Robbmrp wrote: »

uberkull wrote: »

New Video marketing 'Elder Scrolls with friends' LINK

- 55 seconds in 'play along side 100s of other players in Cyrodiil''
- 1:51 seconds in 'initiate trades of crafted goods'

All without text chat....yes, that's right, it's confirmed now.

- 1:41 seconds in 'communicate using built-in voice chat'.....and I waited for it.....text chat wheel? surely something other then just voice. Then the video ended.

That's it...voice communication with '100s of other players'. Oh my gawd.

Console is going to sound like a mesh of conversations from grade school/juniorhigh/highschool/college/adult all at once . Everyone talking over each other. It will sound like group on Team Speak of 12x12x12 members all joking, whining and complaining at the same time.... I'm glad I'm staying on the PC.....

I know right!?! It will be just like you are at a real life bazaar.

What's really going to happen is it will be dead quiet most of the time.

I understand that you are a PC bro, but you are really going to love it here in console land. We already have a long history of games with large scale PvP and voice chat is amazing once you get used to it.

There is a reason the best PC PvP teams and guilds use voice chat while general chat is filled with, "OMG this group of five dudes is killing EVERYONE!! Someone please he.... aaaarrrghghhhh."

On top of that I know you play WoW and I want you to imagine something. Moongaurd server: Goldshire Inn with voice chat. Elder Scrolls console will make that vision a reality.

uberkull wrote: »

New Video marketing 'Elder Scrolls with friends' LINK

- 55 seconds in 'play along side 100s of other players in Cyrodiil''
- 1:51 seconds in 'initiate trades of crafted goods'

All without text chat....yes, that's right, it's confirmed now.

- 1:41 seconds in 'communicate using built-in voice chat'.....and I waited for it.....text chat wheel? surely something other then just voice. Then the video ended.

That's it...voice communication with '100s of other players'. Oh my gawd.

LMAO oh man ..... I was checking out comments from major video game web sites over this trailer and they weren't positive at all , the only positive comments were those thinking this will be like Skyrim.

There's no chance for custom voice channels at all?

That way, instead of talking over all of Tiny Chat with their mics on all the time, you're just talking to the six or eight people in your "room" that press to talk?

I like the idea of small-scale invited voice chat over the text box, but if it's a constant flow of loud 12 year old girls singing pop songs and 13 year old boys using every *** word in the book all the time, you may as well just rename this to The Elder Scrolls Cluster ***.

Hopefully somebody just invents a phone app that acts like a dedicated text box for the console players to use.

retyler3_ESO wrote: »

Robbmrp wrote: »

uberkull wrote: »

New Video marketing 'Elder Scrolls with friends' LINK

- 55 seconds in 'play along side 100s of other players in Cyrodiil''
- 1:51 seconds in 'initiate trades of crafted goods'

All without text chat....yes, that's right, it's confirmed now.

- 1:41 seconds in 'communicate using built-in voice chat'.....and I waited for it.....text chat wheel? surely something other then just voice. Then the video ended.

That's it...voice communication with '100s of other players'. Oh my gawd.

Console is going to sound like a mesh of conversations from grade school/juniorhigh/highschool/college/adult all at once . Everyone talking over each other. It will sound like group on Team Speak of 12x12x12 members all joking, whining and complaining at the same time.... I'm glad I'm staying on the PC.....

I know right!?! It will be just like you are at a real life bazaar.

That never ends or gets quiet!

I'm honestly surprised they've been pushing this 'multiplayer' thing so hard, it's going to hurt them in the long run, I think. The wrong kind of demographic for this game will look in, not like what they see, then return their disc. The right kind of demographic will be repulsed by the advertising. It's unfortunate.

I know that those I've spoken with got into ESO because its grouping is very optional, and it can be played solo, or as a duo, you don't need a full party for the majority of the content. We all have a bit of a grumble about group delves and similar things, but really, it's more open to us than almost any other MMO out there. I wouldn't be surprised if The Elder Scrolls Online's most loyal customers were those kinds of people. The sad part is is that the advertising was already doing them a disservice -- it was pushed as a more puerile, more immature power fantasy akin to Skyrim, except with forced groupingand manipulative WoW addictive gameplay. It's the opposite of that.

