Little Things

Turrican

Despite the terrible launch, gold spam, bots, lag and maintenance, I am still enjoying the game and hoping for fixes to these issues.

Gameplay-wise there are a few niggles I have with inconvenient elements of the game design. Here is my wish list of little things I would implore Zos to change.

- Player inspect. The ability to look at any other player's gear and stats when you encounter them. Aside from being interesting, it spreads information about what's available in the game and gives ideas as to what to aim for.

- Crafting menu. One of the biggest frustrations in the game is not knowing what crafting recipes you have or materials you can use unless you are standing at the relevant crafting station. It's so annoying to be at the guild bank/store and have no idea whether to take an item because you can't remember whether you have a recipe that uses it or not.

- Effects indicator. There is no accurate way to see how your character is being affected by a spell or food. This is silly. I don't even know whether the effects of food last through death or whether I have to eat every time I resurrect, because I can't see the information anywhere!

- Combat text. I know the game is supposed to be immersive and we don't want numbers flying all over the screen but it's not very helpful to have no information about the damage I am doing and receiving. It makes things more vague in both pve and pvp.

- Quickslot hot keys. I don't use potions in this game because it's too fiddly to faff about with a radial dial and then double tap the correct selection. It would be far more helpful to just bind the Quickslots to 1,2,3 etc.

- Books. Why can we only keep lore books and not the other books? I would like to be able to keep all the books I come across in game so that I can read them at a later date. At the very least, I would like some indication as to whether I have found a book previously.

- Proper forums. Ok, this is not an ingame change but it needs to be said. The way that these forums are structured is the worst I have seen on any website in the last 20 years. Please break the forums down into pertinent categories and make these forums far more accessible and useful as a result. Take a look at the Eve online forums if you need an idea.

- Horse armour. Not essential but it would be nice to be able to fit out your horse to make it look like a warhorse whilst adding protection from being knocked off it's back.

- World PvP. Some of the best interactions I've had in MMOs is finding an enemy player in my territory and fighting them off or defending my home town from an invasion. I'd love to see something similar in ESO. Maybe there could be objectives (like to kill he queen or king) and each faction could raid the territory of the others in order to achieve it.

- Heavy armour buff. Right now I feel that medium armour and cloth are far more useful than heavy due to the bonuses they give to stam and magika. Heavy armour should either give a big boost to health (possibly with a speed reduction) or some other bonus. 10% less stam to block and increased heals doesn't cut the mustard in my opinion.

I would also love to see armour dyes, guild store filter, guild tabards etc but I understand these are on the way already so thanks in advance.

So those are my little things. Do you agree/disagree? What are yours?

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

drkeys143

I'm not sure because I have never checked it out, but I think I have seen a tip on the loading screen that tells you when you are at a crafting station, you have access to crafting materials in your bank too, perhaps someone else could confirm this

chromaticmind

You can see food and drink buffs on your character sheet, and they persist through death

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Coggage

You need to visit http://www.esoui.com/addons.php check out some of the great addons people have made.

• Crafting Menu: Try things like Sous Chef and Alchemist or some others.
• Effects Indicator: ZamBuffDisplay shows buff you have on-screen and shows other player's buffs when you mouse over them.
• Quick Slots: Have a look at Greymind Quick Slot Bar which shows a mini-bar on the desktop with what you have on those slots. It lets you assign hotkeys too.
• Combat Text: Have a look at Foundry Tactical Combat, Combat Cloud and the rest.

nidriks

@Turrican I'm not sure I'd agree that it's been a terrible launch full of bugs and lag? Spam and bots, yes, and it should have been expected and readied for. Bugs are something you have to expect in an MMO. Some are not desireable, and I make no excuses for those that hold back progress, but they are part and parcel of a game so extensive. I've encountered no lag whatsoever and maintenance is going to be something you have to accept whatever the MMO.

The main point of your post was the suggestions you made, though. I just wanted to voice my thoughts on the above.

