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• [COMPLETE] Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 3, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• [COMPLETE] PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 3, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
ESO - stuck firmly in the past.
scave
✭
I want to like this game - I was hooked on the promise of epic RvR and compelling PVE within the Elder Scrolls world that I've been a fan of for 10 years. I just can't get past the creaky, antique nature of the gameplay itself.
The PVE is the most obvious relic from an outdated history of mmorpg gaming. That tired old hub-to-hub questing progression within a static, unchanging gameworld was superceded years ago. There's no dynamic world here with evolving, spontaneous chains of events and changing content. Sure, I know games like GW2 and their scripted events never really delivered on their promise of a gameworld were your actions have consequences, but at least that gameworld feels more alive and adaptive to player actions.
ESO takes the lore-rich world of Tamriel and reduces it to that old-fashioned mmo staple of a series of laddered levelling areas that you move on from and never really look back on, in the same way that Turbine reduced lovely old Middle Earth in Lotro, and Bioware did with TOR.
Yet I can live with the lacklustre PVE, because the promise of epic RvR was really what I came here for, and I love the idea of a vast Cyrodil with big objectives to fight over. It was a real dissapointment to find out how the actual combat played out.
The real acid test of mmorpg pvp is whether players are fighting each other or farming each other. In the latter, your typical experience of pvp might be constantly finding yourself being killed while incapacitated for periods were you can't fight back. Players just perfect their techniques of stun and stomp because of a huge range of cc available to them. It's totally reminiscent of the failed pvp within games like TOR, Lotro and Aion.
What you don't have is the sort of tactical dance that players weave around each other in a game like GW2, where the very short duration, non-spammable CC plays a very small part and can only really be used to disrupt players/attack defence patterns. Players are generally mobile and able to fight back at all times (unless totally overwhelmed, of course), and snares and roots are about all you'll get to really slow a player down. The rest of it is down to move and counter-move.
*Edited: Flaming*
Edited by ZOS_LenaicR on May 1, 2014 1:51PM The PVE is the most obvious relic from an outdated history of mmorpg gaming. That tired old hub-to-hub questing progression within a static, unchanging gameworld was superceded years ago. There's no dynamic world here with evolving, spontaneous chains of events and changing content. Sure, I know games like GW2 and their scripted events never really delivered on their promise of a gameworld were your actions have consequences, but at least that gameworld feels more alive and adaptive to player actions.
ESO takes the lore-rich world of Tamriel and reduces it to that old-fashioned mmo staple of a series of laddered levelling areas that you move on from and never really look back on, in the same way that Turbine reduced lovely old Middle Earth in Lotro, and Bioware did with TOR.
Yet I can live with the lacklustre PVE, because the promise of epic RvR was really what I came here for, and I love the idea of a vast Cyrodil with big objectives to fight over. It was a real dissapointment to find out how the actual combat played out.
The real acid test of mmorpg pvp is whether players are fighting each other or farming each other. In the latter, your typical experience of pvp might be constantly finding yourself being killed while incapacitated for periods were you can't fight back. Players just perfect their techniques of stun and stomp because of a huge range of cc available to them. It's totally reminiscent of the failed pvp within games like TOR, Lotro and Aion.
What you don't have is the sort of tactical dance that players weave around each other in a game like GW2, where the very short duration, non-spammable CC plays a very small part and can only really be used to disrupt players/attack defence patterns. Players are generally mobile and able to fight back at all times (unless totally overwhelmed, of course), and snares and roots are about all you'll get to really slow a player down. The rest of it is down to move and counter-move.
*Edited: Flaming*
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Alurria✭✭✭✭✭
✭Then this isn't the game for you. Obviously you don't like core elements of game play, I wish you well in whatever game you go to.4 -
There is plenty of things that could be improved but than again, ESO is in very early stages of its life and some of the improvements that you've suggested can still be implemented without much of an issue. For example, with PvP it's just a matter of rebalancing skill sets, which is not too hard and totally different from situation in, say, LoTRO, that you mentioned, as the whole game mechanics there wasn't exactly suited for PvP in the first place.
If you don't like the game as it is I'd suggest you come back in a few months or a year and maybe some of the issues will get resolved.Edited by pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO on May 1, 2014 9:57AM"Do you want the book or not? Then go whack some people with Wabbajack!!"1 -
Shimond✭✭✭✭Wow I couldn't disagree more with the OP. The "fun" in GW2's combat system was extremely short lived and just turned into a zerg fest in the 'events' while the dungeons were just 5 soloists doing their thing (more deeps and worry about your own survivability because there isn't any trinity to make order of the chaos).
