Pr0Skygon wrote: »

WOW, FF14 have superb story telling.
GW2 has Living Story with new maps, new stories.
BDO, Blade and Soul have action-packed combat.
ESO has... a truckload of DLC?

Don't get me wrong, I love ESO for what it is (with a few complaints here and there). That being said, ESO is like a highschool kid, it tries to do everything, but excels at nothing.
Story? Nope, the writing is good, but nowhere near the scope of WOW or FF14, also, the presentations are sometime just laughable.
Combat? Nope, nowhere near BDO, some might even say GW2 has more fluid combat (I personally still like ESO better than GW2).
PvE? Maybe, Maelstrom Arena and the new Asylum Sanctorium are the most fun i've had in ESO so far, and beloved by a lot of PvEers.
PvP? Also a maybe, since combat just feels so clunky and awkward these days; but I'm gonna be honest: I love both Cyrodill and BG.
The RPG aspect? I think this is where ESO's potential truly shines. Crafting, housing, NPC interaction, zone interaction, character builds with tons of option in skills, sets, appearances. But (And there has always had this but), the quality and balancing is just acceptable at times, or just plain broken. Many crafting motifs looks outdated and ugly, the combat balancing has always been a debate, with so many useless sets and skills (or should I say utterly garbage), housing and decorating are overpriced with no clear advantage, quest choices may have different outcome, but most of the time just feel underwhelming due to terrible presentation and disappointing consequences.

That being said, ESO has no much potential to become one of the best game out there, not just MMORPG. It's 4 years now, but ESO has not yet to know what it wants to be. What makes Skyrim great? It's the freedom, sandbox RPG style of game with epic tales to be told and exciting location to discover. What makes World of Warcraft so great? Epic story of wars, heroes, evils and superbly designed PvE contains. What about ESO? A Skyrim-ish game build on the foundation of World of Warcraft? Yeah that doesn't sound cool at all.

Even worse, if you look back at ESO trailers (launch trailer, DLC trailer,... ), it doesn't seem like ZOS has any idea why newcomer should even play the game. Heck, even the reviewers for ESO Morrowind seems to have no clue what ESO is about. Don't get me wrong, the game is still selling well, but it is criminally underrated, and there's no reason for ESO to be like this.

Ok, here's the fun part: Solutions. We need some solution to get ESO out of this identity crisis. A similar game had suffer this fate before, it's called "Destiny". But after 1 year, when The Taken King expansion comes around, Destiny knew what it's meant to be, a looter shooter game. So it's marketing the heck out of it. Ask any Destiny players, and they'll tell you what makes the game great is the gunplay, the loots, lots and lots of loots. ESO needs this kind of treatment. It needs to focus on fewer things, and excel at it.

My own solution:
1. Improve the combat flows. It's been feeling really clunky these days, and to be honest, some skill animation looks boring and weak af. ESO is suppose to be an M-rated game, so what's with the PG-13 level of violence? There's no satisfaction in using skills, except for some cases, such as Dizzying Swing, or Dragon Leap. But most of the time, it's just bad.
2. I don't think we can ever achieve the "balance" in such a huge game like ESO. But what I've seen is, ZOS can't different themselves between "balancing" and "nerfing". They always try to nerf the most OP set to the ground, but then leave the 2nd most OP set untouched, and so it become the most OP, and then so on and so forth. Here's a bright idea, how about we stop nerfing OP sets to the ground, and start to buff useless sets to match their power? Same thing for skills, please at least consider buffing templar first, before nerfing sorc and DK again, and how about make DK healer and sorc healer a viable option?
3. Making gear grind and character build customization become the core endgame content. This is what makes ESO unique, the sheer amount of sets, skills. The fun of optimizing DPS rotation, maximizing group DPS with buffs and debuffs. PvE and PvP is just contents, what matters is the reward. ZOS needs to emphasize how an endgame should be like. You can create new and exciting challenges for players, but without motivation, they will all be just "addon". Make your players actively want to do those content, not just provide them with fun and enjoyment, but fill them with determination and satisfaction for completing the challenges.

I myself can only think about these solution so far (in like 15 minutes), but I know there're tons of veteran players with different point of views, and I'd love to hear those vision. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND, this is not about "OMG this game sucks", or "This game should be like this, or like that". This is about helping ESO realize what's great about it, and spread the word to everyone else.

If you're reading this line, then I'm thank you for spending your time listening to me "talking *** about the game". I'm not though. I legitimately want the game to reach its full potential. But then again, these are only my opinions. They are all correct in my eyes, but I understand you might feel different. If anyone has any suggestion, or disagreement, please let me know. I'd love to answer them all

And to @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert , please consider about this?