This is the first time my wife and I have played a combat oriented MMO, and we were chatting with some guildies about the complexity of ESO, especially concerning combat. It definitely has a steep learning curve, and ZOS has done very little to help in that regard. Finally after about 4 years, they finally put in skill suggestions to help a beginner with builds. But even now, some of the suggestions are off the mark and there is so much more to learn if you want to be good as a particular class.

I'm quite surprise op, that you haven't joined a guild yet, that's social and casual enough so you can ask whatever your fancy and not looked a fool for it.

Why are you watching a 3 hr vid that tries to cover everything when you can look for certain topics that have bugged you instead. Having problems with sets? Fextralife has some of the best info on sets. Builds? Alcast, woeler are great. MissBizz has some good info on general stuff, hell, when you take the time to look into stuff, the info you gained will help you in the long run.

This game is simple. Wanna go for a magicka based toon? Light armor, magicka stats, staff wielding. Stamina toon? Medium armor, stamina stats, any of the physical weapons. It even states in the starting zone how to use the game mechanics such as interrupting, blocking and light and heavy attacking. There you go, you now can solo 90% of the overland content.

The beauty of the game? It doesn't specialize you in way that's counterintuitive. You choose to be a nightblade. Can you tank in it? Sure. Wear heavy armor sets, get yourself a sword and board and hit it. Can you heal? Sure. Can you dps? Sure, either magicka and stamina works for dps too.

The game is about trial and error. Getting ganged up by groups of mobs? "I should probably either kill the squishest or get more aoes." going up against an elite mob? "I should avoid their attacks and focus on damage dealing or I could mitigate some of the damage they do"

Hope this helps.

the learning curve and complexity of the game are pretty intense @Shraar

got a good buddy in to the game, had to play with him for more than 3 months until he started "getting" things...

I don't know who it was tougher on - him or me...soooooooo much *** to explain...

try to relax, go run around the whole map discovering stuff and appreciating the beauty of the environment - both: sights and sounds...

check out some towns and ask around for a decent beginners guild...participate in guild events...

try not to let yourself get too frustrated...you'll get there...

I'd love to see the Str/Int/Wil/Agi/Spd/End/Chr/Lck Stats make a comeback and that they have a greater impact on builds! New MMO have been to much simplified!

Shraar wrote: »

I hate how everytime I level up I'm given a choice between Magic/Health/Stam. Except it's not really a choice, it's just a trap to screw up your build. If you don't put everything in the right place, you're just wasting your points. The whole game is built around these binary choices of pure Stamina and Pure magicka. Health, I never see health, not even for tanks, so why is there even a choice? Remove this pointless step, it can only go wrong. I wish I could just commit to specializations, I don't want to have to do HOMEWORK just to play a stupid game. That sucks. Update the build advisor to not be useless, remove pointless stats and introduce specializations.

The community, including the biggest youtubers, are GARBAGE when it comes to helping new players. I search "Beginner advice" and get a 3 HOUR VIDEO, just to get started. Don't you realize how bad that makes your game look?

Remove the Magic/Health/Stam choice on level up. It's not even a choice, it's just an overly confusing opportunity for new players to screw up. And they have no way of knowing they've screwed up.

Just wing it. That is what most of us did with our first character. Jump in and see what happens. My first character was a Redguard DK healer (might be worst combination ever). Now he is my master crafter. My third character became my main. When the game came out it was much harder than it is now. I point this out because there was a boss (Doshia) that was in the main story line and had to be solo'd. She was tough and I wasn't sure if I would ever get past that one quest. I was beginning to think well hell I'm going to have to quit the game because I'm going to be stuck here forever. Was frustrating. I saw someone in zone ask how to beat her others offered advice, I scribbled some things down on a sticky note and after a few tries got past her. As I said I was close to giving up on the game. Now I am still really happy that I stayed with it. I consider myself to be an average player and I can do most of the end game content. I'm not getting on any leader boards but I am still having fun. So give the game a chance might work out for you also.

If/when you do make a mistake don't sweat it for a while. Fixing it later in the game is cheap when it comes to allotting your attribute points. I gave my characters some health at the lower levels and then made the change when I had a better idea on how I would play them. Gotta throw in the build adviser is something that is relatively new to the game. A lot of us got by without it for a long time.

And if you haven't already done it try and join a guild. There are a lot of guilds out there that are dedicated to helping new players learn.

I find it hard to disagree with OP. The game however is already simple as it is. For me to be happy to see the character point system go, I'd want to see something else added like skill / spell crafting.

If they were to remove the character points and just replace it with a blanket HP boost (because I do agree, all my toons are either max Stam / Mag) then they would need to revamp the skill system and possibly bolster the item sets too.

For instance, if they removed the points but added a stam / mag bonus to the skills on your bar, and added stam / mag bonuses to passives to make up for it that could work. If they made a third tier to skills, or an ability to skill craft (blend two skills) then that would probably add plenty of options to the game, and I'd therefore be happy to see a pretty obsolete system like the character point system removed.