They're also using phasing regularly in their questing which is pretty far from a 'relic' in the industry, unless you're using some version of the definition I've never heard of.2 -
Selstad✭✭✭✭Server maintenance is a "blast from the past"? Wow, someone should call Blizzard, Trion, Nsoft and every other MMO company out there and tell them that they are antique for taking down the server to fix issues.2 -
scave✭Server maintenance is a "blast from the past"? Wow, someone should call Blizzard, Trion, Nsoft and every other MMO company out there and tell them that they are antique for taking down the server to fix issues.
I think you're referring to older titles? GW2, for example, has its updates rolled out on a beta server first so they're ready to go with minimal down time (usually a couple of minutes).1 -
scave✭pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO wrote: »If you don't like the game as it is I'd suggest you come back in a few months or a year and maybe some of the issues will get resolved.
I'll probably give ESO a good crack for a few months, and see where the development is heading. You usually get at least some sense if a game is doing well enough post-launch to have the resources to address its glaring issues somewhere down the line.
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Selstad✭✭✭✭I think you're referring to older titles? GW2, for example, has its updates rolled out on a beta server first so they're ready to go with minimal down time (usually a couple of minutes).
Yet even GW2 has server down times from time to time. It's not a "thing" of the past or something exclusively to Elder scrolls. A lot of MMOs do it this way because it's more cost effective rather than have a WM server cluster to take over while maintenance is undergoing.4 -
Shimond✭✭✭✭I think you're referring to older titles? GW2, for example, has its updates rolled out on a beta server first so they're ready to go with minimal down time (usually a couple of minutes).
Since every comparison you can come up with references GW2, it seems you were expecting this game to be that game.
I do have good news for you though, that game is still available for you to play.1 -
rawne1980b16_ESO✭✭✭✭✭Server maintenance is a "blast from the past"? Wow, someone should call Blizzard, Trion, Nsoft and every other MMO company out there and tell them that they are antique for taking down the server to fix issues.
No idea what you were reading but the OP didn't once mention the servers going down.
He's talking about the gameplay.1 -
scave✭rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »Server maintenance is a "blast from the past"? Wow, someone should call Blizzard, Trion, Nsoft and every other MMO company out there and tell them that they are antique for taking down the server to fix issues.
No idea what you were reading but the OP didn't once mention the servers going down.
He's talking about the gameplay.
I did, but it was easy to miss and a minor point
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Selstad✭✭✭✭rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »No idea what you were reading but the OP didn't once mention the servers going down.
He's talking about the gameplay.
At the end of OP's post:
"And last of all, like a true blast from the past, we get the regular maintenance downs."1 -
scave✭I think you're referring to older titles? GW2, for example, has its updates rolled out on a beta server first so they're ready to go with minimal down time (usually a couple of minutes).
Since every comparison you can come up with references GW2, it seems you were expecting this game to be that game.
I do have good news for you though, that game is still available for you to play.
This doesn't really address any of the concerns I've voiced about the gameplay, does it?
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Crumpy✭✭✭✭"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."I lyke not this quill.0 -
jamesharv2005ub17_ESO✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭I think its cute people keep going on and on about how great GW2 is. Yet here they are not playing it.3 -
scave✭jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »I think its cute people keep going on and on about how great GW2 is. Yet here they are not playing it.
What I think is far more adorable is how, several posts in, folks can only respond with forgettable one-liners and not address the real content of my post.
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Laura✭✭✭✭✭
✭I think you're referring to older titles? GW2, for example, has its updates rolled out on a beta server first so they're ready to go with minimal down time (usually a couple of minutes).
Since every comparison you can come up with references GW2, it seems you were expecting this game to be that game.
I do have good news for you though, that game is still available for you to play.
This doesn't really address any of the concerns I've voiced about the gameplay, does it?
since you are splitting hairs what about my question what game is in the future? It certainly isn't GW2.
I love this game and I haven't had an MMO pull me in for years and I try them all trying to chase that dragon.
