ESO vs Stand alone games (skyrim, morrowind,...)

Ashryn · August 2020

Both versions have their good and bad and I've enjoyed them both. However, ESO is the one I like better.

Its been awhile since I've played Skyrim, but I remember being frustrated that almost all the dungeons seemed the same and fairly boring. The cities felt lifeless. On the plus side: the landscape wowed me at every turn and dragons would often startle you, seeming to come out of no where.

As to ESO...I'm an introvert, but I love that the cities are usually much more alive, yet can not let others in a dungeon bother me with their presence. Dungeons are different in many ways, not quite as repetitive as in Skyrim. The landscape still is beautiful and it feels like a real world: varied terrain, flora & fauna, etc. It lets me play in different ways according to the mood I'm in: PVP, PVE, questing, exploring, farming, fishing, or housing.

zaria · August 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

The single player games are vastly better than ESO. Many people have touched on the much deeper and customizable character builds.
But I want to hit on two things not brought up yet;

1) The world feels more alive in the single player games.

Npcs have homes, they go to sleep, they eat and do chores. All the npcs in ESO seem to stand around in the same space 24 hours a day.

2) ESO plays it fast and loose with the lore.

Between how dragons are handled, to a overly populated blackreach, to unstealthy wood elves (etc), it’s hard for me to take the lore here that seriously since it seems they (ZOS) doesn’t take the lore seriously themselves.
It’s like a very good fan fiction but ESO is always going to feel like it’s not a part of the ES universe, just a distorted mirror of it.

I say Skyrim and Oblivion with tons of mods are more immersive, mods help a lot in Skyrim too obviously.
ESO is not very immersive.

But for someone who run trough the quests in ESO the first time. No its not up to the quality of Oblivion quests.
But quantity is an quality in its own. However don't binge quests in ESO, its much more.

Most replying here are veteran players who burned trough quests on many alts to get skill points.
Granted back at launch questing was much harder and we did not have the common builds we have today.
Doing delves with an build for vet trials is kind of drive by shooting with an battleship.

Now it was worse before one tamriel, I focused on questing the first month with some dungeons.
Ignored the public dungeons and went back around VR1 as I needed more skill points.
In Thouthman gully I found a lots of low levels struggling so /z grab this one tail an hang on.
Now I got someone else to do the invites after some time, then as I did not do most of the damage in the trial group and was done so this one left.

Lore vise, well we learned more about Bosmers than any non Bosmer wanted to know

Yes ESO had to make up the backdrop for multiple cultures as in most of them.
Now you can complain that they made Bosmer and Argonians barbarians. I agree that the Altmers especially summerset should been more high fantasy but still.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · August 2020

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

Elsonso · August 2020

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion

Yup. Even among the five TES games, Skyrim was weak.

Taloros · August 2020

ESO, as deemed necessary for MMOs nowadays, tries to balance and streamline its gameplay. Characters cannot really have an identity, because everybody plays in the same world. With a little creativity, that could be changed, of course, but there's no effort put into that. Single player games care less about balance and accesability, which allows, in my experience, for a more unique story.

I'll try to illustrate that with two very similar characters I played in ESO and Skyrim:
- I made a Dark Elf mage in ESO. She went through the same tutorial as half a dozen other characters before her. She got the necessary equipment needed for the fights. After the first few levels, she killed a lot of NPCs, until she hit max level. From there on, she occasionally visits the Imperial City or a random raid/dungeon. The character looks nice, is fun to play and so on. But there's no story, no individuality attached to it.
- Compare this to my Dark Elf mage's story in Skyrim: I used Live another Life to start at a shipwreck. She started with just a dagger, stuck in some horrible icy landscape, hunted by wild animals she had no chance to kill.
Finally, she managed to reach the nearest city - Windhelm, where she arrived penniless like all the other dark elf refugees there. Without money, gear or skills, all she could do was solve the murder quest available there, which was fun to do in the role of basically a beggar and actually made a lot of sense, as you use street contacts and observation to solve it. After a meager reward, she realized that the city had little to offer for the dispossessed like her.
Angry at the city's merciless citizens, she went out into the wild, willing to do what was needed to get out of her desperate situation.
In the hills around the city, she discovered a semi-hidden crypt, just out of sight of the next locals. What treasures it might hold? Weapons? Money? A chance to get the gear to become a mercenary? Armed with but a rusted axe, she went inside.
Draugr and skeletons guarded the place. The first few encounters were deadly, but she survived, and finally found the main chamber, which was filled with treasure. Unfortunately, it was guarded by a Draugr boss that was way, way outside her league. So, she just grabbed whatever she could and barely escaped the crypt.
Back in the wilderness, she found a seemingly abandoned homestead, which seemed perfect to rest and look through the treasure stolen from the crypt. There, she was ambushed by bandits, which she could barely stand her ground against with the weapons stolen from the crypt.
And then... turning around, she stared right into the face of the Draugr boss who had followed her outside. The undead pounded the remaining bandits into the ground like ants, giving her a crucial moment to escape. A wild chase began, with her fleeing back to Windhelm. The skeleton boss followed her, just stopping to kill all living things found on the way - peasants, goats, chickens, everything.
The city guards challenged the crypt boss, but were just slaughtered by that thing. Grabbing a guard's bows and arrows, the dark elf had an epic chase/fight with the crypt boss on the battlements of Windhelm, until she finally managed to defeat it.
With the loot and experience from that fight, she managed to get the gear necessary to dare a search for the fabled academy of wizards even more up north. Finally, she followed her dream, became an acclaimed wizard and and clawed her way up the social ladder.

