This is a loaded question.

I don't know what mmorpg has better combat than eso.

Eso has my favorite combat system and immersion is better than other top MMORPGs

colossalvoids wrote: »

Good is subjective. I don't recall many MMOs with even decent combat to my exact taste, bar good. Whilst eso fits me like a glove in this exact engine, setting etc.

Combat here is not bad. At least, in PVE. Both with and without weaving.

My impression with MMO's is that while combat can make people quit but, it doesn't necessarily pull that many people in on it's own. (But, that might be because of the dozen or so MMO's I've played none of them had combat that was really that great on it's own.)

You would also likely hit the issue that portions of he player base that are quite vocal like the current design and so changing it would at least in the short term produce a negative response on social media which could wipe out early gains.

I think ESO's combat is bad but, I think the issues are magnified due to culture, itemization, visuals, and story issues.

You can beat the majority of the content in ESO on pretty much any build. However, because some builds dramatically outperform others social pressures end up driving players into builds that aren't necessarily fun and are frequently too good for the content.

With the occasional exception, combat in ESO simply does not provide much with regards to rewards which makes the combat experience miss out on one of the positives that many other MMO's have. You also hit the issue that the combat that does actually have rewards draws in a significant number of people that are in a huge rush which can lead to mediocre to bad experiences.

ESO's animation visuals are a bit dated and you have a fair number of animations designs that to me seem ugly. A portion of the appeal of Oakensoul for me was that it meant I didn't need to look at the visuals for some of the buffs anymore.

I quit ESO before the difficulty dropped because I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying the story enough for it to be worth it to slog through the combat. I don't have Cadwell's Silver or Gold done because I didn't enjoy many of the quests the first time and have no desire to do them again. My favorite sections today in ESO are generally Soloing Public Dungeons and Soloing Dungeons because the story attached to those environments is generally better and includes more environmental detail than the other parts of the game.

I like the combat system in ESO, it works better for me than some of the MMOs I've played since 1998.

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

My impression with MMO's is that while combat can make people quit but, it doesn't necessarily pull that many people in on it's own. (But, that might be because of the dozen or so MMO's I've played none of them had combat that was really that great on it's own.)

You would also likely hit the issue that portions of he player base that are quite vocal like the current design and so changing it would at least in the short term produce a negative response on social media which could wipe out early gains.

I think ESO's combat is bad but, I think the issues are magnified due to culture, itemization, visuals, and story issues.

You can beat the majority of the content in ESO on pretty much any build. However, because some builds dramatically outperform others social pressures end up driving players into builds that aren't necessarily fun and are frequently too good for the content.

With the occasional exception, combat in ESO simply does not provide much with regards to rewards which makes the combat experience miss out on one of the positives that many other MMO's have. You also hit the issue that the combat that does actually have rewards draws in a significant number of people that are in a huge rush which can lead to mediocre to bad experiences.

ESO's animation visuals are a bit dated and you have a fair number of animations designs that to me seem ugly. A portion of the appeal of Oakensoul for me was that it meant I didn't need to look at the visuals for some of the buffs anymore.

I quit ESO before the difficulty dropped because I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying the story enough for it to be worth it to slog through the combat. I don't have Cadwell's Silver or Gold done because I didn't enjoy many of the quests the first time and have no desire to do them again. My favorite sections today in ESO are generally Soloing Public Dungeons and Soloing Dungeons because the story attached to those environments is generally better and includes more environmental detail than the other parts of the game.

One of the top running MMORPGs. I am sorry eso wasn't for you but most enjoy the combat

Pve combat got bad after Oakensoul. Hold down 1 button and out dps 99% of the players in content. Sure I could play 2 bar builds but why get sweaty if the outcome is the same.

Probably fewer people would join than the number who would quit because combat got annoying/difficult.

i have never played an mmorpg with better combat nor another mmorpg that is elder scrolls.

if people like elder scrolls or think the game looks interesting they'll play the game.

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

My impression with MMO's is that while combat can make people quit but, it doesn't necessarily pull that many people in on it's own. (But, that might be because of the dozen or so MMO's I've played none of them had combat that was really that great on it's own.)

You would also likely hit the issue that portions of he player base that are quite vocal like the current design and so changing it would at least in the short term produce a negative response on social media which could wipe out early gains.

I think ESO's combat is bad but, I think the issues are magnified due to culture, itemization, visuals, and story issues.

You can beat the majority of the content in ESO on pretty much any build. However, because some builds dramatically outperform others social pressures end up driving players into builds that aren't necessarily fun and are frequently too good for the content.

With the occasional exception, combat in ESO simply does not provide much with regards to rewards which makes the combat experience miss out on one of the positives that many other MMO's have. You also hit the issue that the combat that does actually have rewards draws in a significant number of people that are in a huge rush which can lead to mediocre to bad experiences.

