joining a friend, the current state of quests is extremely confusing and overwhelming. You do the tutorial and you're thrown into the portal arena and have absolutely no idea which one to take, it's an awful way to treat new players. It was MUCH better when they just threw players into the MSQ and out they came onto their alliance starter island and progressed from there. Once they reached the main city, they could then decide which quest path they wanted to follow. It flowed much better... and again... just keep all the new DLC content locked in the Crown Store prologue menu and let players start additional DLC quests from there- and get rid of all the city quest givers that just add further confusion to the game.

danno8

ADarklore wrote: »

Here is what I think... I think people who give up, don't have a clue what an MMO is. It is NOT a single-player game that has limited focus and limited content. It's easy to keep a single-player game on rails and provide guidance, etc... because overall the game never changes from start to finishing. With ESO, it is constantly changing, and thus, very very difficult to provide stable guidance to a player.

Furthermore, anyone who has played any MMO should know that they tend to be very complex, and you usually need to search outside of the game for guidance. So coming in and expecting an MMO that has run almost 10 years to be simple is clearly asking for confusion from the start; ESO is NOT simple for a new player.

I understand why they wanted to make the storylines accessible at any point, because if a new player comes in to join a friend and their friend is running High Isle, they will be able to join their friend in that content. But for someone coming in who is NOT joining a friend, the current state of quests is extremely confusing and overwhelming. You do the tutorial and you're thrown into the portal arena and have absolutely no idea which one to take, it's an awful way to treat new players. It was MUCH better when they just threw players into the MSQ and out they came onto their alliance starter island and progressed from there. Once they reached the main city, they could then decide which quest path they wanted to follow. It flowed much better... and again... just keep all the new DLC content locked in the Crown Store prologue menu and let players start additional DLC quests from there- and get rid of all the city quest givers that just add further confusion to the game.

I agree it is complex, but I don't think it would be that hard to simplify and tidy up the DLC quest lines. Replace all the city DLC quest starters with a "Help Notice" board (or something) that clearly list out the DLC quest starters in chronological order and by selecting the DLC only then does the starter quest giver in the city become active and start hollering at you. I feel this is something that could be done rather easily and quickly. You could keep it in the Crown Store like you say, but I feel having it easily discoverable in game is a more organic solution.

Axe the silly portal tutorial and go back to the Coldharbour one that starts you off right and can be completed in 10 minutes allowing you to go wherever you want afterwards anyway.

To me this is a One Tamriel problem, which makes it an ESO problem not so much an mmo problem. Most other mmo's out there require you to have completed older content before you can begin newer content.

Vrienda

Take a look around any city. They're packed full of quests and guess what? Most of them are prologues that lead you off to some remote place, obfuscating your progress in the zone you're in. Prologue quests need moving somewhere away from new players. Desperately. Having ten different plotlines dumped on you at once is overwhelming

Vhozek

I attempted to play the game with a "new player" mentality a couple times last night.

Avoiding most combat (killed mobs if they were near a resource I was trying to gather):

• gathering resources, sometimes scarce, sometimes repeating the same ones like butterflies
• cooking is the most common crafting station yet there's 0 meals to cook until you find recipes
• little to no exp from non-combat exploration
• crafting/refining, other than cooking, was not easy to find and I had to use my knowledge to find it in the city

I think there should be a crafting station or two in places that make sense. If a house is in the middle of the woods, it should have a woodworking station.

Combat oriented:

• Killed a bunch of mobs but started falling asleep after about an hour, even went into a delve and finished the mini quest for it.

I'm sorry but I just really think it's the combat here or the mob difficulty.

Vhozek

I also think some stuff in the game is poorly worded. I have over 2k hours into ESO and didn't know you didn't have to be part of a guild to use the guild traders.
They should just give the impression that it's a player ran market, not specifically a guild market. It always made me think it's for guilds to trade with each other.

Don't get me started on Healing Taken vs Healing Received. Bro what?

majulook

I started a new character with Necrom release on PC. This character had so many Arrow over head "get this Quest" NPC's and Arrow over book / scroll quest starters I felt over whelmed. With all the rabbit holes new player can jump into I am urprised that new players stay at all.

