ceruulean wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

ceruulean wrote: »

Light attack weaving has turned off more players than anything. If the devs overhauled combat to be more organic and less monotonous, with options to use left click to extend combos or trigger special attacks, I'm sure many players will try the game again, but I highly doubt that's gonna happen.

I think there’s a lot of truth to this. A lot of MMO vets claim that ESO’s combat is the worst they’ve ever seen and that’s why they don’t play.

On the flip side there’s people like me who love ESO’s combat and it’s the reason I’ve stuck with the game through all of the many complaints I have.

In my opinion, I think it’s a better strategy to just embrace such a fundamental aspect of the game even if it’s different from competitors. Let the game be different and find its audience. ESO has spent so much time trying to change itself to attract those who don’t like the combat that they’ve upset a lot of long time players with their decisions.

If ESO tried to become like tab target MMOs, I would quit immediately and so would players like me. I love light attack weaving, no cooldowns, and the overall speed of ESO’s combat. I wonder if the hatred for that stuff comes from tab target MMO nostalgia or using keyboard and mouse as the input method.

I wasn’t even born when games like EverQuest came out, so I have no nostalgia for old school tab target MMOs. I also play with controller, and I can definitely see how playing without it would dramatically worsen my experience.

I don’t really subscribe to the idea that ESO’s combat is somehow objectively bad/inorganic and that it needs to change. I just think it’s very different than what a lot of old school players are used to. It could be an asset if they just embraced it imo.

This has nothing to do with tab target, nostalgia, or pace/speed. I play a ton of action combat games. Even FPS players can attest that ESO combat is just terrible and induces RSI in a way that most other games don't. If a combat system has a higher risk of inducing RSI, that doesn't make it good or quirky, it is objectively terrible for the majority of the community.

This hasn’t been my experience or the experience of those that I’ve played with. I’ve definitely heard of cases where people with existing conditions like arthritis had trouble with ESO, but they had trouble with other games as well.

ESO isn’t uniquely hard on my hands compared to other games that I’ve played. There’s lots of repetition needed for pretty much anything that I play. Personally, having to hold things down a lot strains my hands more than repetitive actions. So even much slower paced games have been harder on my hands than ESO. Calling it objectively bad is a huge stretch.

Do you play with mouse and keyboard or controller? Cause like I said, I absolutely understand the complaint coming from mouse and keyboard players. On controller it’s just fine for me and many others I’ve played with.

I don't carre if they will do better graphics, fix Cyrodil, fix balance, rework classes, I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY WILL DECIDE TO DO FIRST, JUST DO SOMETHING.

kevkj wrote: »

ceruulean wrote: »

Light attack weaving has turned off more players than anything. If the devs overhauled combat to be more organic and less monotonous, with options to use left click to extend combos or trigger special attacks, I'm sure many players will try the game again, but I highly doubt that's gonna happen.

For example, instead of dragon knight whip doing 25k dmg because you accumulated 3 stacks, the power could be split into a 2 part attack. First pressing the skill button deals a little damage because it's instant. In general, instant skills with 0 telegraph or windup should only do poke damage, and empowered DK whips currently ignore this balance and feel unfair as a result. Pressing left click adds a 2nd hit to whip that has a 0.4 cast time and deals high damage, but bashing/blocking/barswapping cancels this hit. This way, DKs have to put skin into the game and expose themselves to deal massive damage. This would also change the inputs from LC > skill > LC > skill, to LC > Skill > LC, reducing the total needed inputs.

Right now you can blockcast whip and just spam it, or save your 3 stacks and kill whoever with an ultimate > whip combo. As a result, nobody takes ESO combat seriously because it's spammy, and it stalemates because there's no way to punish bad plays by trading blows. You can only win through attrition of resources, and hope the opponent forgets an armor buff and your attacks crit higher when you go to punish their aggressiveness. Or wear burst damage sets like Balorgh and acuity and use ultimates like corrosive/2h and 1 shot your opponent so they can't react. Of course corrosive armor is an issue too, but I'm just trying to explain basic combat stuff.

You say you think light attack weaving is bad for the game but in your example problem regarding molten whip you seem to want to return more power to light attacks (or left clicks as you put it). Left click/light attack damage was reduced to lower the importance to weaving, so your proposed change would only return it to greater prominence. In your proposal, you would have a 50% damage loss for not following up Molten Whip with a light attack, whereas now you could hold block and spam Whip for less than 50% loss of damage potential. Wanting Molten Whip to have a cast time is also a balance change that is completely possible in the current combat system, Arcanist's Tentacle Flail for example.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the changes you want, just seemed like odd contradictory opinions.

How is it contradictory? Current eso combat is LA > Skill for the entirety of the battle. You only break this pattern for defensive options like blockcast, roll dodge, bash, or to conserve/heavy attack for resources, and for cast time/channel skills. Even then, the most optimal is something like LA > Skill > Roll dodge to cancel the animation, all within 1 second, but then you're back on the light attack weave even on the ice staff backbar when refreshing buffs.