Now, what do you think: Which character will I remember until my hair grows gray(er), and which will be lost to time?

Edit: Removed some typos.

Nebthet78 · August 2020

- Why would someone play skyrim instead of eso?

People would play Skyrim over ESO because Skyrim/Morrowind etc are better in graphics, in game play. You can play as fast paced or slow paces as you want. You don't have to keep up with other players or fall behind, or play their way to do things. The single player games are much more relaxing and immersive.
The choices you make in the Standalone games actual carry throughout the whole gameplay experience, whereas those in ESO are an afterthought, as if they never happened.

- Eso is much bigger and its online and it has skyrim! Or what am i missing here ?

Yes, it has all those, but it's also hollow on the inside. Lacking in depth of story, and vision.

- Is the gameplay different ?

Yes, the gameplay is much different. ESO things are never stable. They are always changing every few months to force you into grinding more gear to do the content you used to be able to do. In the single player games, you can really play the way you want. You can be a no armor fist fighting barbarian if you want to. You can't do that in ESO. I can go climb the mountain in the standalone game without being walled off and forced to go around it to get to a location on the other side.

- Why would some prefer to play the stand alone games ?

Yes, I'm finding more and more I prefer the stand alone games. ESO was a good fill in while waiting for a new Elder Scrolls standalone game to be released or other games like Witcher 3 to go on sale.

What does it have to offer compared to the bigger eso franchise ?

True depth of story. Consequences to your actions in game. Stabilized combat. Being able to do things at your own pace without being forced to follow someone else's shoes.

Is the stand alone games also not much much smaller ? Havent you seen the landscapes of those games rather quickly
Actually, no. The landscape in the stand alone games are actually larger in comparison to your character. They are more immersive. You aren't made to feel like you have to rush from point A to point B in quests. It takes me more time to go through the same area of Skyrim in the standalone game, than it does in ESO's Western Skyrim because there's a lot more to explore and large areas are not walled off. If I want to climb to the top of a steep mountain and jump, I can do that.... and sometimes the character survives. That's more fun than what they let us do in ESO.

luen79rwb17_ESO · August 2020

It's all a matter of personal preference.

Since I pretty much stopped with SPRPGs back on the FF days on the SNES I can tell you my personal opinion that I don't give a crap if you can make cows fly in Skyrim or Morrowind and come here and sat that it is so innmersive and "deep".

For me, being all alone on an huge map filled with "actual nothing" (noone there but you) that the game makes you feel is "alive" as a result a bunch of AI processes is kindda dumb. But of course that's because my personal taste and logics make me have that opinion.

The way I see it is that SPRPGs like Skyrim and Oblivion are like the little girl playing barbies in the corner of her room: with a few little tools that activate your imagination and you feel and believe you're on a whole new world filled with wonders and having a blast on an alternate reality.

Playing ESO or MMORPG's is like a baseball field, it's the same space everyday but yeah, it's filled with real people, and each match is a total different experience becuase it's driven by real people and each and every day you go to that field you have something new and exciting to remember. It's the same dungeon or trial but each party, each day is a different experience, its a different BG, Cyrodiil is different every hour, all because of player choices.

For me, the joy of the unpredictable human behavior is ten times better than the risk of killing X NPC. Send a random message to someone, throw a random emote and see their random reaction, it's the experience of a real social interaction on a virtual enviroment which is not something that an AI can't even come close to, or having a good time with guildies on discord raiding or wiping on a boss.