I was genuinely surprised at the Veiled Heritance and their political shenanigans. It's not often a fantasy roleplaying game deals with fascists versus proressives. That was almost we understand that evil is among us, it is even us, and that we have to guard ourselves lest we become the worst plague this world has known rather than its shining beacon of hope as opposed to the more common we're pretty, beautiful, normal, extroverted, healthy, mostly Caucasian, mostly male, and always cis-gendered people standing up against the ugly things, because they're all evil like and we're going to use you as our eugenics-y pawn. The latter is so commonplace that it's depressing, I end up wondering if I'm just having the wool pulled over my eyes and whether I'm murdering people just looking out for their own against an actually evil, faceless horde.

And it was welcoming to me as a person who avoids large groups of other people. I'm an introvert. In fact, what would make the game better for me is optional instancing. The key word here is optional. It'd be nice to not have to share the company of people with ... unpleasant proclivities. As a disabled person, I've heard enough of that in passing. I'm tired of hearing it in video games as well. I just dislike keeping too broad a group of company as that's more quantitative than qualitative, and you can't account for just how awful they might be. I'd rather have a few people of genuine quality, thoroughly unique, amazing, interesting individuals than a crowd of thirty potty-mouthed likeminds.

That's just me.

So I don't think the lack of multiplayer, forced grouping, or even an LFG panel has hurt ESO. To the contrary, it's helped it. What's hurt ESO is how it advertises to the wrong demographic. And how certain elements (the very few instances of forced grouping) seem tacked on out of pure desperation. I'd even go so far as to surmise that perhaps they're only there because marketing and corporate figures suggested that they had to be there, believing in all the 'how to make a good MMO by copying WoW' buzzwords.

With all the lore, the reading, the ongoing narrative, how each zone is a chapter in a story, and so on? It feels like an MMO that's far more aimed at those who just want a co-op RPG experience rather than a massively multiplayer experience. So my fixes would be as thus: Optional instancing for all zones (including interiors and public delves) which you can hop in and out of at any time, such as to take on a dolmen or a world boss; Scaling for group dungeons from 1-4, rather than just locking it to max; Some content with less of a reliance on combat, perhaps some genuinely hard puzzles more akin to The Secret World, or sneaky bits such as the proposed Thieves Guild update; More costumes, such as NPC clothes, on the Crown Store for roleplaying purposes.

Those would be my fixes.

But when you consider that many of the quests are so story driven that you don't even need to run around killing everything, even that alone, it's obvious the game is targeted at an intelligent audience. Those who're from more typical MMOs won't get it, they'll see it as broken. I'd say ESO isn't for them, and they'd have a happier time in, oh, say Guild Wars 2?

There are a lot of people out there who don't know that ESO is for them as ZOS hasn't told them. I wish they would. Like I said, I only found out that ESO was for me just by random chance, I trusted a bit of word of mouth and dropped money on the buy-to-play version. I wasn't expecting anything at all, I had my suspicions that I'd wasted my money and that I perhaps shouldn't have been so trusting of my sources. But they were right. The approach to advertising for ESO itself was wrong.

Not everyone is an extrovert. And not everyone lives in America, which is the extroverted capital of the world. It's just something to keep in mind. ESO is almost one of the best co-op RPGs out there. Almost. ZOS -- you could take more steps in this direction without hurting anyone, advertise it, and watch the interest pile on.

The fact is... people like me? We just don't know ESO exists. At least, not the ESO I've come to know. The ESO I've heaped bountiful praise upon over at massivelyop.net.

The console focus isn't the problem, for me, but the fact that ESO is being advertised as a massively multiplayer game when it simply isn't. Over on massivelyop, I saw comments like 'ESO is openly hostile to those who like multiplayer' and 'ESO is the least multiplayer game I have ever seen.' This is because these people lack the perspicacity and insight to comprehend a game with optional multiplayer. They've had forced grouping drilled into them so hard that they can only accept that as a valid form of content, and there may even be persons in this very thread who're like that.

They're one demographic. You do have others, ZOS. Others you've yet to tap. Just FYI.

On the topic of voice making for the greatest inn roleplay one has ever known? Haha. Nope. Any introvert could tell you why. I'm not ragging on the console version, as I'm a multiplatform gamer myself. I'm just pointing out the folly of such a statement.

Consider...

An old, beefy khajiit walks in through the door. One might expect a deep, thick, rich middle-eastern accent, something with a certain cadence and a touch of something baritone to it. He addresses himself as 'this one,' and speaks clearly and succinctly.