You touch on some old mmo (and honestly RPG in general) cliches. Were you expecting another skyrim hiking simulator? (I LOVE ES as much if not more than the next person but after oblivion and skyrim it is nice to see something new before those two made the "standard" ES was different on each title)
You made a long post that essentially repeats the same thing - I came for pvp like gw2 and was expecting PVE to be skyrim. This is an MMO and while many things were omitted from the game that SHOULD have been there (housing and a crime system) I think the way they did things works out great. There aren't really "hubs" have you played wow recently? or other games like it? Hubs are where you go to some npcs pick up like 20 quests then go mindlessly do those quests then return. at least you have to do some exploration in ESO and if you actually take the time to let the scripts play out and delve into the story of each zone its actually quite engaging. I , personally, don't know how they could have done it much better. I really enjoy it. The game has some serious flaws and design issues but I strongly disagree with your assessment.
Your entire post can be summed up like this.
I don't like to quest and there are lots of quests. I wanted pvp to be more like GW2 but on a larger scale.
I also think servers fix themselves.
there I just saved someone like three minutes of reading.6 -
scave✭Anyway, this is getting silly and non-productive. An actual reasoned response might have been nice (although these sort of reponses were fairly predictable). So I'll leave my OP as food for thought and leave you good folks to it. 1
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rawne1980b16_ESO✭✭✭✭✭rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »No idea what you were reading but the OP didn't once mention the servers going down.
He's talking about the gameplay.
At the end of OP's post:
"And last of all, like a true blast from the past, we get the regular maintenance downs."
My mistake, I missed that bit, I sit corrected.0 -
Selstad✭✭✭✭Well fine, I can do that:The PVE is the most obvious relic from an outdated history of mmorpg gaming. That tired old hub-to-hub questing progression within a static, unchanging gameworld was superceded years ago. There's no dynamic world here with evolving, spontaneous chains of events and changing content. Sure, I know games like GW2 and their scripted events never really delivered on their promise of a gameworld were your actions have consequences, but at least that gameworld feels more alive and adaptive to player actions.
It's not outdate, it's far from outdate. World of warcraft per example, The Secret world and Star Wars: The old republic are 3 games that are current yet doesn't do much in terms of changing or being dynamic. And to be honest, I really hated in GW2 that you went from a town to collect something, wanted to go back only to find the dam place under attack from something something the Xth time. Same with Rift, questing along, only to find that the whole dam zone was flooded by invaders. Having a dynamic world where the whole zone changes is rarely a good game design in my eyes. It becomes very boring very fast, and the novelty of it wears of after the Xth time the same event happens. There are limitations to how many different events you can hardcode into a game.
Another huge negative part with GW2 is the lack of structure in group content such as dungeons. I know they tried to invent the wheel with removing set structures on tank, healer and DPS, but it just turned out to be a chaotic mess in there. Tried several dungeons and it all went the same, we died horribly a good few times because there weren't any patterns to run from. GW2 tried and proved that having some sort of organizing in dungeon content is preferable.
And Guild wars 2 is also hub based, where you travel from zone to zone locked away by loading screens. Only problem with GW2 is that it also scales down your level to that of the zone, making the feel of progression and levelling up kind of useless. What's the use of having a levelling system if you're constantly bumped down when you enter a new zone?
When it comes to PvP I haven't really done any of that in GW2 because it's as lacklustre and not appealing to me as PvP in WoW is. You run in circles, stomping your buttons and that's about it. I didn't get a whole good feel about it. I am however looking forward to get my home changed in TESO and do some organized PvP with the guild, as the whole siege is just very appealing and seems like a great deal of fun.1 -
scave✭[Your entire post can be summed up like this.
I don't like to quest and there are lots of quests. I wanted pvp to be more like GW2 but on a larger scale.
I also think servers fix themselves.
there I just saved someone like three minutes of reading.
Ok, I'll respond here because it's a little more reasoned. I would say first, though, that argument reductionism like the above is a shallow, childish tactic that doesn't wash with me.
You don't actually address anything about ESO having a static, unchanging gameworld that delivers a predictable, repetitive experience to players, and has done nothing to provide anything new from the many mmo's we've played before. The dialogue and quest-plots are dull, predictable and uninspiring and are hardly what you'd call groundbreaking. That won't cut it for long in a competitive market.
As for my points about the combat system in pvp, and the player experience of it - they still stand. You didn't address that at all.
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dagnome✭✭✭I love this game and I haven't had an MMO pull me in for years and I try them all trying to chase that dragon.
Gatta lay off that Heroine Hero, it's a dangerous game. XD
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