So in conclusion, each one on their own. Go play barbie, go play baseball. Having fun is what matters!

BlueRaven · August 2020

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

I am still, STILL playing Skyrim. In fact, outside of events, I am playing it more then ESO at the moment.

(To be fair it’s most likely because of the poor condition the Mac client is currently in.)

If Bethesda announced Skyrim SE 2.0 I would buy it in a heartbeat.

(Again, to be fair I would buy a remastered Morrowind or Oblivion as well.)

But I love Skyrim. Love it.

eMKa8 · August 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

I am still, STILL playing Skyrim. In fact, outside of events, I am playing it more then ESO at the moment.

(To be fair it’s most likely because of the poor condition the Mac client is currently in.)

If Bethesda announced Skyrim SE 2.0 I would buy it in a heartbeat.

(Again, to be fair I would buy a remastered Morrowind or Oblivion as well.)

But I love Skyrim. Love it.

I am playiNg on a MacOS as well and i am having less troubles then i used to. Yes my FPS are always low (30 iN high quality), however it runs smoothly enough for me.

eMKa8 · August 2020

Having said the above ... ESO is practically the only good game i can play on a mac which is online.

The only other game i played was civ5 on a mac but after 1500 hours of playtime
I got bored enough to try something else

Thank you everyone for all your answers and opinions! Did not expect that many messages and replies

Sylvermynx · August 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

I am still, STILL playing Skyrim. In fact, outside of events, I am playing it more then ESO at the moment.

(To be fair it’s most likely because of the poor condition the Mac client is currently in.)

If Bethesda announced Skyrim SE 2.0 I would buy it in a heartbeat.

(Again, to be fair I would buy a remastered Morrowind or Oblivion as well.)

But I love Skyrim. Love it.

Agreed. Though I just refuse to mess with CC, so I'm still playing SLE. And yeah, bring on the remasters of MW and Oblivion!

goldCoaster · August 2020

Skrim and ESO go together like Captain and Tennille. Like ying and yang.

Both are within the top 10 games of the past 10 years.

BlueRaven · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

I am still, STILL playing Skyrim. In fact, outside of events, I am playing it more then ESO at the moment.

(To be fair it’s most likely because of the poor condition the Mac client is currently in.)

If Bethesda announced Skyrim SE 2.0 I would buy it in a heartbeat.

(Again, to be fair I would buy a remastered Morrowind or Oblivion as well.)

But I love Skyrim. Love it.

I am playiNg on a MacOS as well and i am having less troubles then i used to. Yes my FPS are always low (30 iN high quality), however it runs smoothly enough for me.

This is not the place to get into it, but the issues I am having are discussed in a forum post here (if you are curious);

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/497668/spontaneous-logging-out-of-computer-user-in-macos-catalina/p1

So it's going on two years now and nothing has been done about it. At least I am comforted to know I am not the only one with this issue, even though ZOS does not seem that much in a hurry to address it.

(Again as an aside, I am playing Skyrim on a PS4, not the Mac.)

SidraWillowsky · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Having said the above ... ESO is practically the only good game i can play on a mac which is online.

The only other game i played was civ5 on a mac but after 1500 hours of playtime
I got bored enough to try something else

Thank you everyone for all your answers and opinions! Did not expect that many messages and replies

If you're looking into games like Skyrim/Morrowind/Oblivion and are a long-haul-er, I'd HIGHLY recommend Skyrim simply due to the vast number of fantastic quest/dungeon mods out there. More than a few of them are DLC-sized and just as good -if not at times better- than the vanilla game. People have also put a lot of time and effort into fixing the bugs in the game, which is much appreciated. You can easily put 1000+ hours into the vanilla game and then probably just as many playing new lands or quest mods. And THEN you can buy a house and fill it up with cabbages to the point that it glitches out when you try to enter and deem it a lost cause. Then you go build a house and fill it with wine and cheese.

I think that Morrowind is a better game than Skyrim in many regards (story, lore, spellcrafting, etc) and has some awesome mods as well, but it is SO dated graphics- and combat-wise that I'd recommend you try Skyrim first, which is also dated, but not to the degree that Morrowind is.

Jayman1000 · August 2020

Some players that like to grind they butts away for hours doing the same insane repetive actions. I never did that in Skyrim, hell I dont even do it in ESO. But the point is that in ESO that's a very effective way to become successful.

