The thing is though, this isn't elder scrolls VI. Its ESO, not made by the same people that made any other game.

Just because Takashi Tezuka & Koji Kondo are involved, it ain't Zelda without Shigeru Miyamoto.

Comparing this game to the offline games is comparing football stadiums to oranges.

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

OP does what most the threads around here do and compare this game to another game they clearly enjoy a little better. Telling game developers they don't have an understanding on how to build an MMO isn't exactly helping much.

Nah--most of threads around here are full of posts complaining about most of the threads around here.

I firmly disagree. It's the complaining about posts complaining about posts complaining about threads complaining about posts complaining about the game is what getting to me.

I play solo most of the time, but if I can't do something solo, I'll wait for someone else to come along. Someone always does. I've never once run into a situation where someone didn't, or where we couldn't successfully work together. I have a friend who also usually plays solo, but we team up now and then, and have had no problems.

I'm not saying that cooperative play works perfectly in ESO - obviously it doesn't, or people wouldn't be complaining about it - but to say that doesn't work at all is just not true.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Stadium!

Stadium who?

Knock knock?

Who's there?

Stadium!

Stadium WHO?

Knock knock.

Sigh. Who's there?

Orange!

Orange who?

Orange you glad I didn't say Stadium!


HAHAHAHAHAHA!

You guys should have to PAY for this comedy gold, I tell ya.

Mablung wrote: »

Playing the game really comes down to having to change your idea of what playing an MMO is. This game is not an MMO but does have some MMO-like features that do not work properly.

The story and character progression from levels 1 through 50 remind me of the story and character progression of Star Wars the Old Republic. Great stories for single player play. Both games require little to no social interaction to achieve max level for your character.

Good comparison, had the same one in mind with one exception: flashpoints and PvP were bona fide ways to level in SWTOR and have no real equivalence in ESO. The content is there in ESO for sure (dungeons/Cyrodiil), just not the XP. The ESO devs have bizarrely made quest completion the golden goose of XP, and killed off all the other traditional and more social sources of MMO XP: group instances and PvP.

The leveling experience from 1-50 in ESO is generally like SWTOR WITHOUT flashpoints and PvP: really fun solo story questing, and well did I mention really fun solo story questing?

PharmaChief wrote: »

Its funny that voice overs make the addition of new quests and periodical events harder as they require more work. Its surprising that for two months now there have been no special events and no addition of new quests (besides Craglorn). The world is very static which may be acceptable for single player games but very bad for MMO's

Well, they could probably also add quests without voice overs in the future? Would make the experience a bit less consistent, but if it would mean to get more interesting content quicker, I would have no problem with some future quests lacking voice overs.

Why do you think I'm arguing for argument sake?

What happened to that age old addage: "Don't judge a book by its cover?". Just because someone slapped the Elder Scrolls moniker on it does not make it have to fall in line with the "Elder Scrolls" mentality.

Put it this way:

Star Wars Episode 1-3 and Star Wars Episode 4-6.

Made by "technically" the same people, but actually so not. They are completely different animals in the same world, comparing the two series together is really almost impossible as they provide completely different experiences, yet they all have the same name.

Ever played a licensed game? Just because it has a picture of a genie it isn't about Alladin.

The expectations of this game, the hopes and dreams and wants of people is what is bringing it down. The fact that is has Elder Scrolls in its name does not mean it has to be a certain way, Arena -> Daggerfall -> Morrowind -> Oblivion -> Skyrim -> ES VI is the way it goes.

Like Fast and The Furious 3, ESO is something that the single player games are going to pretend doesn't exist.

Blackwidow wrote: »

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

ESO is a great RPG, terrible MMO.

I would go one step further and say it is a bad TES game a bad MMO, but a good rpg game.

If this was a solo game, i would tell my friends to go get it, shearly on it's size alone and the quests for the most part are pretty good.

If this was TES 6, I would be really upset.

As a MMO player, I'm really upset.

So, the only thing that keeps me going is the hope that the MMO part starts to get fixed. I have no faith in this game being a better TES game.

Yeah, makes sense. Luckily for me, I care the least about the TES aspect.

Just wish you hadn't posted in my thread, though, blackwidow.

Now it's probably going to be closed. :<

To me ESO is neither the best nor worst in either area. That desire to appeal to everyone landed the game somewhere in the middle. It will be interesting to see where they take it from here.

Evergnar wrote: »

To me ESO is neither the best nor worst in either area. That desire to appeal to everyone landed the game somewhere in the middle. It will be interesting to see where they take it from here.

No doubt you cannot please everyone, but....the game needs to please a good cross section of the subset of players that play these games. My guess is that the traditional MMO crowd is the largest portion of this group, followed by the non-MMO single player RPG types.

ESO at launch had a ton of content, and still does - to please a lot more players than it is. It is not about the content for many players, it's about rewards.