What you'll receive is someone with a lilting Wisconsin accent whose voice cracks at every third syllable.

Or perhaps it was a lanky altmer whose presence you felt, a being with a profound sense of demeanour, exuding elegance with every movement and sublime, silken syllable. They open their mouth and...

A college student with an abrupt, slightly rude attitude and mumbly voice 'graces' your ears.

Let's throw a curveball, here. What about a drunken nord? Can't be too hard, right?

Well, except that you have some southerner trying their best to perform with a Scandinavian accent and failing, painfully, oh so painfully. It hurts so bad, and you want them to stop.

Argonian?

Well, not unless you're Steve Blum or Clint, the Lazy Game Reviews guy.

So what's the solution? Do we cut every race barring Breton and Redguard from the console version? I don't think that's a good idea. I also know that there won't be a whole lot of roleplaying, and that some people will try and enforce 'human only roleplayers' areas, and they will not succeed. Roleplaying requires text, so that the imagination can do the legwork for the voice. Voice chat is absolutely fine for PvP games where there's no lore, no culture to speak of, and no constructs in place for one to operate within. That's dandy. Though perhaps with a game that has the depth of lore of the Elder Scrolls Online, the succor of text chat would be heartily welcomed by any and every kind of console-owning roleplayer.

AuldWolf wrote: »

I'm honestly surprised they've been pushing this 'multiplayer' thing so hard, it's going to hurt them in the long run, I think. The wrong kind of demographic for this game will look in, not like what they see, then return their disc. The right kind of demographic will be repulsed by the advertising. It's unfortunate.

I know that those I've spoken with got into ESO because its grouping is very optional, and it can be played solo, or as a duo, you don't need a full party for the majority of the content. We all have a bit of a grumble about group delves and similar things, but really, it's more open to us than almost any other MMO out there. I wouldn't be surprised if The Elder Scrolls Online's most loyal customers were those kinds of people. The sad part is is that the advertising was already doing them a disservice -- it was pushed as a more puerile, more immature power fantasy akin to Skyrim, except with forced groupingand manipulative WoW addictive gameplay. It's the opposite of that.

I was genuinely surprised at the Veiled Heritance and their political shenanigans. It's not often a fantasy roleplaying game deals with fascists versus proressives. That was almost we understand that evil is among us, it is even us, and that we have to guard ourselves lest we become the worst plague this world has known rather than its shining beacon of hope as opposed to the more common we're pretty, beautiful, normal, extroverted, healthy, mostly Caucasian, mostly male, and always cis-gendered people standing up against the ugly things, because they're all evil like and we're going to use you as our eugenics-y pawn. The latter is so commonplace that it's depressing, I end up wondering if I'm just having the wool pulled over my eyes and whether I'm murdering people just looking out for their own against an actually evil, faceless horde.

And it was welcoming to me as a person who avoids large groups of other people. I'm an introvert. In fact, what would make the game better for me is optional instancing. The key word here is optional. It'd be nice to not have to share the company of people with ... unpleasant proclivities. As a disabled person, I've heard enough of that in passing. I'm tired of hearing it in video games as well. I just dislike keeping too broad a group of company as that's more quantitative than qualitative, and you can't account for just how awful they might be. I'd rather have a few people of genuine quality, thoroughly unique, amazing, interesting individuals than a crowd of thirty potty-mouthed likeminds.

That's just me.

So I don't think the lack of multiplayer, forced grouping, or even an LFG panel has hurt ESO. To the contrary, it's helped it. What's hurt ESO is how it advertises to the wrong demographic. And how certain elements (the very few instances of forced grouping) seem tacked on out of pure desperation. I'd even go so far as to surmise that perhaps they're only there because marketing and corporate figures suggested that they had to be there, believing in all the 'how to make a good MMO by copying WoW' buzzwords.

With all the lore, the reading, the ongoing narrative, how each zone is a chapter in a story, and so on? It feels like an MMO that's far more aimed at those who just want a co-op RPG experience rather than a massively multiplayer experience. So my fixes would be as thus: Optional instancing for all zones (including interiors and public delves) which you can hop in and out of at any time, such as to take on a dolmen or a world boss; Scaling for group dungeons from 1-4, rather than just locking it to max; Some content with less of a reliance on combat, perhaps some genuinely hard puzzles more akin to The Secret World, or sneaky bits such as the proposed Thieves Guild update; More costumes, such as NPC clothes, on the Crown Store for roleplaying purposes.