Concerning the UI you want to go and get Foundry Tactical Combat. Trust me, it's essential.

Concerning the quickslots; I too see no reason why they couldn't have given us two or three quickslots below the main skill bar. I have already switched the quickslot hotkey to 8 (handy on my Naga), so to have quickslots in 7 and 9 would be great for me.

World PvP is, I think, pretty much covered by AvA in Cyrodiil.

You'll get used to these forums the more you use them. When I first came here I thought it looked confusing, but I now find it well laid out and I really find the Insightful/Agree/Awesome/LOL addition to be an excellent idea. Some might say there's a call for negative rating of posts but that would easily lead to abuse, so I'll happily accept just rewarding posters who have useful things to say because it could make for a much nicer forum. I'm sure you'll have noticed the internet has become a much less friendly place full of backstabbing and grumbling. Many forums I used to frequent I leave behind now, so I'd like to see this one remain friendly.

There could be more sub forums, such as trading and private alliance, but they may come. I'd like to see a member able to mark their alliance in their profile and be able to access forums for that alliance. I'm sure that would be great for AvA if moderated so it can not be abused and used for cheating.

Turrican

Coggage wrote: »

You need to visit http://www.esoui.com/addons.php check out some of the great addons people have made.

• Crafting Menu: Try things like Sous Chef and Alchemist or some others.
• Effects Indicator: ZamBuffDisplay shows buff you have on-screen and shows other player's buffs when you mouse over them.
• Quick Slots: Have a look at Greymind Quick Slot Bar which shows a mini-bar on the desktop with what you have on those slots. It lets you assign hotkeys too.
• Combat Text: Have a look at Foundry Tactical Combat, Combat Cloud and the rest.

Thanks. I may well check these out. It would be nice if they were standard as part of the game though.

Turrican

nidriks wrote: »

@Turrican I'm not sure I'd agree that it's been a terrible launch full of bugs and lag? Spam and bots, yes, and it should have been expected and readied for. Bugs are something you have to expect in an MMO. Some are not desireable, and I make no excuses for those that hold back progress, but they are part and parcel of a game so extensive. I've encountered no lag whatsoever and maintenance is going to be something you have to accept whatever the MMO.

The main point of your post was the suggestions you made, though. I just wanted to voice my thoughts on the above.

Concerning the UI you want to go and get Foundry Tactical Combat. Trust me, it's essential.

Concerning the quickslots; I too see no reason why they couldn't have given us two or three quickslots below the main skill bar. I have already switched the quickslot hotkey to 8 (handy on my Naga), so to have quickslots in 7 and 9 would be great for me.

World PvP is, I think, pretty much covered by AvA in Cyrodiil.

You'll get used to these forums the more you use them. When I first came here I thought it looked confusing, but I now find it well laid out and I really find the Insightful/Agree/Awesome/LOL addition to be an excellent idea. Some might say there's a call for negative rating of posts but that would easily lead to abuse, so I'll happily accept just rewarding posters who have useful things to say because it could make for a much nicer forum. I'm sure you'll have noticed the internet has become a much less friendly place full of backstabbing and grumbling. Many forums I used to frequent I leave behind now, so I'd like to see this one remain friendly.

There could be more sub forums, such as trading and private alliance, but they may come. I'd like to see a member able to mark their alliance in their profile and be able to access forums for that alliance. I'm sure that would be great for AvA if moderated so it can not be abused and used for cheating.

Tbh, I have no major issue with bugs as long as they are fixed over time but the bots and gold spam should have been considered by Zos and there's been too much scheduled maintenance during peak times.

That aside, I have a Naga too and yeah it would be nice to use a few more of the buttons

I'll check out the mod. Thanks.

I also like the forum options you mentioned. However, there should be a general discussion forum and the different languages should be kept separate at the very least.

I'd still like to be able to encounter enemies in the open world. Keeping the different factions separate just feels artificial to me.

Coggage

Turrican wrote: »

Coggage wrote: »

You need to visit http://www.esoui.com/addons.php check out some of the great addons people have made.