Now this being stated I have been playing since beta and have several characters. My main has done almost everything for all Zones, Dungeons, Trial, and quite a bit of PVP.

I feel bad for new players as they must get so confused when starting out

spartaxoxo

I attempted to play the game with a "new player" mentality a couple times last night.

Grinding mobs and collecting mats is moreso an experienced player mentality, not a new one. New players typically expect the tutorial to be easy and assume that it will get harder as the game progresses, so very few complain about the combat difficulty. When they get experienced and realize that it never progresses past the tutorial level is when the complaints about difficulty generally start, post 160 cp.

What they do complain about is how difficult the game is to understand, what they should be doing and which quests they should go on. I've had to explain crafting to almost every new player I have ever met because they didn't bother with it yet. They usually find out about it when they wonder how it is they're supposed to make coin.

Edit: Most complaints I've seen from new players have been too complicated/didn't know what to do, too much micro transactions, inventory management is aggravating, and performance issues. Some do complain the combat is boring, but the majority of new players that quit don't make it far enough to come to that conclusion.

jlmurra2

I'm glad to see this thread, and discussion.

It reflects much of how I have felt about ESO for the past two years. I have taken two extended breaks, with no specific plan on when I would return.

When I began playing the game again I see new content, and changes to existing features that I feel mostly positive about, new areas to explore, a new class, I like the hybridization changes, etc. I generally feel positive about the evolution of ESO, yet the more that is added the more convoluted the overall experience of playing feels.

The Elder Scrolls Online Feels like it needs to be reconfigured. Perhaps the option to play in a mode where quest staring npcs do not spawn until the chronology appropriate time would be a good start.

I_killed_Vivec

CiliPadi wrote: »

I could not stand the High Isle story line. The over use of the word DEAR drove me nuts.

And if it's not dear it's mercenary

I'm not a mercenary, I'm a warrior - the loot from quests means nothing to me, peanuts compared to what I have in the bank.

And I have no idea how a new player reacts to that - "What, I'm bought by the highest bidder? I thought I was the hero of this story!"

rottenlittlecreature

I have a sort of torn relationship with this game. I've been playing for less than a year and if I'm really really honest the only reason I'm still playing is cause a)I've met some cool people I enjoy talking to, b)personal/irl stuff has made it so I really don't have the energy to pick up and try something new again, and c)I play with my husband and we don't have a lot of things we play together so I try to hold the ones we do. I've enjoyed some of the story lines(once I googled and figured out how to actually do them so that they made sense- something I shouldn't have needed to do), I think the game is very pretty, some parts do bring me a bit of nostalgia-driven serotonin, and the housing system is a lot of fun, but there's equally as much that really puts me off it. That said, despite continuing to play, I've cautioned so many friends about ESO for so many of the reasons others have talked about above. Most of whom are familiar with a variety other MMOs and the elder scrolls franchise in general.

The new player experience truly is disastrous. Letting people start questing wherever they want rather then giving them an easy to follow, linear chronological order, at the very least through the base game zones, is so confusing and overwhelming. The friends who haven't heeded my various warnings have quit after a month or less because of just how awful it is. You shouldn't have to look up a guide just to start a game in a way that makes sense.
Even when folks try to be super helpful and answer all the questions and guide them to where they need to go(and thankfully there are many kind folks who do if you have the courage to reach out) there's just so freaking much that its hard to keep any of it straight.
The last time I tried to explain some of the systems in the game for someone new I had to stop and apologize when I realized just how much of a mess things are. Especially if you don't have ESO+.
Not to mention how many times I have to answer a new person's question with "oh that's a bug that's apparently been around for years so you have to do this instead" or "oh you need an addon for that" or "oh you have to buy that" and see them instantly lose interest. It's so sad.

I really wanted to think they had great intentions with the whole "adventure how you want" thing and they just did it far too haphazardly for it to work properly. But, the ridiculous number of NPCs screeching at you about DLC stuff in starter zones feels far more like an intended design, as it encourages people to sub to ESO+. So I really don't ever see them changing that up. It's the npc equivalent of pop up ads. Eventually someone's gonna click it and spend money. Its icky but probably pretty effective.