Those would be my fixes.

But when you consider that many of the quests are so story driven that you don't even need to run around killing everything, even that alone, it's obvious the game is targeted at an intelligent audience. Those who're from more typical MMOs won't get it, they'll see it as broken. I'd say ESO isn't for them, and they'd have a happier time in, oh, say Guild Wars 2?

There are a lot of people out there who don't know that ESO is for them as ZOS hasn't told them. I wish they would. Like I said, I only found out that ESO was for me just by random chance, I trusted a bit of word of mouth and dropped money on the buy-to-play version. I wasn't expecting anything at all, I had my suspicions that I'd wasted my money and that I perhaps shouldn't have been so trusting of my sources. But they were right. The approach to advertising for ESO itself was wrong.

Not everyone is an extrovert. And not everyone lives in America, which is the extroverted capital of the world. It's just something to keep in mind. ESO is almost one of the best co-op RPGs out there. Almost. ZOS -- you could take more steps in this direction without hurting anyone, advertise it, and watch the interest pile on.

The fact is... people like me? We just don't know ESO exists. At least, not the ESO I've come to know. The ESO I've heaped bountiful praise upon over at massivelyop.net.

The console focus isn't the problem, for me, but the fact that ESO is being advertised as a massively multiplayer game when it simply isn't. Over on massivelyop, I saw comments like 'ESO is openly hostile to those who like multiplayer' and 'ESO is the least multiplayer game I have ever seen.' This is because these people lack the perspicacity and insight to comprehend a game with optional multiplayer. They've had forced grouping drilled into them so hard that they can only accept that as a valid form of content, and there may even be persons in this very thread who're like that.

They're one demographic. You do have others, ZOS. Others you've yet to tap. Just FYI.

" ."

This right here man. This game has more going for it as a 1-4 player experience than an 10-18 man dungeon grinder. If it went that route it would be less differentiated from other mmos with less addon-ons and quality of life services and probably can itself.

The voice area based voice chat is going to make ERP very interesting indeed.

Acrolas wrote: »

There's no chance for custom voice channels at all?

That way, instead of talking over all of Tiny Chat with their mics on all the time, you're just talking to the six or eight people in your "room" that press to talk?

I like the idea of small-scale invited voice chat over the text box, but if it's a constant flow of loud 12 year old girls singing pop songs and 13 year old boys using every *** word in the book all the time, you may as well just rename this to The Elder Scrolls Cluster ***.

Hopefully somebody just invents a phone app that acts like a dedicated text box for the console players to use.

Consoles already have this. No need for the game to build this in

Alphashado wrote: »

This isn't a COOP game. This is an MMORPG with every standard feature found in a typical MMORPG. All of those features revolving around communication with other people. Limiting means of communication in an environment designed to thrive on communication doesn't seem revolutionary, innovative or visionary to me. It seems impractical, illogical, and destined to fail.

I could be wrong. Only time will tell.

I agree it's standard on PC.
On console....using a standard approach hasn't worked out well.

Console MMORPG sales vs any FPS or Co-Op games is no contest.
ZOS might be onto something great

AuldWolf wrote: »

That's just me.

It's not just you. I don't know how many we are, or if there are enough of us to matter, but it's definitely not just you. I'm a social person, but I also enjoy a quiet solo run from time to time, and ESO has the options I want. Since the group delves started scaling to the group leader's level, a guaranteed solo instance of reasonable difficulty requires the passive help of a lower level friend, but it's still doable. And you will mostly find yourself alone in the "solo delves" in Gold level VR zones.

Sandmanninja wrote: »

Daenerys wrote: »

2:07 "No matter the level disparity between you and your groupmates, content will scale to your party." Ummm I thought it was if you were within 5 levels of each other?

Am I misinformed, or is this blatant false advertising? As a marketing maven IRL, I find this is terribly disconcerting. I do hope I am misinformed, for then I could bring my noobie friends along in V14 dungeons, and it would scale... right?

The dungeons scale to you. I can run a lvl 15 Spindleclutch on my VR14 toon and it will be challenging (if I am group leader).
Nothing misleading about it, unless you read a slant into it.

Scales to group leader.