• Crafting Menu: Try things like Sous Chef and Alchemist or some others.
• Effects Indicator: ZamBuffDisplay shows buff you have on-screen and shows other player's buffs when you mouse over them.
• Quick Slots: Have a look at Greymind Quick Slot Bar which shows a mini-bar on the desktop with what you have on those slots. It lets you assign hotkeys too.
• Combat Text: Have a look at Foundry Tactical Combat, Combat Cloud and the rest.

Thanks. I may well check these out. It would be nice if they were standard as part of the game though.

Ahhh, but think of it instead as having a completely customisable interface, tailored to your exact preferences. Everyone is different - some of the things you would love to have as standard might be the sort of things other people dislike or don't want. As an example, I LOATHE people coming up to inspect my character in mmorpgs. What I'm wearing and what I'm using is my business and no-one else's. Let them create their own setup instead of copying mine.

In a sideways sort of way addons ARE a standard part of the game, which is why the facility for addons was created in the first place.

Shimond

Most of that can be obtained via add-ons, and the parts that can't I mostly disagree with adding into the game (inspect, world pvp).

lordspyder

Turrican wrote: »

- Quickslot hot keys. I don't use potions in this game because it's too fiddly to faff about with a radial dial and then double tap the correct selection. It would be far more helpful to just bind the Quickslots to 1,2,3 etc.

I just want to say, I find the radial menu pretty cool, and I have no idea what you are talking about with double tap. All you have to do is hold down q, highlight the potion you want and then when you want to use it, tap q once. no double tap required. It's gotten to the point that I can easily swap potions in combat. I think the people that hate it went "This is different. I don't like different, so I hate it" With out bothering to figure out how to use it properly.

Turrican

Shimond wrote: »

Most of that can be obtained via add-ons, and the parts that can't I mostly disagree with adding into the game (inspect, world pvp).

Add ons aren't sufficient. They aren't supported by the game and require updating etc. I want proper features built into the game.

I can't see how there could be any objection to an inspect feature. But I am curious, why do you object to world pvp?

Rajani Isa

@Turrican‌

Player Inspect : This has pros and cons. Look up "gear score" and you'll see issues where it has it's issues. I know you are not asking for gear score here, but it's similar in the kinds of problems it can cause.

Crafting : Agree. The fact that you can use stuff directly from the bank is nice, but it doesn't help too much with the guild bank.

About Buffs/Debuffs : I'll agree it would be nice to have it in the combat UI, but there is a place it shows up - the Character (Attributes) window. The bottom section will show any buffs/debuffs you are currently under.

Forums/Books/Horse Armor/Combat Text I agree with. Forums especially - the dev digest is odd compared to most others AND lacks time stamps. I do like the lol/agree/insightful flags too.

Adding Open World PVP would be tricky as it could alienate people who bought this game under the belief that PVP would be kept to it's own section (Cyrodill). If I wanted forced (which is how myself and many others generally regard most implementations of "Open PVP") PVP I'd play something more like Shadowbane was or games with dedicated PVP servers.

@nidriks Sounds like you are in the same boat as me. While it's been a decent launch for me, others have had serious to terrible issues with it.

DanMan3395

Yeah the fact that enemies cannot ever come to Riften and annoy us is pretty lame. I LOVED defending home cities in EQ and WoW years ago before those games became hot garbage.

Shimond

Turrican wrote: »

I can't see how there could be any objection to an inspect feature. But I am curious, why do you object to world pvp?

Because I don't need jackasses killing my quest mobs and npcs? I had enough of that experience 10 years ago.

Glurin

- Player inspect. Good for the reason's you listed. Bad because this quickly leads to gear-check moments where you get kicked for not already having gear far above what is even overkill for the task in question. Yes, that does happen in other MMOs with inspect. A lot.

- Crafting menu. That would be nice. Also would be handy to see what you already have researched so you can figure out what to do with a particular item on the fly rather than having to run to a crafting station.