I was having fun with some roleplaying alone with some elfs that I pretended were enemies of my own faction and my honorable goal was to challenge each one on hand to hand combat (dual wielding). Dishonorable as they were their elf friends helped them! grr! That only made me angrier! But then a number of players appeared and kept aggroing all the mobs away aoe'ing them real fast over and over, obviously to gain extra xp. Me being in process of teaching lessons in honor and such apparantly was too much for the grinders that messaged me angrily why I "wasn't following their group properly" "why you kill mobs one on one, you distroy our game!". Such disrespect for different ways to play the game, no one owns the mobs, at least let me have my fun with a few of them you can have the rest.

But ANYWAYS, the reason I would play skyrim, oblivion, fallout etc (other than ecaping above experiences) is that I can mod the crap out of them completely altering the experience to my liking. Want huge natural looking forests? install huge forest mod. Want to live the life of a troll? Install troll mod. Want beatiful photorealistic graphics? Install photorealistic ENB etc etc.

JKorr · August 2020

ZaroktheImmortal wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

eMKa8 wrote: »

Hi 👋

Interesting question , i hope...
What are the main differences between the vast landscapes of Tamriel in ESO versus the stand alone games such as skyrim , oblivion, morrowind,...

I tried to find online and on youtube for some thoughts and opinions about it but cant find it.

Why would someone play skyrim instead of eso?

Eso is much bigger and its online and it has skyrim! Or what am i missing here ?

Is the gameplay different ?

Why would some prefer to play the stand alone games ?

What does it have to offer compared to the bigger eso franchise ?

Is the sta d alone games also not much much smaller ? Havent you seen the landscapes of those games rather quickly

I usually play single player games. I've played Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Oblivion, Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles, Skyrim [and dlc], and I'm considering Hammerfell or whatever the next ES game is titled.

There are times I don't want to deal with people. Online mmorpg is people, some of whom may decide to intentionally screw with your game play. It is also "online", if I don't have internet [and have set my Steam for offline] then I can play when I want, internet access or not. ESO can't be played if the servers are down for any reason.

To cover the large world of ESO, the stories are broad and sweeping. You don't find a lot of detail or even hidden areas or items. The single player games have a lot more options to get npc details, hidden areas, and items to find. I still remember how hard it was to find daedric arrows in Morrowind; how hard it was to get daedric armor, and finding a cursed mine you had to report to a Counselor in a haunted mansion that you could get a daedric weapon as a reward.... ESO stories tend towards the gray, and in some cases have me actively avoiding certain quests with any alts, because they were do darn depressing.

The single player games cover a smaller area, yes. However they have a lot more detail, and offer rewards for exploring. ESO, not so much.

I actually enjoy the morally grey choices cause they make me think more on them. It's one of the things I enjoyed about it and hope there's more morally grey choices in the next Elder Scrolls games. If a choice is too easy just right and wrong then it has less meaning to me. But one where there is no right answer that really gets me thinking.

It isn't the "morally grey" choices that bother me. It's the ones where your character can't make a choice or be a hero.

The one Stonefalls quest; you pass a plantation and an npc runs up, telling you her captain killed the squad and he's burning the bodies. You go check it out, of course. You find shadow demons summoned by a khajiit slave because the plantation owner whipped his wife to death. The slaves tried to escape, but didn't succeed. The slave helps you deal with the demons. You can, maybe, convince the mistress revenge caused the mess and solved nothing, and she lets the slave go. Then when you leave, you find a young female khajiit who was waiting for her only remaining friend to escape and come for her. You can give her the letter from her friend, and tell her he's dead. So....slaves beaten to death, and you could do nothing. Slave beating plantation owner killed, and you could do nothing. Squad of Pact soldiers killed, and you could do nothing. Slaves who wanted to be free enough to die for it, and you could do nothing. You break a young slave's world by telling her her last hope of freedom is dead because he wanted to free her, she's still enslaved, and you just walk away. That is not morally grey, imo.

Morally grey is the one where the Argonian parents want revenge for the death of their daughter. You can lure the last member of the family to a location where the parents can attack her. You can help, or not.

The quests where you can be an active agent don't bother me. The ones where 99% of the outcomes are not what you might call "good", and your character can do nothing.

EDIT:Autocorrect doesn't like Elder Scrolls.....

NotaDaedraWorshipper · August 2020

BlueRaven wrote: »

NotaDaedraWorshipper wrote: »

I don't get why so many people think Skyrim is so great. It's the worst of the "modern" TES games in my opinion and I pick ESO any day over Skyrim.

