ESO is a great RPG, terrible MMO.

Bloodfang · June 2014

NerfEverything wrote: »

This is Zens first MMO and it shows.
They hired an incompetent lead that had already driven one MMO into the ground.

They simply forgot that bots exist and they would have to deal with them.

They left economy breaking exploits and dupes in the game for weeks instead of hotfixing them.

The class balance issues are so bad that endgame content is currently limited to 3 out of the 4 classes.

The forums are a mess, the mods are incompetent,

GMs are virtually non-existent which is a huge problem since there is no client side cheat detection.

Grouping and playing with friends is a disaster to the point where the whole game needs to be played solo

PvP is unplayable due to lag and group crashes, not to mention constant PvP exploits

I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now.

ESO is a great RPG, but as an MMO they literally got every single thing wrong

I agree mostly with everything you wrote, however that last sentence is bothering me, "ESO is a great RPG, but as an MMO they literally got every single thing wrong"?

Firstly Questing Design and Story is superior than any other MMO on the market (SWTOR is following second, while others are just way behind). You are forgetting it's an mmoRPG and not just MMO (just as many other MMOs are forgetting the same thing).

PvP is by no means that unplayable as you make it sound. You can argue as much as you want, but ESO PvP is one of the best ever made in the whole genre.

Crafting system - I've never been impressed with the Crafting System in any other MMO. Most notably I've played WoW where it was totally rubish and felt so much grindy that I just skipped it, till I was the highest level. ESO however got it nearly perfect.

Exploration - Who in their right mind would deny ESO the crown for Exploration? This is by far the strongest thing in ESO and it truly delivers.

Dungeons - While they are certainly nothing inovative, apart from the very interesting combat design, I have to say they have many positive things. From the great story telling, gorgeous environments, all the way to the badass bosses. I consider this a very important MMO Feature, and ESO certainly doesn't disappoint.

I could go on and on..However ESO is a great RPG and MMO. Though they truly deserve the crown for RPG which is in my eyes the most important factor when analysing the quality of a game. I admit there are many things it's missing, especially from the MMO perspective. Sometimes I feel like we're still in the beta, or perhaps testers for Console. It's a shame really, it looks like they've pretty much played it very safe. I really hope they have enough budget to help ESO reach it's full potential.

daneyulebub17_ESO · June 2014

Yeah. Say want you want about the tons of terrible MMO implementation, but crafting is pretty awesome. They definitely went in the right direction there.

NobleX35 · June 2014

Despair9 wrote: »

Exploration - Who in their right mind would deny ESO the crown for Exploration? This is by far the strongest thing in ESO and it truly delivers.

I agree with almost everything you said, but this. And honestly this all a matter of personal opinion. I personally don't think "expiration" in this game truely delivers because every nook and cranny in the world is covered by something either an "exploration" spot or a quest area, or world boss, or something. Not to mention that because of the resurrection system you have access to basically everywhere. There's no real sense of wonder. You don't just look at a spot on the map and wonder "hey what's over there" or see some object or castle off in the distance wonder "I wonder what's over there, or what happened here" because you'll end up having to go there for some pointless quest or some stupid world boss...you're essentially forced to explore everything which ends up taking all the wonder out of the world.

As for comparison Lotro was so massive and most of the landscapes didn't really have a whole lot going on, but they had just enough to spark ones interest to go and explore just to see what was out there...even though you generally had no real reason to go out there other than to explore for explorations sake.

I remember way back when I was first leveling up my character there and evendim had just launch. I remember going out to tinudir and looking across the lake at the massive partially sunken city that annuminas and was just full over wonder, and the cool part about it was that it was virtually inaccessible to someone of my level because there were so many mobs and they were all level 50 that you would die if you got anywhere near the area. Because it was blocked off, the sense of wonder remained for the next 20 levels and then when I finally was able to go back there and finally able to explore the area, it was so much more gratifying to finally get there because the anticipation was able build and my sense of wonder was able to grow.

I've yet to really have any experiences like that in ESO and I honestly feel like he reasoning for that is because there is "too" much in each zone...you are pratically forced into exploring the entire map to achieve every objective and every nook and cranny is filled with something, again though it's all a matter of perception and personal opinion.

daneyulebub17_ESO · June 2014

Yep. If you want a sense of exploration, Lotro delivers. Just bumbling through Moria, you find all kinds of wild stuff, including a dead balrog in the snow.

The problem with ESO exploration is it feels compressed. You're always with in eye sight (almost) of a quest giver--the map is just chock full of icons and wayshrines everywhere. I think they would do well just to build some more frontier, non-quest areas--spread things out.

I know no one would agree with me, but one aspect, too, I liked with Lotro in the earlier days was lack of easy travel. Stables weren't everywhere, swift-travel wasn't always available, and you couldn't even ride a horse until you were level 35. Often, you had to often interact with hunters to get a port somewhere. It gave a sense of epicness to the landscape, and gravity to your decisions of where to go.

This free teleporting from wayshrine to wayshrine to me just shrinks things further than they already seem, making the experience of the game just a sporadic jumping from hot spot to hot spot instead of a serious, large worldscape you have to contend with in an immersive way. (That won't change, though--I've learned that, in MMOs, once a "convenience" like super-easy travel is there, even if it hurts the game in the long run-- it will never, ever be allowed to go away by the players. That's how so many games get slowly ruined by "easy-creep".).

drogon1 · June 2014

Westcoast14_ESO wrote: »

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.

