bathynomusESO wrote: »

I have been back in ESO for about 4 months now. I managed to level quite a few characters to 50, all classes and equip them with decent gear/sets. I've maxed out crafting on several of them. I have 8 healers using different racial bonuses and classes, several dps and 1 tank, 12 characters so far. I've invested in the game 60+ hours/week, ESO+ and crown purchases. I am currently weighing the pros and cons of sticking with the game, hoping that things will get better.

Pros:
1. Atmospheric, weather, day/night cycles, music, scenery. This is probably the biggest reason that I love the game.
2. Random dungeons. The majority of my random dungeon experiences have been great. This is what I spend most of my time doing.
3. Story and quests. Interesting, but not my main interest. I would like to get into this more.
4. PvP, prior to the recent DM changes. When I want to veg out and relax, I do PvP.

Cons:
1. Having to rely on a glitch, animation canceling, to perform as well as the top players. If this is now a "feature", build the option somehow into the UI so that everyone can do it easily or remove the glitch. This is a game killing "feature" for me. It gives other players an advantage and apparently nothing that I do appears to make this work.
2. Recent PvP changes, we lost randoms and this still does not appear to be fixed. Little map variety. Lack of balance. We need separate PvP gear that is balanced specifically for PvP. Perhaps, PvP only gear should be allowed in PvP areas and would be an easier way to balance.
3. Fishing is boring and you cannot just fish anywhere you want. It could be much better (e.g.: New World's fishing).
4. Player Housing. No apparent benefits or bonuses for housing items. In BDO, for example, you could house trophies and other items that would give benefits/bonuses, etc.
5. Only able to equip 5 skills (6 with Ultimate). Weapon swapping is an interesting idea, but I found it to be more cumbersome than enjoyable.
6. Skills need to be reworked for every class. Some should be eliminated entirely. I found that only about 1/2 the skills were even beneficial, others were just a waste of skill points and felt more like fillers.
7. No central Auction House and this one really bothers me. There have been numerous posts on this and most of the opposition comes from those who benefit the most from the current limited system; gold sellers, etc. I am broke in-game. I have never been this broke in any MMO. Prices are through the roof on quite a few items.

More could be listed here. ESO is an interesting game and has made some major improvements over the years. It is better than many MMOs that I have played, but it could still use some major improvements. Just my 2 cents (the rest was used to buy mats).

Atmosphere and Dungeons: I agree on most of your pros and I’m glad you’ve also had mostly positive experiences with dungeons! Certainly not every random will be, but I think the negative get focused on too much.

Story and Quests: I also would like to get into the story more and at least for me, I feel that being given some choice in what you say even some outcomes where feasible in a multiplayer game, and I want NPCs to respond appropriately to me based on my character’s race (where relevant, obviously often it is not, but having a character talk about a race as if I were not a member is really jarring) and previous choices and interactions. SWTOR did this to an astounding degree for the first main story arc and it is the only MMO in which I was so into the stories, I would create characters for the primary purpose of playing through them in different ways.

In ESO, the stories I’ve enjoyed most so far are Orsinium and some of the side quests in Summerset.

PVP: My veg out activity is collecting surveys! I do like PVP where I can find good matches but for me it is a more intense activity. And all deathmatch all the time isn’t my preference either.

Animation Cancelling: Regarding cons, I feel the same about animation cancelling being requisite for DPS being rather lame and uninteresting. I like dynamic reactive gameplay and the thought of practicing timing ones rotation with animation canceling to get those high numbers sounds bloody miserable to me! So I play endgame PVE content as healer which I do enjoy.

Fishing: I’ve not experienced fishing in any other game but I wouldn’t want it changed in any way that took away from what players can currently do. I don’t fish a lot because in general I confess I would find it boring too but doing a zone with guildies where we also take out bosses and other things along the way can be fun.

Housing: My initial response is, Don’t touch my housing! I don’t want to feel obligated with anything to do with housing, like, trial groups looking for players but you must have XYZ on display in your primary? Noooo thank you! Maybe that’s absurd and I’ve never played BDO but that’s what came to mind. I like housing as my personal private sanctuary or an environment/story that I can create and then share with others. So all that said, I would like to see further additions that would broaden what people can do with housing and also make it much easier for people to make their houses accessible to the community! EHT is awesome but this should absolutely be a feature of the game and not require an add-on (which of course aren’t even an option on consoles)! More PVP options, including abilities recognizing floors as such would be awesome, as well as the ability to place and path hostiles. Also, houseguests that act as vendors, ideally with inventory stocked and priced by the player and could be used for role-playing (I’d love to have a Dunmer bartender who sold appropriate food and drink at my Ashfall Cornerclub) or for profit. I’m sure there are other additions too which could broaden the appeal of housing and what can be done with it.

Skills: I feel the number of skills is good and it’s why this is the MMO where I finally use keybinds for skills instead of clicking on them (yes, I know clicking on skills is horrible, but I could never get over the hurdle of transition in other games where as ESO feels more set up for that by default so I forced myself to play that way from the beginning (since starting a new game is already a transition) and now I could never go back! But I wouldn’t want to have to hit multiple keys for an ability (which I think becomes essential when you have bars of them as you could in SWTOR for instance). Plus, as you say, there are only so many really good abilities anyway. I’d be all for improvements, ideally as third morphs so as not to take away anyone’s options, however niche, but then I wouldn’t want to see everything all homogenized but rather additional class/skill-line unique abilities and I realize that would probably be difficult to balance… As for weapon swapping, I definitely like having this and I think I’ve played a number of games where I could swap between two weapon sets, often melee and ranges options. GW2 also had weapon swapping but with a cooldown, so if you swapped at the wrong time or accidentally it was $#]€><^%%>]! So coming from that, weapon swapping hasn’t felt cumbersome to me but rather a way that I like for switching between melee and ranged or offensive versus defensive focus.

Auction House: Now I am surprised that you think an auction house would make prices lower. Starting any game so much seems unobtainably expensive, does it not? But over time you see prices go up and down, obtain more yourself, find ways that you can make money, etc. And you can find deals by checking those out of the way traders or looking on a website such as Tamriel Trade Center (of course if it’s something in demand or it’s a great deal in a prime location, it probably won’t be there). What would be the situation with a central auction house? Traders would have standing buy orders for everything, yes everything. In GW2 I focused on the pricing trends of things like mid-tier dyes, low-risk and usually modest profit margin, but a reliable income. In ESO the trading game requires too much footwork for me, lol. So I just hunt for deals on things I personally want. I made a lot of gold on the central auction house in SWTOR, especially when server transfers were cheap, and modest gold in GW2 where everything was centralized so competition fierce and I had to occupy a smaller niche. Here you still can make a killing, but it requires a lot more work and without standing buy orders, you can actually find deals on things you want. It’s a trade-off for convenience. When I started ESO, I felt like the trader system was a pain and I would have rather had an central auction house but now I like this system, pros and cons, although I would really really like ZOS to add an option to hide recipes/motifs/etc. that I already know.

I hadn’t intended to write so much, but there it is!

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Also, houseguests that act as vendors, ideally with inventory stocked and priced by the player...

That made me think of the old SWG vendors that we could put in our houses. That would be a great thing to have and be another option for trading. It would make houses more useful. It's been a lot of years, but I think you could search the market place, then travel to the person's house and buy from their vendors. Everyone could have their own trade vendor(s) in their houses!