[removed quote]
That was Skyrim.

It's not laziness either. A lot of people played Oblivion, couldn't sort out what the stats did, and wandered off. So, with Skyrim, it was streamlined. You didn't raise a bunch of attributes that provided bonuses in different abstract places, you simply upgraded a resource pool, and the game took care of the rest.

i would never watch a 3 hour video to get into a game either. i never did. it's not necessary at all.

i played the game instead. it might be tough to find the cornerstones of a complex system; that doesn't mean the people who already learned them are idiots. i've never found a good teacher by insulting all potential teachers. maybe i'll learn something new from OP's "unconventional" techniques here?

but this isn't the right game to dumb down. you can learn it if you try harder. gradually do more difficult things and push against the bleeding edge of your ability. or don't! if you care to improve, it's possible. lots of forumfolks have managed.

@Shraar is wildly throwing his hammer at the sky instead of focusing on forging the sword just right.

I will try to help out as much as I can, but I hope you do realize that asking for help from a community of players who like this game by insulting the game and demonstrating a lack of desire to learn is not quite the recipe for success. There's also a sub-forum here dedicated to helping out new players that many experienced players love to help newbies get into the game.

1. This game is huge. Not just geographically wise, but content wise as well from solo content to crafting to group content to housing. That's why a beginner's guide video that tries to touch upon each topic is 200 minutes long. Dottz is a great resource for new players; I used him when starting out and he is pretty active within this community as well.

2. I do agree with the "illusion of choice" when it comes to stat allocation, outside of tanks, but it's a symptom of how damage works within the combat system in which not only does resource management play a central role in ESO combat, but spell/weapon damage also scales with these resource pools to an extent. It does limit the variety of builds in terms of hybrid gameplay, but as of right now that's just the state of the game.

3. The developers understand that this game is complex and often times, new players might not contribute all their points into the appropriate resource pool or pick less optimal morphs when learning the game. Luckily they allow skill and attribute respecs at a pretty cheap cost, even giving player's a free consumable for each at around level 42-44. So "messing up" a character is very easily corrected.

4. There is a cursor mode within the game. If you press "." (period) it will enter cursor mode to allow you to explore some of the UI. Also, when in the skills menu you can hover over skills to bring up the tooltips of each skill. However, it is known that sometimes the tooltips are more confusing than helpful and ZOS is working on this.

5. Join a guild. I'd say 95% of all guilds are very welcoming to new players and helping out and growing talent in-house is often a pillar within the majority of these guilds. That way you have an instant source of information for any questions you might have. Also, UESP and Fextralife are both incredible resources for ESO, bookmark them.

There are many other things I could touch on, but I just wanted to explain some of the core arguments of your complaints throughout the thread. Honestly, anyone who expects to come into a complex game/system and expect to get it right the first time hasn't learned that failure is not only a part of life, but also a key part in success. Even the very best players within the game today have all stumbled and failed at one point or another within the game.

As a person that has never played an mmo before, and play all single player games on casual, let me say i am proud of how far i've gotten in this game
Much has to do with you getting a rhythm down, don't give up that's for sure
Many things in this game are a total and complete pain in the #ss, BUT for some odd reason it is addicting
Create your character if you feel they are to weak, scrap them make another, also if you have summerset, don't start there, you run around a lot there and don't level up quick go to stros m'kai or kenarthi's roost
One big problem they need to address is starting new players with a 2 hander, maybe that's not what you want to use, best advice there is deal with it until you can craft or find what you are looking for (daggers, staff, etc.)
The places I mentioned above are 2 of my favorite places because of the way the quests are set up and the characters
About a month after I purchased this game, ESO sent out a survey asking will you be playing this game in a month, my answer absolutely not...well here I am on the forums and played for 600 hours
Also think of it this way, if it was simple and basic, everyone would play it, finish it and move on, that's not the case here, you always want to try something else
I'm a dual wielder, high elf, night blade by the way, he's my favorite so far

OP was indeed rude (as were some of their reply) but frankly many of the other players' replies leave just as much to be desired. I think the later will argue that "OP started it" in spite of the fact we're all very much past the point of kindergarten, if one is to believe the game's age restriction.

I feel that a lot of the answering aggressiveness stems less from OP's original tone than the usual defensiveness at seeing a beloved game be criticized. Which to be honest is a real issue in this community.

"Live with it", "git gud", "you're not willing to put in the effort"... It's a GAME. Effort should very much NOT be an issue here. It's one thing to need time to learn mechanics and discover subtleties but those can - and should - be found without it feeling like a struggle.

Aurielle wrote: »

The onus is not on the developers to hand-hold players during the learning process, however...

@Aurielle I'll play along and ask : "why ?" Why is the onus not on the developers ?