I completly Agree with that

having a toggle and intensity slider for the flashing/strobing effects would be awesome

Nope we finally have modern looking mounts that look good and cool, not boring. Sorry no,

wilykcat wrote: »

I prefer when a fantasy game has colors, magic, sparkles, and other unique elements because it shows creativity and imagination has been used. This is what I expect to see when playing a fantasy game.

Real life has tons of flashy colorful elements too even naturally occurring. Fantasy games will sometimes take inspiration from real life, change some of it, and create something new.

If I see a game that appears to be dull (without any fun fantasy elements or exaggerated special effects), I won't play it. I'm glad so many fantasy games have such unique special effects that gives each game character, including eso.

Elder scrolls in general is generally more on the realism side, though. Not just explaining away things as magic. Summoning atronachs as mounts sounds like something a skilled sorcerer could do. Creating a whole new animal out of magic is probably out of reach for the vast majority of people.
Not all flashy mounts are questionable though. Like the radiant apex flower senche-raht people raved about. He’s at least a mage and is I suppose essentially casting a momento on himself.

I feel like they are asking their kids for advice on what the effects should look like.

+1

Whatever happened to immersion and "grounded fantasy?"

ZOS figure out that a lot of players are hyped by shinning things. Like small kids.

I'm among those who hate the intrusive neon cartoon graphics associated with so many of the newer mounts. When summoned, many of them render my screen useless for a few seconds.

That said, although my view is shared by many, there are also those who like those flashy mounts. I would be fine if I had a setting that displayed other players on a simple brown generic horse.

The game has struggled in the past rendering things like the blue flame in wayshrines, the Daedric portal to Volundrung in Cyrodiil, and lighting in housing. Now the glow of harvesting runes and Thieves Troves are fading.

This eleven year old game just cannot handle this much glowing stuff. Let us turn off the obnoxiously glowing and exploding mounts so we can see the stuff in game that is really important. Stop catering to narcissists.

wilykcat wrote: »

I prefer when a fantasy game has colors, magic, sparkles, and other unique elements because it shows creativity and imagination has been used. This is what I expect to see when playing a fantasy game.

Real life has tons of flashy colorful elements too even naturally occurring. Fantasy games will sometimes take inspiration from real life, change some of it, and create something new.

If I see a game that appears to be dull (without any fun fantasy elements or exaggerated special effects), I won't play it. I'm glad so many fantasy games have such unique special effects that gives each game character, including eso.

Fantasy doesn't equal whatever goes. Lord of the Rings is a fantasy. Final Fantasy is a fantasy. Warcraft is a fantasy. The Witcher is a fantasy. Star Wars could technically be seen as a fantasy. Would you say these are all the same? They all got sparkles and colours? Fantasy is a genre, a very varied one hence why it also got a lot of sub-genres like high fantasy, low fantasy, dark fantasy etc, and all genres has hundreds of franchises with their own setting in them. Settings with their own world building, their own rules, and their own style, which they are consistent with, or at least should be for the suspension of disbelief to remain and not have people go, wait that seems off.

Elder Scrolls world has kept it consistency somewhat since Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall and III Morrowind, which is when they got their own style down and felt a lot less like an odd DnD. ESO at the start, was a it off, hence why it was quite disliked by fans, but with dlcs it got better, but now as time has gone on and it seems to be such a big focus on mmo-ness and miscrotransaction shops the style consistency of the world is being thrown out.

Tamriel even with all it's ups and down over the games that didn't always fit previous lore, still had something in common. The world is a high fantasy, with magic users and and fantastical things wide spread over it, but it's also quite grounded. The most commonly used mount was horses, not horses made out mushrooms or lava, but normal horses, with the exceptions of places like Morrowind where you had guars and various giant bugs. Any weird sparkly, smoky, rainbow farting thing would be a truly rare thing to see, such as they are in the single player games. There are some magical looking mounts (which are all still horses), but they are shown to be extraordinary things.
Now, it's not all grimdark, we could definitely have some clear magic influence, but it shouldn't be a wolf that is somehow rideable, made out of shadows, breathe fire and got fancy neon lights on it. Instead a much more suiting thing for the setting would be mounts such as horses, guars etc, that got magical and enchanted equipments to them. Maybe some lord had a mage enchant his knights horses' armour with a glowing rune so they could see well in darker places without worry for a lantern, or maybe a mage enchanted a pretty lantern to follow them on their mount for similar reason. Maybe just enchant a fancy heraldry or family crest to show how wealthy you are.

Not just mounts either. So many weird skins and body markings that looks like nothing seen in Elder Scrolls before, not even in the game itself. It's ridiculous how we don't have fancy dunmer tattoos seen in Morrowind or its concept art, or ones that are mentioned in lore such as the gaudy Nibenese tattoos. But we can have some flatly coloured and badly done leaves and flowers or awkward looking stained glass windows all over our characters skin. So many of these cosmetics would even look weird in World of Warcraft with how cartoony they look, and WoW is already very cartoony.

Which is another point, it's not just moving away from Elder Scrolls style consistency, a setting that definitely got room for strange magical things, but it is that it's badly done. Uncreative, and not really based in lore. Which is a shame, because again, the setting definitely have a lot of inspiration for those things.

But the most noticeable issue, the one that makes this style inconsitency so blatant, is that there is so much of it with very little else.
There's just too much of column B's gimmicky flashiness and way too little of column A's grounded stuff. Which is made worse by column B's things are badly done or ill-fitting to the setting. They could make B things that is much more suiting for the setting, but these are not it, and it definitely would have been better if they early on made the grounded column A stuff the majority. Of course we can't change that, bit it doesn't mean though we should just continue make B larger and larger now.

There's a "Glare" effect on the Living Armor mounts that has always hurt my eyes/brain to look at when they use it in other parts of the game. It's not that they cast light, it's that the glare is a lens-flare type of graphic that blocks you from seeing objects between your camera and the source of the glare. The glare source is inside the Living Armor mounts, so it makes the mount armor hard to look at, because it's blocked by its own lens flare. I don't think this should be a setting to turn off (no, the current setting does not turn this off), but removed entirely (from player cosmetics and most furnishings) to reduce eye strain and make the design of the game easier to enjoy without being blocked by glares.

I don't have a picture, but it's that blue circle from some wayshrines that shines through walls or through your character, or the torch from the Treasure Hunter personality, or the way that an Azure Plasm Cage shines through walls and blocks you from seeing your character even if it's behind your character.

When I've pointed out to people that their braziers in their home have this effect and show them alternatives, they typically start seeing the issue and how much smoother/less strainful the game looks without it.

Those exploding mounts need to be toned down before my already weak PC explodes.

"i want my game bland and soulless"

The thing I hate the most? Mounts that make sudden loud *EXPLOSION* sounds. Please stop!