I didn't find any place to really put feed back on the game, so I decided to put it here. This posts covers my experiences with ESO and opens up the floor to a discussion how to improve the game.

I also can't figure out how to add polls. Will someone reply or PM me if you have a good BBcode for one or know how to add one on this forum.

Please keep in mind these are my experiences and opinions and may or may not reflect the overall attitude of other players

Foreword

I personally bought this game because I saw some regarding PvP and enjoyed how fast it seemed. I dislike MMO's where people are sponges and can take dozens of hits. I picked up ESO with the hope that I would find an MMO with the deadliness and skill level of Age of Conan but the feel of a traditional Elder Scrolls game. To be honest the gameplay of combat itself gives me no problems whatsoever, however there is much more to the experience of ESO than the feel of combat alone.

I would appreciate constructive responses. A response such as "well I don't want ESO to turn into X mmo", or "if you don't like it go play something else", or "your just stupid, I have no problems whatsoever" etc... are NOT valid responses


Accounts and Forums

In my honest opinion, the only time a customer should have to check his email is to verify his account creation. On tamrielfoundry, one of the bigger forums for Elder Scrolls games, people have expressed their concern for how not-user-friendly it is to create a forum account on the ESO online official forums. It pretty much feels like the buddy press plugin for wordpress, or some other "easy paste and go" forum.

If you are reading this and are having problems creating your forum account you need to check your email. It will have a link that will take you to the create a forum account page with your "invitation code" already plugged in.

Clicking the create an account for the forum without following the link in your email is pretty much worthless. There is quite literally no point in having that button if you only get your code from a link.

Also having forums organized so that it shows the appropriate amount of open discussions in each section (it shows 0 on most even though this is untrue). Please also take out the German Forums for English players vice-versa as the Germans probably want just German Forums.

Add a Feedback Section please.


Customer Service

When the launcher FIRST told me to redeem my free game time, I went and followed the supposedly "simple" instructions by logging into my account and selecting payment method. It proceeded to charge my card even though I was under the impression that the first month was free. The amount total the screen showed me when I purchased the first month even showed up as $0.00. It took almost a week before the amount was refunded. I never got an email saying they refunded either. Just a copy and paste response that was non-applicable to one of my two tickets. Yes they actually only responded to one ticket.


AI

MMOs in general have never really been known for having good AI. I actually really can't think of an MMO that has had what I would call astounding AI. What most MMOs have though is AI that is better than what the current ESO has. All to often AI in ESO will go into existential crisis in the middle of combat and just sit there with an idle animation while doing absolutely nothing. This is a real immersion breaker.

Not only can the AI not pick targets worth ***, but the aggro system is not well defined at all. It would be nice if intended groups of AI were grouped together so they could respond to threats intelligently. You could build a function that includes an algorithm that takes into accounts the type of AI in the group "Caster, Healer, DPS(burst or sustain), Tank, CC" and then weighs them against the group of attacking players to then choose the best course of action for the fight. You could also take into account variables such as health, mana, stamina of both groups, alive vs dead players of both groups, positioning, etc.. You could even have the AI start responding to the players play style. For example if a player likes to spam power attacks with a two hander, an AI who notices one of the players in the group using CCs alot might save his CC for that player.

Also the aggro range is extremely short. I can be killing some dude while his buddy a few feet away picks his nose. This creates a situation where going through zones and dungeons allows for easier than intended skirmishes. If a portion of the zone or dungeon is meant to be an X amount of AI vs the group, it becomes too easy for players to aggro specific AI away from the tight nit group of AI pals with candy and turn the skirmish into X-2 or 3 vs the group. Having AI groups as said above could fix this.

Also it would be nice to have AI attempt to dodge, block, and reposition themselves to avoid player attacks as a player would against AI attacks.

Please improve the AI by
- Keeping them active so they are always acting
- Choose targets with a smarter algorithm, or actually put in an algorithm
- Aggro from farther distances
- Have AI attempt to move out of AOE, block attacks, or dodge roll as a player does

I am not an expert on MMOs and messing with code for them since MMOs aren't really a type of game that allows modding or user design. However I have worked with code for all the Blizzard games as well as the Arma series of games. If the community can make game re-defining code for the AI in these games, I see no reason people such as yourselves who code for a living can't do the same. I know more complex code doesn't tend to impact the performance of Blizzard games, however it does in ARMA if you do not have a dedicated client "headless client" to process the calculations for the server; so maybe this is the case, that having loads of players in a zone mixed with these calculations would create performance issues. My response is to instance the PvE more in this case. PvE doesn't require the massive amounts of on-screen players that PvP does.


PvE Content

I have actually enjoyed the quests so far. Everything is voice acted. It's super fun. The only thing I wish is that you didn't have to level 3 characters to max to enjoy all the PvE content available. Really unless you want to re-roll another race, you are exploring only 1/3 of the map. I would like to see the ability to quest in other races zones. It's harder to play with friends when it's no longer "Good guy faction or bad guy faction?" and now DC? EP? AD? Otherwise, PvE looks great and the new Craglorn stuff looks fun fun!

Also it would be cool to add Arenas to the game. Not only PvP Arenas, but gladitorial PvE arenas would actually be way cool!


PvP

The Alliance War PvP in Cyrodill is fun, but it's pretty much just a zerg fest.

I feel as if there is no point to how you build your character for PvP; very rarely will you actually get to fight either solo or with your small group vs another solo or small group of at least similar ratios enough to really have your build count. For the most part it seems the best bet is to spam HP so you survive longer, or spam Magicka and get AO spells and play a game of "avoid the red circles".

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the war aspect of the game, but it mostly feels like a jumbled mess. With the lack of speach bubbles above peoples head "is there a way to turn this on? does it exist?" the only chat that really matters is group chat. Getting a group is ridiculous though, the Alliance War group finder does a *** job of grouping near players, and so people resort to things such as typing "press 42 for to defend Nikkel" into chat.

Also the lack of Open world PvP sucks. There is a different mood when In Cyrodill vs normal open world PvP. Let players choose between PvE realms and PvP. Questing with the possibility of getting ganked by bandits is much different than going into a zone where a wild band of grazing Ebon Heart Packateers might eat you over the crest of any hill. Does anyone other than me miss the older days of WoW (i haven't played in years so maybe it's still like this?) where people would go from Capitol City to Capitol City like a town cryer shouting "Large Alliance group outside of Thunder Bluff, come defend!".

Also, the ability to level form 10 to V1 by PvP as fast (not faster, just the same) should become available. Zenimax loves to say that ESO is about "playing your way". Well the way of many players is PvP.

PvP Arenas and Dueling Areans. The number one thing any PvP player wants to do is test his skills against a solo player or equal group of opposing players in a fair fight. Nuff' said. PvPers love doing this for hours and would gladly pay you $15 a month to do so.


I would love to see these added to the game...
- Arenas
- PvP and PvE servers.
- Ability to level in PvP with the same speed as PvE (not faster, not slower).


Random Game Design Stuff

Make it so you can respect a certain number of Attributes or Skills rather than completely to completely respec.

There are tons of options already, but adding one or two more skills to each skill line would be cool. This is completely a personal thing, but I am a skill ***. A game built around being able to play how you want should have "the skies the limit" on options for building your character. I'm someone who looks at GW1's skill list and smiles.

Speach Bubbles