- Effects indicator. It's in the character menu. We don't have buff icons because they become extra clutter on the UI. There's probably an addon somewhere that adds them if you really want them though.

- Combat text. Vague is good. Don't encourage min/max elitists.

- Books. Yeah, that would be nice to be able to read books later that aren't counted as lore books.

- Proper forums. They could use a little organization, yes.

- Horse armour. I think that might already be in the game. Gotta increase stamina if I remember right. Some people that were in the beta (the other beta ) mentioned it.

- World PvP. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO! Is that clear? I will cancel my sub and leave forever the instant that crap infects anything outside Cyrodiil. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. World PvP is a deal breaker. I do not find it at all enjoyable to be arbitrarily restricted from half the game just because some *** with the mental capacity of a twelve year old thinks it's funny to block people from doing quests or even traveling between zones. Neither does the vast majority of MMO players for that matter, meaning this is a one way ticket to low subscription numbers and free to play.

Rajani Isa

Stamina increases for horse are via "feeding" them at the stables - you can feed them fifty times, IIRC, and you choose to increase stamina, sprint speed, or YOUR carrying capacity.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

Turrican wrote: »

- Crafting menu. One of the biggest frustrations in the game is not knowing what crafting recipes you have or materials you can use unless you are standing at the relevant crafting station. It's so annoying to be at the guild bank/store and have no idea whether to take an item because you can't remember whether you have a recipe that uses it or not.

Anything in your bank is available when you craft. I dunno 'bout guild banks mine has only one member so far.

Lalai

Concerning books. There is an addon that keeps track of literally every book you read so you can go back and read it at a later date. Outside of that a friend of mine shared that once you get done with Mage story quest (or it may be a passive you put a point into, not sure) stuff there's something you can get within the game that does the same thing.

For the effects thing, you can see buffs on the character page by hitting C. They're listed below your horse. Food does persist through death. Personally I like seeing my buffs on my UI, so I've downloaded FTC to do that for me. FTC will also give you scrolling combat text.

For horses, feeding it for Stam will provide some protection from being knocked off so easily. Feeding does also eventually change the look of your horse. My carrying capacity horse now has bags on it's sides, making it look more like a pack horse. I'm not sure what added look speed or stam gives the horse.

Disagree with World PvP.. they don't have a traditional server setup, so having a PvP server seems like it's not really an option, I also don't see how World PvP would fit given how the world and questlines are currently setup.

I personally find heavy armor very useful just for it being armor, really. It does have some passives to help with armor and health, and I find them sufficient.

Agreed for forum setup, just for ease of access, dyes, and something to be able to represent your desired guild. Would like them to fix current bugs before adding new things into the world though.

Turrican

Rajani Isa wrote: »

@Turrican‌

Player Inspect : This has pros and cons. Look up "gear score" and you'll see issues where it has it's issues. I know you are not asking for gear score here, but it's similar in the kinds of problems it can cause.

Adding Open World PVP would be tricky as it could alienate people who bought this game under the belief that PVP would be kept to it's own section (Cyrodill). If I wanted forced (which is how myself and many others generally regard most implementations of "Open PVP") PVP I'd play something more like Shadowbane was or games with dedicated PVP servers.

I agree that Gearscore and the misguided elitism that comes with it is just about the worst thing that can happen to an MMO, so yeah, I see the point there. I hadn't considered that.

It seems that most of the replies are extremely against world pvp and I can understand why. It's a personal preference. I suppose that, as we're all on a mega server, there can't be separate pve and pvp realms and, given the choice, I would keep things as they are rather than splinter the mega server.

Turrican

Rajani Isa wrote: »

Stamina increases for horse are via "feeding" them at the stables - you can feed them fifty times, IIRC, and you choose to increase stamina, sprint speed, or YOUR carrying capacity.

Not sure why you mentioned this.