But comparing the ESO to the singleplayer rpgs is a weird thing to do, because they are two very different type of games. One is an mmo and the others are as mentioned singleplayer.

One thing I like the most about ESO is the amount of lore it has given us to all manner of things. Even mundane things like the contraband items can be very interesting.

I am still, STILL playing Skyrim. In fact, outside of events, I am playing it more then ESO at the moment.

(To be fair it’s most likely because of the poor condition the Mac client is currently in.)

If Bethesda announced Skyrim SE 2.0 I would buy it in a heartbeat.

(Again, to be fair I would buy a remastered Morrowind or Oblivion as well.)

But I love Skyrim. Love it.

I haven't played Skyrim for years now, and the only Skyrim I own is one Xbox 360 version. Maybe a PC one I got for free.

Played ESO early on, then had a break for a long time and returned like a year or more ago. Because I missed it. I don't miss Skyrim.

NotaDaedraWorshipper · August 2020

Taloros wrote: »

ESO, as deemed necessary for MMOs nowadays, tries to balance and streamline its gameplay. Characters cannot really have an identity, because everybody plays in the same world. With a little creativity, that could be changed, of course, but there's no effort put into that. Single player games care less about balance and accesability, which allows, in my experience, for a more unique story.

I'll try to illustrate that with two very similar characters I played in ESO and Skyrim:
- I made a Dark Elf mage in ESO. She went through the same tutorial as half a dozen other characters before her. She got the necessary equipment needed for the fights. After the first few levels, she killed a lot of NPCs, until she hit max level. From there on, she occasionaly visits the Imperial City or a random raid/dungeon. The character looks nice, is fun to play and so on. But there's no story, no individuality attached to it.
- Compare this to my Dark Elf mage's story in Skyrim: I used Live another Life to start at a shipwreck. She started with just a dagger, stuck in some horrible icy landscape, hunted by animals she had no chance to kill. Finally, she managed to reach the nearest city - Windhelm, where she became part of all the other dark elf refugees there. Without money, gear or skills, all she could do was solve the murder quest available there, which was fun to do in the role of basically a beggar and actually made a lot of sense, as you use street contacts and observation to solve it.
After a meager reward, she realized that the city had little to offer for the dispossesed like her, and went out into the wild and found a crypt, just out of sight of the next locals. Free loot? A chance to get the gear to become a mercenary? The first few encounters were deadly, but she survived, and she found a crypt full of treasure. But sadly, it was guarded by skeleton boss that was way, way outside her league. So, she just grabbed whatever she could and barely escaped in the wilderness. There, she was ambushed by bandits, which she could barely stand her ground against with the weapons stolen from the crypt.
And then... turning around, she stared right into the face of the crypt boss who had followed her outside. The undead pounded the remaining bandits into the ground like ants, giving her a crucial moment to escape. A wild chase began, with her fleeing back to Windhelm. The skeleton boss followed her, just stopping to kill all living things found on the way - goats, chickens, peasants, everything.
The city guards challenged the crypt boss, but were just slaughtered by that thing. Grabbing a guard's bows and arrows, the mage had an epic chase/fight with the crypt boss on the battlements of Windhelm, until she finally managed to defeat it.
With the loot and experience from that fight, she began her venture to the academy of wizards, and finally clawed her way up the social ladder.

Now, what do you think: Which character will I remember until my hair grows gray(er), and which will be lost to time?

Roleplaying stories and characters are what you make them. Which to me can be done just as easy in the singeplayer games as they can be in ESO. In the latter I can also roleplay with others as a bonus, which is very nice.

Jayman1000 · August 2020

Taloros wrote: »