ESO's animation visuals are a bit dated and you have a fair number of animations designs that to me seem ugly. A portion of the appeal of Oakensoul for me was that it meant I didn't need to look at the visuals for some of the buffs anymore.

I quit ESO before the difficulty dropped because I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying the story enough for it to be worth it to slog through the combat. I don't have Cadwell's Silver or Gold done because I didn't enjoy many of the quests the first time and have no desire to do them again. My favorite sections today in ESO are generally Soloing Public Dungeons and Soloing Dungeons because the story attached to those environments is generally better and includes more environmental detail than the other parts of the game.

One of the top running MMORPGs. I am sorry eso wasn't for you but most enjoy the combat

Yet when you ask around for an MMO to recommend, almost nobody ever says ESO.
And when you ask people why, top reason is that the combat is off-putting. It just looks terribly janky and not particularly Elder Scrolls.

At least that's my experience.

Faulgor wrote: »

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

My impression with MMO's is that while combat can make people quit but, it doesn't necessarily pull that many people in on it's own. (But, that might be because of the dozen or so MMO's I've played none of them had combat that was really that great on it's own.)

You would also likely hit the issue that portions of he player base that are quite vocal like the current design and so changing it would at least in the short term produce a negative response on social media which could wipe out early gains.

I think ESO's combat is bad but, I think the issues are magnified due to culture, itemization, visuals, and story issues.

You can beat the majority of the content in ESO on pretty much any build. However, because some builds dramatically outperform others social pressures end up driving players into builds that aren't necessarily fun and are frequently too good for the content.

With the occasional exception, combat in ESO simply does not provide much with regards to rewards which makes the combat experience miss out on one of the positives that many other MMO's have. You also hit the issue that the combat that does actually have rewards draws in a significant number of people that are in a huge rush which can lead to mediocre to bad experiences.

ESO's animation visuals are a bit dated and you have a fair number of animations designs that to me seem ugly. A portion of the appeal of Oakensoul for me was that it meant I didn't need to look at the visuals for some of the buffs anymore.

I quit ESO before the difficulty dropped because I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying the story enough for it to be worth it to slog through the combat. I don't have Cadwell's Silver or Gold done because I didn't enjoy many of the quests the first time and have no desire to do them again. My favorite sections today in ESO are generally Soloing Public Dungeons and Soloing Dungeons because the story attached to those environments is generally better and includes more environmental detail than the other parts of the game.

One of the top running MMORPGs. I am sorry eso wasn't for you but most enjoy the combat

Yet when you ask around for an MMO to recommend, almost nobody ever says ESO.
And when you ask people why, top reason is that the combat is off-putting. It just looks terribly janky and not particularly Elder Scrolls.

At least that's my experience.

I get that, I like the combat, a lot! but it's a bit arcade-like and the animations and animation canceling, while very fun to me, is a bit weird to look at...

The game would have benefitted from a skill connecting animation/system to connect light and heavy attacks and skills to improve the flow a bit.

Might not be too late to do something like that. However a combat overhaul will never happen at this point anyway.

I don't personally like weaving / animation cancelling. I think it's a very dumb "mechanic" that no new player would expect to be there because it's just a glitch in the game that then got adopted as a "feature".

But that point aside, I'm not sure I agree with the premise, in that I'm not sure the combat in ESO is bad.

But what would *certainly* help is if ZOS sat down and spent a good year or so working out how to *explain the game* to players, because nothing about it is intuitive.

Some of that work isn't even difficult, it just needs a little thought while wearing the hat of a person who has never played the game before. For example, a set might have stats like "adds 164 critical chance". It wouldn't kill anyone to have a tooltip saying what critical chance actually means, and whether 164 is a lot of it. Otherwise the set description might as well say "three lemons and a pinecone" for all the insight it gives someone.

But it's not just stats. It's also the mechanics of combat that are never fully explained, beyond press the mouse button to use your weapon and right click to block (oh, I'm sorry, "brace" wherever we've decided to use different words).

There are so many features that suffer from very obvious inertia, in that most of the developers and many of the players have lived with them the way they are for so many years that they just know what they mean instinctively and don't see the problems for anyone else. New players don't understand this stuff for reasons that should be obvious -- it is almost impossible to understand. Hell, I don't understand half of it and I have played for years.

It's pretty hard for someone trying ESO to say it has good combat when they have no idea how its combat even works.

PS One very, very basic change they could make is to the third person camera position. For reasons I simply do not understand, the default position of the third person camera is off-centred when the way you target in ESO is *exclusively* by pointing the centre of the screen at your target.

That camera view makes the third person camera very close to unusable (as does the often very difficult to see reticle once any combat is going on), and I'm not clear why a new player would think to check whether the camera view can be changed, when they might not realise just how much the camera position itself contributes to making combat feel bad.