Turrican

poodlemasterb16_ESO wrote: »

Turrican wrote: »

- Crafting menu. One of the biggest frustrations in the game is not knowing what crafting recipes you have or materials you can use unless you are standing at the relevant crafting station. It's so annoying to be at the guild bank/store and have no idea whether to take an item because you can't remember whether you have a recipe that uses it or not.

Anything in your bank is available when you craft. I dunno 'bout guild banks mine has only one member so far.

I don't think you've read what I wrote properly. Yes, I realise that whilst you are at a crafting station you have access to anything in your inventory and bank. The problem is that when you are not at that station (say browsing the store), you do not have anyway to see the recipes you have learned or the mats that they use.

Turrican

Lalai wrote: »

Concerning books. There is an addon that keeps track of literally every book you read so you can go back and read it at a later date. Outside of that a friend of mine shared that once you get done with Mage story quest (or it may be a passive you put a point into, not sure) stuff there's something you can get within the game that does the same thing.

For the effects thing, you can see buffs on the character page by hitting C. They're listed below your horse. Food does persist through death. Personally I like seeing my buffs on my UI, so I've downloaded FTC to do that for me. FTC will also give you scrolling combat text.

For horses, feeding it for Stam will provide some protection from being knocked off so easily. Feeding does also eventually change the look of your horse. My carrying capacity horse now has bags on it's sides, making it look more like a pack horse. I'm not sure what added look speed or stam gives the horse.

Disagree with World PvP.. they don't have a traditional server setup, so having a PvP server seems like it's not really an option, I also don't see how World PvP would fit given how the world and questlines are currently setup.

I personally find heavy armor very useful just for it being armor, really. It does have some passives to help with armor and health, and I find them sufficient.

Agreed for forum setup, just for ease of access, dyes, and something to be able to represent your desired guild. Would like them to fix current bugs before adding new things into the world though.

Thanks for the reply. Interesting what you say about the Mage quest. Maybe I really need to (begrudgingly) start looking at add ons. I'd still like heavy armour to get a buff but maybe it is more valuable than I am presently aware at high levels.

Lalai

Turrican wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Interesting what you say about the Mage quest. Maybe I really need to (begrudgingly) start looking at add ons. I'd still like heavy armour to get a buff but maybe it is more valuable than I am presently aware at high levels.

Yeah.. at first I didn't really wanna do any addons.. but then I realized that part of the great thing about them is being able to customize the game to be more how you want it, without having to change it for folks that like it as-is, kinda like an option to toggle things on or off that a lot are asking for. The ones I'm currently using are:

Sous Chef (which allows you to tell which recipes you've learned, even on alt characters.. and tells you which tier ingredients are from, plus whether you have any recipes that use them)
Research Assistant (marks gear with colors so you know which gear has traits you haven't learned yet, which is a duplicate to something else in your inventory, and which has intricate or ornate traits)
AI Research Grid (allows you to pull up a grid of what traits you have/haven't researched so you don't have to be at a crafting bench to see)
FTC (I use it just for the buffs, but it also displays numbers for health/mana, and scrolling combat text)
Guild Store Search (allows you to type in what you're searching for, and then searches your guild stores for it)
Achievement Tracker (self explanatory)

I believe Librarian was the one that tracks all the books.

Csub

Lalai wrote: »

Turrican wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Interesting what you say about the Mage quest. Maybe I really need to (begrudgingly) start looking at add ons. I'd still like heavy armour to get a buff but maybe it is more valuable than I am presently aware at high levels.

Yeah.. at first I didn't really wanna do any addons.. but then I realized that part of the great thing about them is being able to customize the game to be more how you want it, without having to change it for folks that like it as-is, kinda like an option to toggle things on or off that a lot are asking for. The ones I'm currently using are:

Sous Chef (which allows you to tell which recipes you've learned, even on alt characters.. and tells you which tier ingredients are from, plus whether you have any recipes that use them)
Research Assistant (marks gear with colors so you know which gear has traits you haven't learned yet, which is a duplicate to something else in your inventory, and which has intricate or ornate traits)
AI Research Grid (allows you to pull up a grid of what traits you have/haven't researched so you don't have to be at a crafting bench to see)
FTC (I use it just for the buffs, but it also displays numbers for health/mana, and scrolling combat text)
Guild Store Search (allows you to type in what you're searching for, and then searches your guild stores for it)
Achievement Tracker (self explanatory)

I believe Librarian was the one that tracks all the books.