- Compare this to my Dark Elf mage's story in Skyrim: I used Live another Life to start at a shipwreck. She started with just a dagger, stuck in some horrible icy landscape, hunted by animals she had no chance to kill. Finally, she managed to reach the nearest city - Windhelm, where she became part of all the other dark elf refugees there. Without money, gear or skills, all she could do was solve the murder quest available there, which was fun to do in the role of basically a beggar and actually made a lot of sense, as you use street contacts and observation to solve it.
After a meager reward, she realized that the city had little to offer for the dispossesed like her, and went out into the wild and found a crypt, just out of sight of the next locals. Free loot? A chance to get the gear to become a mercenary? The first few encounters were deadly, but she survived, and she found a crypt full of treasure. But sadly, it was guarded by skeleton boss that was way, way outside her league. So, she just grabbed whatever she could and barely escaped in the wilderness. There, she was ambushed by bandits, which she could barely stand her ground against with the weapons stolen from the crypt.
And then... turning around, she stared right into the face of the crypt boss who had followed her outside. The undead pounded the remaining bandits into the ground like ants, giving her a crucial moment to escape. A wild chase began, with her fleeing back to Windhelm. The skeleton boss followed her, just stopping to kill all living things found on the way - goats, chickens, peasants, everything.
The city guards challenged the crypt boss, but were just slaughtered by that thing. Grabbing a guard's bows and arrows, the mage had an epic chase/fight with the crypt boss on the battlements of Windhelm, until she finally managed to defeat it.
With the loot and experience from that fight, she began her venture to the academy of wizards, and finally clawed her way up the social ladder.

Now, what do you think: Which character will I remember until my hair grows gray(er), and which will be lost to time?

What an epic story, I saw all the images in my mind from your description.

Taloros · August 2020

Jayman1000 wrote: »

What an epic story, I saw all the images in my mind from your description.

Thanks.

Tbh, I still have flashbacks from that undead boss suddenly showing up behind me.

TwinLamps · August 2020

TES III is my favorite TES related game.

UGotBenched91 · August 2020

Eh the landscapes aren’t as vast as some players believe. Takes maybe 3-5 minutes to cross most of the lands in ESO. Just started playing another game where the world just seems so much bigger and it’s not all cut into pieces like ESO is with loading screens. Just one fluid world. (ESO lacks diversity as well)

Elsonso · August 2020

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

Eh the landscapes aren’t as vast as some players believe. Takes maybe 3-5 minutes to cross most of the lands in ESO. Just started playing another game where the world just seems so much bigger and it’s not all cut into pieces like ESO is with loading screens. Just one fluid world. (ESO lacks diversity as well)

I remember the first time I realized how close together things were in TES 3. These maps are tiny and everything is packed together and hidden with fog or terrain so that you can't see how close they are.

I do wish that they had designed ESO so that the game transitioned between maps without a loading screen, like World of Warcraft does it.

danno8 · August 2020

Single player versions: Fills my mind with the world
ESO: Fills my time with the world

Single: More alive
ESO: More social

Single: Exploration focused
MMO: Exploration pointless

It may seem like I am hating on the mmo, but that's not the case. I do enjoy ESO for what it is. But if you were to give me ES6 or ESO2 right now side by side, I would certainly play ES6 first, and only pickup ESO2 after fully exhausting all ES6 content.

The single player games just immerse you and capture the imagination in a way that MMOs in general have a really hard time doing. It's the nature of the beast.

Taloros wrote: »

ESO, as deemed necessary for MMOs nowadays, tries to balance and streamline its gameplay. Characters cannot really have an identity, because everybody plays in the same world. With a little creativity, that could be changed, of course, but there's no effort put into that. Single player games care less about balance and accesability, which allows, in my experience, for a more unique story.

I'll try to illustrate that with two very similar characters I played in ESO and Skyrim:
- I made a Dark Elf mage in ESO. She went through the same tutorial as half a dozen other characters before her. She got the necessary equipment needed for the fights. After the first few levels, she killed a lot of NPCs, until she hit max level. From there on, she occasionaly visits the Imperial City or a random raid/dungeon. The character looks nice, is fun to play and so on. But there's no story, no individuality attached to it.
- Compare this to my Dark Elf mage's story in Skyrim: I used Live another Life to start at a shipwreck. She started with just a dagger, stuck in some horrible icy landscape, hunted by animals she had no chance to kill. Finally, she managed to reach the nearest city - Windhelm, where she became part of all the other dark elf refugees there. Without money, gear or skills, all she could do was solve the murder quest available there, which was fun to do in the role of basically a beggar and actually made a lot of sense, as you use street contacts and observation to solve it.
After a meager reward, she realized that the city had little to offer for the dispossesed like her, and went out into the wild and found a crypt, just out of sight of the next locals. Free loot? A chance to get the gear to become a mercenary? The first few encounters were deadly, but she survived, and she found a crypt full of treasure. But sadly, it was guarded by skeleton boss that was way, way outside her league. So, she just grabbed whatever she could and barely escaped in the wilderness. There, she was ambushed by bandits, which she could barely stand her ground against with the weapons stolen from the crypt.
And then... turning around, she stared right into the face of the crypt boss who had followed her outside. The undead pounded the remaining bandits into the ground like ants, giving her a crucial moment to escape. A wild chase began, with her fleeing back to Windhelm. The skeleton boss followed her, just stopping to kill all living things found on the way - goats, chickens, peasants, everything.
The city guards challenged the crypt boss, but were just slaughtered by that thing. Grabbing a guard's bows and arrows, the mage had an epic chase/fight with the crypt boss on the battlements of Windhelm, until she finally managed to defeat it.
With the loot and experience from that fight, she began her venture to the academy of wizards, and finally clawed her way up the social ladder.