That said, nearly every single one of these issues traces back to one concept: The game sometimes feels like its primary(and occasionally only) goal is to make you spend more money somehow. Which you know, its a business, that's what its supposed to do. I can only hold that against them a little. Shoving every shiny thing into a new players face with zero direction is how they choose to achieve that goal.
So if it turns out you don't want to or can't spend that money, why bother sticking around if you have to search through a million guides, download a bunch of addons, and ask a hundred questions, just to figure out what you can do?

I think in the case of my friends and probably plenty of others, they try ESO thinking it'll have the feel of an Elder Scrolls game, the epic coolness of its trailers, and the polish of the other big name MMOs(because as an Elder Scrolls game it absolutely should) and when they quickly discover it lacks a chunk of those things they nope out rather than bother paying the $15 a month. I know I was pretty disappointed and shocked by a lot of it when I first started playing but I really wanted something to play with my husband(who had already been on and off with it for a couple years) so I stuck it out til I found the things I do like. Not everyone has that driving factor.


TLDR: The game could be way more appealing and way simpler for new folks if they focused less on trying to shove the shiny fomo/dlc/new stuff that makes them feel like they have to spend more into their faces and more on assuring that their experiences in the base game make them want to spend that money and keep moving through the story and content.

I really really hope some of the QoL changes they're talking about for later in the year can do some of this foundation repair but optimism is admittedly hard to come by these days.

DrNukenstein

The new player experience in this game is weird, that's the word for it.

I'll get the non linearity out of the way first. I think is a good thing, this is in a way the first Elder Scrolls game with "Alternate Start" built in

What makes the game weird is you don't get to have an actual build until your first character is cp160. I didn't really know what I was doing, and it took me like 6 weeks to hit that point playing multiple hours a day. Up until that point, you just put on whatever gear you can find within 5 levels, and then whatever gear is within 10 CP.

You have to really want to like this game to get over this extremely long tutorial section. Then, this "tutorial" doesn't really teach you anything about the game. At no point are you guided towards making a build with complete sets, there is never a point where you need to manage buffs and devise a workable rotation, let alone a section where it is made clear that animation cancelling is very much a part of this game.

On top of that, this absurd intro grind only applies to your first character. CP (fortunately) applies to all of your characters. To me, what this means is gear needs to stop scaling at 50 if it should even still be scaling by level at all.

Then you get past this tutorial, hit cp160, and can do veteran dungeons. Do veteran dungeons? With what build and with what expertise? Crikey, what a jump those are. If it weren't for the fact that I had nothing better to do during quarantine than to get into this game, I would have put it down by level 40.

For the record, I got into the game and it's great. But the amount of work the game asked of me to get into it is insane. Imagine going to Arbies, and they make you pass a whole course on the science and history of roast beef just to order a sandwich that might not even be your bag, but you'll never know if you don't pass the course.

Fata1moose

People complain about ESO's floaty combat and the easy overland all of the time so I think that's what turns off people most. There's also the group that expects it to be like the mainline games but the world design is quite different NPCs aren't on schedules, they don't sleep and eat, they don't have set houses they walk in and out of and there are a ton of buildings that are blocked off. In mainline TES they never tell you no whereas ESO's world tells you no often.

Vhozek

Fata1moose wrote: »

People complain about ESO's floaty combat and the easy overland all of the time so I think that's what turns off people most. There's also the group that expects it to be like the mainline games but the world design is quite different NPCs aren't on schedules, they don't sleep and eat, they don't have set houses they walk in and out of and there are a ton of buildings that are blocked off. In mainline TES they never tell you no whereas ESO's world tells you no often.

Floaty combat is DEFINITELY a real thing. The number of times I've gone to bed earlier than I usually do.

Northwold

Honestly, I tend to agree with the poster above that I doubt the vast majority of new players give a fig about combat. Combat is what people who've been playing 1000 hours get bothered about. People who've played 20 simply want to understand what on earth is going on.

I mean, I got halfway to writing a novel (thanks to folk for wading through it) above relating everything I felt about ESO when I started and how horrible it was, and combat didn't even occur to me as an issue to put into words. Yes, my personal priorities are my personal priorities, but I definitely wasn't thinking "oh my goodness if only I could somehow animation cancel this game would be chef's kiss perfect".