Hmm nice addons, I will also have a look at these after work, so I also thank you for the tips just a question : can you disable other features in FTC and just track the buffs? I want to keep my hud minimalistic but a buff timer would be nice! I don't want scrolling combat texts though.

Lalai

Csub wrote: »

Hmm nice addons, I will also have a look at these after work, so I also thank you for the tips just a question : can you disable other features in FTC and just track the buffs? I want to keep my hud minimalistic but a buff timer would be nice! I don't want scrolling combat texts though.

Yup! That's actually what I do. I don't really like scrolling combat text, nor do I have a desire to have health/stam/magicka/exp bars constantly on my screen. This is my current UI when not in combat. It is worth noting that to see what the buff actually does, you still need to hit C and mouse-over the buff. However it's nice to see the timers (for me). Went back and updated original addon list to include links.

nidriks

@Rajani Isa It's been pretty stress free, though since yesterday's (Friday's) downtime I've been experiencing quite a bit of glitchiness. Loading times are through the roof, and I've had to quit the game more than a few times. I don't know if it's connected but I've been having many more frame rate problems too.

All that being said, I've played my fair share of MMOs and I'd still say it's been a pretty good launch. There were times in Vanguard I had to have my settings at the lowest possible just to move. In Warhammer Online the server I picked was empty after a few weeks.

I'm enjoying ESO very much.

Beware though; a busy Cyrodiil really shows up your hardware. Time for a new video card

Kadigan

There has not been a single joke about horse armour in this thread

Disappointed, TES fans.

But it will probably be released as DLC in their store later for $2.49.

Csub

Lalai wrote: »

Csub wrote: »

Hmm nice addons, I will also have a look at these after work, so I also thank you for the tips just a question : can you disable other features in FTC and just track the buffs? I want to keep my hud minimalistic but a buff timer would be nice! I don't want scrolling combat texts though.

Yup! That's actually what I do. I don't really like scrolling combat text, nor do I have a desire to have health/stam/magicka/exp bars constantly on my screen. This is my current UI when not in combat. It is worth noting that to see what the buff actually does, you still need to hit C and mouse-over the buff. However it's nice to see the timers (for me). Went back and updated original addon list to include links.

Oh, that's nice, I will be definitely getting it then, thanks for the tip and explanation!

Firmament

Glurin wrote: »

- Player inspect. Good for the reason's you listed. Bad because this quickly leads to gear-check moments where you get kicked for not already having gear far above what is even overkill for the task in question. Yes, that does happen in other MMOs with inspect. A lot.

- Crafting menu. That would be nice. Also would be handy to see what you already have researched so you can figure out what to do with a particular item on the fly rather than having to run to a crafting station.

- Effects indicator. It's in the character menu. We don't have buff icons because they become extra clutter on the UI. There's probably an addon somewhere that adds them if you really want them though.

- Combat text. Vague is good. Don't encourage min/max elitists.

- Books. Yeah, that would be nice to be able to read books later that aren't counted as lore books.

- Proper forums. They could use a little organization, yes.

- Horse armour. I think that might already be in the game. Gotta increase stamina if I remember right. Some people that were in the beta (the other beta ) mentioned it.

- World PvP. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NO! Is that clear? I will cancel my sub and leave forever the instant that crap infects anything outside Cyrodiil. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. World PvP is a deal breaker. I do not find it at all enjoyable to be arbitrarily restricted from half the game just because some *** with the mental capacity of a twelve year old thinks it's funny to block people from doing quests or even traveling between zones. Neither does the vast majority of MMO players for that matter, meaning this is a one way ticket to low subscription numbers and free to play.

+1