Now, what do you think: Which character will I remember until my hair grows gray(er), and which will be lost to time?

[/spolier]

This nails exactly the reason I would play ES6 over ESO any day. MMOs world need to be flat and static by nature. Nothing strange or unknown can happen because that is a problem for them.

Taloros · August 2020

danno8 wrote: »

This nails exactly the reason I would play ES6 over ESO any day. MMOs world need to be flat and static by nature. Nothing strange or unknown can happen because that is a problem for them.

That's the way they're made now, and the designers seem to take that as rule.

But I've always wondered: Why is that? Or better: Is that true?

There could be a lot more individuality in characters. In a very limited sense, many MMOs - from WoW to ESO - have given us some background options, though basically limited to race. GW2 goes a little further and adds a social background, e. g. growing up as a noble, but wanting to join the circus.
Something like that could be expanded to allow more of a personal story. This could even have game play effects without creating too deep of a problem: Let's stay starting as a noble in ESO gives you a set of blue quality equipment and a different starter quest, while starting out poor gives an XP boost for first ten levels.
It would be problematic to add too much of a difference between starts for an MMO, as people would - as they always do - complain out of envy against people who picked another option. But some limited things could be done.
It requires, of course, work. Work is time, time is money, so the studio executives won't be happy to add something like this. But one has to ask how much that would actually cost, and if the time invested there wouldn't achieve more than the many, many hours spent on rebalancing the last rebalancing patch that rebalanced the out of balance rebalancing from five patches before.
With many movies, one must wonder if spending just a few little dollars more on writing instead of special effects and famous actors would have made a spectacular, but boring/stupid/inaccurate movie into a, you know, good movie. Games and MMOs seem to suffer from a similar problem. The story of Elsweyr was an example of bad writing, a series of deus-ex-machina moments and magical super girls that just happen to have the fitting magic ability written into their character just when they need it. And the new expansion seems to suffer from similar problems.

Not only with writing, but also regarding customization and individuality, ESO seems to be on a wrong path. What little individuality there was, curiously got stripped away by the expansions.
Everybody always got the same tutorial mission in Coldharbor. But after that, you were put on your character's racial starting zone.
But ever since Morrowind, we all get thrown into the same expansion zone, which is very weird and pretty confusing to new players in my experience: "I'm a Wood Elf - why am I doing in an area exclusively populated by Dark Elves? And why is everything full of mushrooms? And how to find the main story?"
In contrast, the starter zones lay barren, all the effort put into them is pretty much wasted, and new players get thrown into a high level zone, which is hidden by scaling.

Olauron · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Why would someone play skyrim instead of eso?

That's like "Why would someone watch LotR instead of Hobbit?" or "Why would someone read The Eye of the World instead of New Spring?".
The story is different. The story is connected. The story in ESO is not that bad to proclaim it not canon.

eMKa8 · August 2020

Wheel of time .... awesome series
Actually reading them now . I am at book 4 only 🤗

danno8 · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Wheel of time .... awesome series
Actually reading them now . I am at book 4 only 🤗

Great series overall. The first 7 books move along nicely, then starting book 8 it kind of gets bogged down and doesn't pickup again until Brandon Sanderson takes it over and finishes the last 3. RIP Robert Jordan.

Speaking if Sanderson, I am currently reading the Stormlight Chronicle series and it is excellent. Slow to start but really picks up at about half way through the first book. (the books are around 1200 pages each however)

Supreme_Atromancer · August 2020

eMKa8 wrote: »

Hi 👋

Interesting question , i hope...
What are the main differences between the vast landscapes of Tamriel in ESO versus the stand alone games such as skyrim , oblivion, morrowind,...

