Rkindaleft wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the main story spent too much time on the recollection wood elves than ithelia, there was only a handful of quests actually involving ithelia that she felt more incidental than the main focus

This is my main complaint about the story as well. TBH the best quest in the whole questline was the one where she's sitting at the inn and you talk to her. We really needed more Ithelia and less wood elf drama especially considering that it was like half of the questline while not really being that related to the main story outside of retracing her steps.

yeah i think the outcast inn was probably the best zone POI quest

I just finished the chapter story (and have done many of the side quests) and found the experience very enjoyable. The best part was the zone story in general - although there were some flaws in the execution. Especially the parts involving Ithelia directly were very intriguing and engaging. The inn quest in particular was exciting, it fleshed Ithelia out very nicely and had a nicely strange, spooky atmosphere. In the end I found myself pitying Ithelia, Torvesard and Vargas. The writing in these parts was very good, even excellent at times. There's only one question I would have liked to be addressed or even asked: Was Ithelia really inevitably going to be a monster, or did Hermaeus Mora inadvertently create a self-fulfilling prophecy by overreacting to one possible fate he saw? Either way, what happened to her was quite tragic (and at the same time, it nicely answered why she wasn't heard of in the single player games). Ithelia's voice acting was top notch, which certainly helped in the enjoyment of the story.

The ending was bittersweet, which is both a good and a bad thing. On the other hand, it avoided the fairy tale "happy ever after"-feel these storylines can have. But on the other, I hated how Leramil was treated by Mora. She had served faithfully and then got such a raw deal as a reward. Well, what can expect from a demon?

The side quests I did were mostly very nice. The writers had bothered to make even more insignificant NPCs interesting and their voice acting was well done. The murder mystery at Weatherleah manor was very engaging in particular, as was the quest with the Scarlets.

The zone is very beautiful. I love the autumn colours, the architecture, the new motifs. The design people responsible for these did an outstanding job! Skingrad as a city is both believable as a medieval-style town and functional writ-wise. The visual atmosphere in general is one of the best in all ESO, on par with Summerset even.

Scribing is somewhat of a middle ground. The system has much potential, but the grind to unlock the scripts is rather heavy for doing with all characters. The storyline was nice to do once or twice, but fortunately isn't obligatory for all characters.

As for the negative, there's quite little. I agree with some others that the story spent too much time with the Bosmer at the expense of more interesting things.

Also, there were some bugs. One boss in Silorn got stuck in the wall, for instance, and a random encounter was (pardon the pun) randomly ended by another encounter spawning at the same place in the middle of dialogue.

The incursions are a pain to complete. Okay, they are supposed to be an epic invasion, but do we really have to kill that many tedious things before we get even to fight the real boss? Speaking of bosses, some of the public dungeon ones are rather too beefy. I had serious trouble soloing Viikor in Silorn (and gave up in frustration), which shouldn't be the case with a public dungeon boss. They should be solo content, after all.

So, the scale certainly shows much more positive than negative things.

I thought the zone was gorgeous. The placement of the wayshrines were logical, unlike Northern Elsweyr and Murkmire. The story was great, but...

The quests were inane. I hate going back to places I have been before to gather something else. By the time it ended I wanted to send Beragon to live with Stuga so I would never hear from him again. Especially in the epilogue. Skingrad was promising, but its essentially a movie prop city; there is nothing to do and most buildings you can not enter. The delves, especially Varen's Watch, are needlessly winding and long for what they offer.

It's the hope that kills you.

loveeso wrote: »

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

loveeso wrote: »

Yeah, I agree with what others said about scribing. It is just too much grind for someone who has a lot of characters, like different supports or tanks for different group setups, and so on. Don't buy till they fix it unless you have only one character or just love to waste your life on grinding .
Recent Reviews on Steam: Mostly Negative.

You do know that you only have to do the 5 minute intro quest on other characters to access the scribing right? Also, I've accumulated enough scripts on my main to fully spec out at least 4 other alts now. Hardly a grind at all.

Hey Obviously, I wasn't talking about the quest but the following (per character):

11 grimoires (for now, more will probably be added with future updates)

21 focus scripts
20 signature scripts
26 affix scripts

67 scripts in total (for now, more will probably be added with future updates)

1 x luminous ink for each script applied to a grimoire each time you do it (3 skills per grimoire = 3 x luminous ink)

So, for 20 characters, it would be:

220 grimoires
1340 scripts
660 x luminous ink if all grimoires used on each character just once (more if multiple times, and obviously, less ink if not all grimoires used)

That's quite a grind in my grimoire but ofc we may disagree as to what constitutes a grind

Why would you need all those scribed skills on every alt? Realistically you add two or three at best to your skill rotation and you are good to go. Or am I missing something here? This feels a bit like: I went 100 hours of fishing and 50 hours of hunting but I am a vegetarian.

new raid is cool but overland bosses are bad and the story is as boring as always. Scribing is kinda cool too but it makes older content so much easier since you can have so many shields now