This "left click combo attack" would replace a typical LA>skill in the 1 second, and only if you cast molten whip first. It doesn't buff light attacks or something, conceptually it casts a new skill, for example, "After casting whip, pressing left attack within 1 second performs an explosive whip that deals XXX damage with a 0.4 cast time." Also, if you add punishable left click combos, you do greater dmg at the expense of not being able to block. So people might not left click if they realize that it'll cause them to take more damage because of the cast time, and instead do a defensive manuever. Thus increasing the variety of options instead of left click > skill > tap block dominance. It also adds a mind-game element since you don't have to follow up with the left click if you dont want to, thus confusing the opponent.

Essentially, most high damage skills needs to be like templar jabs or dizzying swing so the animation plays out and blocking cancels the damage. A few instant cast skills that do high damage need conditions, like sorc curse being delayed or merciless needing light attack stacking. Otherwise you have the situation where DKs spam whip with impunity and no counterplay: low cost instant skill that does high damage with little-no telegraph or delay.

Of course, the entire game would have to be overhauled because in my whip example, the muscle memory of LA weaving would cause people to cast explosive whips when they don't mean to.

The game looks great on my PS5 with HDR. Sure there are some low rez textures here and there that could be fixed but it’s only noticeable when you get close to large boulders and such.

We are experiencing the first ever schedule slip the game has ever seen. Let that sink in. They aren’t going to be able to do what they said they were going to do in the time they said it would take due to the layoffs. Time for a reality check. No new stuff can be added on top of the already delayed stuff they had planned. When the situation improves later down the road then maybe they can think about more visual upgrades.

I'm gonna be honest,as someone that really likes this game and has put A LOT of hours in,the main focus of the game is fighting enemies and exploring and the game has embarrassing variety.

Enemies have the same 2-3 animations that they had at the launch of the game.

Lootable interactables have single lockpicks in the them with little variation in the loot pool.

Some animations are broken beyond belief like the first person 2 handed animations.

From the perspective of a new player(In terms of knowledge and game completion) the situation is very dire.I agree with your points and i add mine because this is what you will be doing in the game almost all the time and there is little variation to it.

I hope they fix/add to these instead of add more content with the same enemies/loot pool/quests.

Still gonna play and support the game no matter what they do but these thing are a priority in my honest opinion.

Umbracat449 wrote: »

Watching stiff npc stare straight ahead with perhaps 4 standard head movements as they deliver dialogue is so boring I can't stand it.

After playing any modern game, the dialogue scenes are just the worst to sit through.

Our toons just don't walk through the world like they're in it. They can't climb the smallest thing.

It's not the graphics, it's everything else.

it's always "look left, look right, straight ahead, gesture with arms up and down"

It's funny when they're talking about the most casual things with nobody around and they hit the Lion King 3 "Quick before the hyena coommeee" emote

ESO's problems don't stem from its graphics; on the contrary, there are plenty of other issues that might deter potential new players.

The graphics are fine as they are; newer zones, in particular, are closer to modern visual standards. Unfortunately, ZOS's plans to revamp older zones only got as far as the starter areas, and I don't see that work continuing given the current staffing situation.

An advantage of the "outdated" graphics is that the game runs smoothly on lower-end hardware—maintaining a fluid 4K/60 FPS experience even at Dolmens crowded with dozens of players.

By the way: ESO's engine is NOT the HeroEngine; that was only used for internal prototypes. ESO runs on a proprietary engine built from the ground up specifically for the game.

people worried about Ai taking over the world meanwhile a billion dollar company can't make a game look modern?

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Respectfully, there are so many bigger problems than just “I want capes!”

The team was just decimated, so they have little bandwidth for anything. And the Class Reworks being unfinished are making the balance issues so much more evident. And now, those just got delayed until some unspecified time next year. .

You're over blowing the layoffs. The team that is still there is the same team size that did wrothgar one of the largest DLCs they've done.

Part of the delay has to do with them just reshuffling and reorganizing not necessarily their manpower so low that they can't do anything.

Well I agree the refresh of classes need to take priority and it does kind of concern me that it takes so long to refresh one class. Now maybe they have really strict controls on who's allowed to do that but when you have games that are able drastically change their classes every 3 months for New seasons it makes you wonder why it take so long for ESO.

Also having smaller teams doesn't necessarily mean they can't do as much. Smaller teams can be much more efficient because there's less bureaucracy organizing them all. Changes can become faster because there's less people you have to organize it with.

I never understand the criticism of ESO's graphics. Are the graphics a bit "old-fashioned" compared to brand-new games? Sure, but it keeps the game's specific style, and not every game has to look ultra-realistic. If it were solely about how good the graphics are, or how realistic the visuals/style, lighting, and shadows are in a game, then nobody would play WoW... just as one example. Tastes a different.
I find, e.g.,TES Oblivion remastered strange - sure, the landscape looks great and realistic, but the NPCs are even freakier than the old "potato heads", in my opinion.