The demand for fast-paced action and grind everywhere often impacts the landscapes by making them feel crowded with metrically-spawning mobs. In Skyrim, exploration itself is its own reward. Climb a mountain and suddenly come across a vast, beautiful vista. Around this corner you find some ruins - the buildings themselves have stories to tell - about culture, about history. Every now and again you will come across an encounter - a saber cat, or a group of bandits. In ESO, it feels like every step you take is triggering a bunch of 2 to 3 saber cats and an imp, each with perfectly standardised issue of 7gp and a rubedo leather. Perhaps one green rubedite dagger. When you finally get to the designated Point of Interest, its usually just a skeleton with an arrow in its head with a journal nearby explaining how the person is hoping an arrow doesn't suddenly hit them in the head. Or you find lost Direnni Towers which are really just generic Breton towers, and are hard to get a sense of because they are jumbled in with another ruins not 2m to the side, because any open space is a waste and better used to support non-stop action and grind.

Especially in the base game, but even in later expansions, zones - even sometimes entire provinces - use the same architecture from one side to the other. Where in games like Morrowind and Skyrim, the world tells a story. Whiterun is majestic and warm, displaying a celebration of nordic flair in the architecture, despite the obvious wear-and-tear; where Windhelm is dark and menacing - ancient, hard stone everywhere. Mushroom towers grow around ancient Velothi fortresses where the Telvanni have settled in the East, while you can see where the Imperials have managed to gain a toe-hold by their distinctive settlements in the South and South-West. In ESO, Daggerfall is *identical* to Wayrest, Shornhelm and Evermore, while the entirety of Mainland Morrowind is built in Indoril style. Same with Summerset. And Elsweyr. Its like during the vast history of elvish settlement history on Summerset, they developed one single architecture, and forever developed everything in exactly the same style. There's nothing to read into here. No story the world can tell.

eMKa8 wrote: »

is much bigger and its online and it has skyrim! Or what am i missing here ?

Yes, one thing that ESO has is that the vast amount of content it has *** all over anything the SPTs can give, *even with mods*. They could stop developing today and there would still be *years* of content. But they *aren't* stopping today, so you can create a character and develop them with fresh content for a long time to come.

eMKa8 wrote: »

Is the gameplay different ?

Yes. Spend 5 minutes on the Official Forums main discussion front page and it will become eye-bleedingly apparent that absolutely, infinitissimally-defined balance is the prime development imperative. Everything else is bent to fit around it, with very mixed results on a feeling of authenticity or soul. The single player titles can get away with a lot of stuff because balance, while important, isn't game-breaking. They're free to put things in just because they're freaking cool. In ESO, there's huge amounts of really cool stuff they could consider adding that the community, and TES-lovers would absolutely LOVE to see, but would never fly because it would have to get through the gauntlet of the sorts of discussion you see on the front page. Daedric artefacts? Meh, put them in the crown store. Spellcrafting? MAH BALANCE!!11

Classes were largely completely new - the developers pretty much completely ignored what had been established in the franchise to impose a weird collection of things that probably speaks more to the MMO crowd than the people coming over from the SPTs. Want to make a Nord Barbarian who smashes their puny enemies with their mighty axe, or a martial sword-master who eskews all magic, like you in the other games? Sorry, you're a Dragonknight, and your power depends on Akaviri fire. Because each class was given a new power source with big, obvious visual queues which doesn't feel much like anything from the original games. The mythology or "power fantasy" of each feels contrived and tacked on, in order to force fit them into the lore. Sorcerers draw their exclusively lightning-based magic from Meridia for some reason, unless they are "stamsorcs", who create hurricanes presumably with the power of their stamina or some-such. In the face of demand for ice mages, rangers and druids, and magicka tanking mechanics, ZoS decided to mash all these concepts together, and when faced with the quirky, misfit package it presented, decided to make their animal skills all fit a Vvardenfell because that was the chapter they were selling and I guess they believed that no one would understand what was going on unless they plugged every orofice with this fact. So get used to shooting your enemies with Cliffracers and your friends with mushrooms while a blue jellyfish bobs merrily behind you pissing blue whatever at the back of your head and tell everyone you're doing lore right.

DaveMoeDee · August 2020

ESO terrain doesn't compare to Skyrim. You really feel like you can explore anywhere and get lost in the wild in Skyrim. In ESO, you get lost because they put in a bunch of impassible terrain and it takes forever to figure out how to get to the other side. The ambiance isn't there in ESO. I love ESO, but the world fills very synthetic. Enemies are always located in the same location scattered around. I know people say this is normal MMO stuff, but I don't play MMOs and this all stands out.