I'm a fresh level 15 and there is Cyrodiil and dungeons - both so much fun - that I can do. Here's the disconnect: you can do them, just not reasonably level from them. Underlying dev msg to my fresh 15: go quest if you want to get anywhere in a reasonable manner.

I calculated at level 20 I'd need to run a dungeon with my buddies well over 200 times to reach 21. No thank you.

I know what you are saying- but its not a "great rpg"; it does the rpg side really well for an mmo, and it is enjoyable, but a "great rpg"? far from it.
-
However, that is the best part of the game imo, and its the first mmo I have played where I end up wishing I had spent my gaming time in the pve side (doing the story quests) rather than doing pvp - and that's not just because the pvp is bad, its because the story/pve side is actually interesting.

Alazarz wrote: »

It's very clear to me that they made the game for and cater towards consoles. Thus as with any console game to date... you've a lack luster UI, and pretty much a lack of standard MMO features that you probably took for granted in the past while playing PC oriented MMOs.

That's probably true. The potion quick slot wheel being a case in point.

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

We played LotRO again a while last week--and, wow--the difference in the social aspect was striking. We were communicating, emoting at each other, effectively grouping, comparing gear, trying different cosmetic outfits. If that game hadn't been so borked by F2P and easy-fying everything, we'd probably go back for good. It's become a bad game in many ways, but it's still a fun, full featured MMO.

I used to love that game, however they really did f it up pretty bad. It was so much more fun in SOA and Moria, but then they got really greedy (which tends to happen with f2p games) and the quality of the game just started to decline rather rapidly.

It definitely had all the essentials for a good MMO at the start though.
1. Decent leveling system
2. massive open world (probably the biggest I've yet to play) which so large that it prompted a sense of exploration - here in ESO every nook and cranny is filled with something that there's no real sense of adventure because your practically forced to see everything...
3. PvP
4. housing
5. actual endgame dungeon delving that was fun, entertaining, and rewarding
6. Dueling (which is a useful tool for testing out new builds and skills and not just for trying to show your epeen...)
7. Crafting
8. A solid balance between solo endgame content (more questing, exploration, class traits, virtue traits, legendary traits, reputation farming, crafting, pvp) and group based endgame content (several 6 man dungeons, the Rift 12 man raid, helegrod 24 man raid, pvp) - most games seem to miss this vital balance and just have group based endgame content, when you really need both so you have something to do while your waiting to do group based content.

ESO has a lot of potential I think, but they really need to start pumping out some large scale balance fixes, bug fixes, and more content that isn't just increasing the damn level cap.

It is a terrible single player game and a horrible, painful MMO.

Possibly I am just in a hating on ESO mood today but I have to go crawl through my inventories for a reason that just makes me really really angry.

Post WoW, it looks like MMO's perceived as being mostly about socially augmented progression (to quote Hannibal, "we covet that which we see every day"). Story, broad social activity, even combat (as long as its not frustrating), apparently are all add-ons.

ESO is at odds with progression in a number of ways:
It impairs players interest in investing in characters
- The build system is not intuitive and the poor quality of the initial tool tips and the inability to see morphs before achieving rank 4 in a skill, the lack of detailed skill information (like what kind of crit is uses) and the punishingly high cost respecs only contribute to this.
- ESO launched with a lot of hard quest blockers to progress, and still has several (ex. the broken skill point quests for many of group challenges in public dungeons).
- Between bugs and presumably intended implementation (ex. 60% vampire cost reduction), ESO launched wildly out of balance and the resultant restoration of balance (although quite important) is making it hard to invest in playstyles or builds for some players.
- The challenge of the single player experience is wildly uneven between the general overland quests and the challenge of some of the solo instances (many of which are needed for progression).

Social progression is also impaired:
- You can't see what other players have (even if they are guild-mates or even if they want to let you see what they have equipped).

The cost of respec should be lowered until ZoS gets its skill/class house more in order.
ZoS should provide better in game descriptions of the details of abilities.
Clearly communicate ahead of time what the class changes are and what they are intended to accomplish.
For solo instances tied to progression, ZoS could provide a difficulty selector, easy mode ("normal") and normal ("hard") and ZoS could give an achievement for beating normal mode.
ZoS could implement at least a guild feature(s) where people can inspect and show off their cool lewt.

If ZoS wanted to substantially help players with their builds, they implement training/test instances (maybe they are training grounds for Imperial Battle Mages or a facility associated with the Mages guild (maybe part of Shalidor's legacy)). Therein provide instances for single target DPS, AoE DPS, Healing, and Tanking with appropriate meters for each type of activity and instances for battling an elite, a cc immune elite, and a group of 3 npc's. Let players respec freely in the instance (e.g. put the player in control of a "spectral" toon with the same level/race/gender/skill points with the ability to select any skill they could reasonably purchase at their level). Also provide the player similarly with access to basic gear and basic sets. There could even be some ready made templates that illustrated various kinds of build strategies.