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

if you didnt like pvp, you could do other options for affix scripts, unless you were trying to maximize your script gains per day

bolgrul undaunted daily and incursion daily quests both also give affix scripts

i agree that the unbound scripts are not useful both with how infrequently they drop, but also due to all the other sources (the guaranteed daily ones + vendors that sell scripts)

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Shara_Wynn wrote: »

Positives:

1. The crafting area is the best in the game with everything close together.
2. Wayshrines are situated fairly close to each world incursion event which makes them quick and easy to get to.
3. World incursion events are back to being open to everyone (unlike Nymics).
4. Some of the furnishing pieces are just lovely, with the addition of "clutter" pieces to make houses seem "fuller".
5. The new motif dropping from delves and world bosses is pretty nice looking.
6. The new dye from the Trial is really nice.
7. The zone itself is stunning. Yes I love those orange sunsets/sunrises in the Sutch area.
8. Skill Styles are a nice addition. I can't wait for these to be expanded to include more colors and class skills.
9. Some of the animations on the scribed skills are really fun.
10. Some really interesting craftable and overland sets.

Negatives:

1. I am missing the new companions.
2. Invulnerable phases on everything.
3. Linking a previous chapter (Necrom) to the completion of the main story line of The Gold Road.
4. Tedious main story quest line that HAS to be done with the same character that did the Necrom main story line.
5. Including the Antiquarian Chase in the "Saviour of" achievement.
6. It feels like there is very little to steal from the environment.
7. Having to obtain scripts for all your alts. They should at least have made these tradeable.
8. Lack of luminous Ink drops.
9. Scribing needs a LOT of tweeking. There is hardly ANY scribed skills that are better than regular skills.
10. Scribing is a total gold sink if you have multiple characters.

there are unbound scripts that can drop, but they are exceptionally rare, ive only seen a handful of people link them since gold road came out

i get significantly more scripts just opening various daily boxes, and put extras in my bank to trade to alts that need them, and with the 3 per week that can be bought from the scholarium, i dont feel i will ever have to buy an unbound script

Yes, I've since heard there are unbound scripts, but I think they are too few and far in-between and it would be nice if all scripts were made tradeable. I am however, finally on my last alt for getting all the scripts. The affix ones for me, have been the bottleneck and despite my dislike of PVP, I have been a good girl and made sure I did my IC dailies every day in order to get it "over and done with" as soon as possible!

if you didnt like pvp, you could do other options for affix scripts, unless you were trying to maximize your script gains per day

bolgrul undaunted daily and incursion daily quests both also give affix scripts

i agree that the unbound scripts are not useful both with how infrequently they drop, but also due to all the other sources (the guaranteed daily ones + vendors that sell scripts)

Yes. I know them all off by heart now. Which scripts need what quests. As I play off peak, it actually wasn't that harsh in IC, I only got ganked maybe two or three times max (during MYM). Sometimes not at all.

Pros
1. The visuals are very nice. I saw the sun come up over the horizon was like my goodness.
2. I'm really digging the implications of the story. And I'm enjoying the story out right as well.

Observations. Neither Pro nor Con.
1. On one hand it feels small. On the other hand those resources are being spent on the back end. So I can let that slide because I accept what's happening.
2. The same amount of work is getting done It's just not all that work is going towards content anymore. I can be aware that stuff is happening in the background so I'm not worried. They change the release pattern every few years anyway.
3. There are from a statistical point of view fewer bugs and a lot of things got fixed over the last little while. A cold comfort when I feel like I'm still not getting what I want but it is factually true. Difference in what I "feel" and what I "know" is annoy sometimes.
4. Balance of the scribing system. Things always get rebalanced so.... Whatever. I don't expect perfect balance of anything on release. I do a bit of game development. Saying something "is overpowered/underpowered" literally tells me nothing.

Cons
-Dear Lord the work to reward ratio of scribing system is waaaaay off. I like having the custom skills but the amount of work I have to do just feels too extra. Like TOOO much. For context I really have no issue doing it, but even I'm like okay this is a bit much.

Outside of that I really don't have any other cons

For me:

Strong: Lucent Citadel Trial - it's AWESOME. Now my favourite trial.

Weak: The way-overused immunity 'god mode' phases of bosses (this is a very lazy and boring way to pad out a fight)
Bosmer taking up at least half the main quest. I hate Bosmer. I was hoping for more Imperial stuff, not more wood elves shoe-horned in.
Most of Skingrad was closed up.
Zone is very small.
Ithelia got a really bum deal from Herma Mora.

This has convinced me to no longer pay full price for chapters. Bargain bin only from now on.

Strong point: new skills which I think is a good thing, giving players more built in power vs just relying on sets for power

Weak point: Luminous ink, a major selling point is literally behind a firewall of luminous ink having atrocious drop rates.

Rkindaleft wrote: »

I see the orange thing argued here on the forums a lot.

Am I the only one who doesn't hate the saturated autumn look of the zone?

The Zone doesn't bother me.

The character login screen is Horrid tho.

IMHO

Same song second verse as with every DLC. Scribing is not spellcrafting, grinding to this degree is abhorrent.