Thoughtful suggestions which I will bump and endorse. Lowering respec costs is something they can do with little code monkey time and would spread goodwill to the masses that seriously need some. I cannot think of a single good reason why respec costs are as high as they are.

NobleX35 · June 2014

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

Yep. If you want a sense of exploration, Lotro delivers. Just bumbling through Moria, you find all kinds of wild stuff, including a dead balrog in the snow.

The problem with ESO exploration is it feels compressed. You're always with in eye sight (almost) of a quest giver--the map is just chock full of icons and wayshrines everywhere. I think they would do well just to build some more frontier, non-quest areas--spread things out.

I know no one would agree with me, but one aspect, too, I liked with Lotro in the earlier days was lack of easy travel. Stables weren't everywhere, swift-travel wasn't always available, and you couldn't even ride a horse until you were level 35. Often, you had to often interact with hunters to get a port somewhere. It gave a sense of epicness to the landscape, and gravity to your decisions of where to go.

This free teleporting from wayshrine to wayshrine to me just shrinks things further than they already seem, making the experience of the game just a sporadic jumping from hot spot to hot spot instead of a serious, large worldscape you have to contend with in an immersive way. (That won't change, though--I've learned that, in MMOs, once a "convenience" like super-easy travel is there, even if it hurts the game in the long run-- it will never, ever be allowed to go away by the players. That's how so many games get slowly ruined by "easy-creep".).

I agree 100%, while sometimes its nice to have way shrines and simple fast means of travel, I think I really did prefer those only being available to "hotspots" like major towns or the primary camp In a region. Anywhere else you wanted to go you actually had to make some sort of effort to get there! Here in ESO you can simply port within 100 feet of your destination. Unfortunately like you said, we're in the minority and it's not going to go away

Blackwidow · June 2014

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

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.

QFT.

Zorrashi · June 2014

I adore ESO, and I especially like how I can play solo. If you want to play in a group, more power to you. The only thing I will be against is if this game goes in such a direction that I feel FORCED to group up in order to be able to accomplish anything. Well, that and armor inspection, but that is more along the lines of pet peeve.

However, this game needs some improvement in some areas, like grouping and guild store UI for a few. Class balance of course, should be on the list. Plus a more public outlet for guild stores in order to access more outside buyers.

therain93 · June 2014

Despair9 wrote: »

NerfEverything wrote: »

This is Zens first MMO and it shows.
They hired an incompetent lead that had already driven one MMO into the ground.

They simply forgot that bots exist and they would have to deal with them.

They left economy breaking exploits and dupes in the game for weeks instead of hotfixing them.

The class balance issues are so bad that endgame content is currently limited to 3 out of the 4 classes.

The forums are a mess, the mods are incompetent,

GMs are virtually non-existent which is a huge problem since there is no client side cheat detection.

Grouping and playing with friends is a disaster to the point where the whole game needs to be played solo

PvP is unplayable due to lag and group crashes, not to mention constant PvP exploits

I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now.

ESO is a great RPG, but as an MMO they literally got every single thing wrong

I agree mostly with everything you wrote, however that last sentence is bothering me, "ESO is a great RPG, but as an MMO they literally got every single thing wrong"?

Firstly Questing Design and Story is superior than any other MMO on the market (SWTOR is following second, while others are just way behind). You are forgetting it's an mmoRPG and not just MMO (just as many other MMOs are forgetting the same thing).

PvP is by no means that unplayable as you make it sound. You can argue as much as you want, but ESO PvP is one of the best ever made in the whole genre.

Crafting system - I've never been impressed with the Crafting System in any other MMO. Most notably I've played WoW where it was totally rubish and felt so much grindy that I just skipped it, till I was the highest level. ESO however got it nearly perfect.

Exploration - Who in their right mind would deny ESO the crown for Exploration? This is by far the strongest thing in ESO and it truly delivers.

Dungeons - While they are certainly nothing inovative, apart from the very interesting combat design, I have to say they have many positive things. From the great story telling, gorgeous environments, all the way to the badass bosses. I consider this a very important MMO Feature, and ESO certainly doesn't disappoint.

I could go on and on..However ESO is a great RPG and MMO. Though they truly deserve the crown for RPG which is in my eyes the most important factor when analysing the quality of a game. I admit there are many things it's missing, especially from the MMO perspective. Sometimes I feel like we're still in the beta, or perhaps testers for Console. It's a shame really, it looks like they've pretty much played it very safe. I really hope they have enough budget to help ESO reach it's full potential.

Sorry for the multiquote, but I think you actually substantiate NerfEverything's point very well....all of those things you describe can be found in a single player game...like Skyrim. The point of an MMO is the interactivity, be it grouping for quests, pvping, or simply selling crafted wares. To the OP, I think they've failrly closely nailed TESO -- TESO is a very good rpg that incidentally happens to be an MMO.

IMHO, if we're going to describe it relative to other MMOs, TESO kind of feels like a more polished Champions Online, if you get the drift -- no reason, no motivation to group except in certain circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I still pay the monthly fee as I enjoy occasionally grouping up with my rl friends, but it is what it is and I don't necessarily see myself paying and playing after 6 months (50+15*6=$140ish for the experience)....

wafcatb14_ESO · June 2014

game feels and plays like a single player RPG with Co-operative side play tacked on .