Where does the intimidate perk live? Is that a racial skill or something?
I'm guessing you're referring to "Intimidating Presence" which is a conversation skill? It's in the Fighter's Guild skill tree, so if you haven't joined up with them yet you won't see it.
Yeah...there seems to be quite a few skills outside of what you start with which is pretty cool. So far I've unlocked 3 trees in the guild section of skills.
I'm not sure if I like that you have the 3 locked in class trees, though, when everything else can be gotten by whoever. But I guess it makes sense if you need to have classes.
Yeah...there seems to be quite a few skills outside of what you start with which is pretty cool. So far I've unlocked 3 trees in the guild section of skills.
I'm not sure if I like that you have the 3 locked in class trees, though, when everything else can be gotten by whoever. But I guess it makes sense if you need to have classes.
Yeah, I spent a lot of my time yesterday figure out what race/class/weapon combination I preferred.
Also, speaking as generally as I can so as to avoid NDA violations, I... don't hate(?) this game.
There are guild skill trees?
*wipes tear*
That's... that's beautiful.
The options for making your character "your character" are pretty damn awesome actually. I didn't see it at first, but if you suddenly want to pick up a staff and heal then you can. Your class selection wont stop you. Same with wanting to go put on heavy armor instead of medium, you can do that and gain passives that contribute to that. THAT is how I always want armor selection to work in games, beyond a few defense numbers it represents different passives that I can choose based on what I think works best. Not some crap that is defined the second I make my character and lock in a class selection.
Sure there will be min/maxed solutions made with these options, but for active skills there is such a small amount you use at any given time that I assume you can be swapping things around to cover the min/maxed roles as well as other things. I'm already swapping soul trap now and then to charge up soul shards, clearly something you dont just leave on your bar.
I'm glad I redownloaded 27gb only to get constant "Your login information was incorrect. Please try again." errors.
Unless it's different from the username/password I used to login to the website 5 seconds ago, I give up.
This happened to me too. I think the November beta the user ID was your email but now you use your actual user ID. I was able to reset my password and everything and it's still like "Nope, you're wrong!" but then typing in my user ID instead in the client worked. So, try that.
I'm glad I redownloaded 27gb only to get constant "Your login information was incorrect. Please try again." errors.
Unless it's different from the username/password I used to login to the website 5 seconds ago, I give up.
Make sure your username isn't your email address, but your actual username. I made that mistake earlier.
Already tried that, along with the last 3 passwords in case they have an old database; haven't been able to get in at all since I got home from work yesterday.
Ugh, even tried copy/pasting my username from the account page in case somehow I have a weird character, adding a space after it, really anything you could think of. This is frustrating.
Seems ok, lost a pile of progress to the server maintenance - had to redo a number of quests. At least crafting is important and viable. I can't see paying for it however so far, unless things get terribly exciting as I level up some. Feels like a wait for F2P shift so far.
Really wish they had stuck with the grittier Skyrim character art style.
+1
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
One nice thing is that it is really easy to describe the game when people ask since you can just go "it's like skyrim, unmodded skyrim".
I would disagree.
In Skyrim, you could go wherever you wanted, kill whoever you wanted, steal from them, take their stuff and generally feel much freer and able to shape the world. The immersion is just not there.
I can't see ESO appealing to a lot of hardcore Bethesda fans who don't like MMOs since it's not a multiplayer ES but rather a theme park MMO with some Elder Scroll touches.
Been playing the PVP for the last 4-5 hours. Take notes Guild Wars 2, this is how you do this shit.
The engine is just fucking awesome for huge PVP.
Lattice system is great. HUUUUUGE map counters the zerg fucking well. Tons of big and small objectives all over.
Even the little things that GW2 needs are in there, like the ability to deploy camps to spawn from.
Siege weapons are fucking fantastic. Walls/doors need repaired, its not just mindless flipping.
I went from optimistically enjoying the game on the PVE side to ready to throw money down their throats for this shit now.
I logged into the web account with no problem, kept getting an error while trying to log into the client. Changed the PW like 3 times while logged in, none of those worked in the client.
Then tried logging out and back into the website, none of the passwords worked.
Did a forced password reset, and then it worked for both.
This is seriously one of the worse MMOs I have played. Astonished at how bad it is for this amount of cash spent - it feels like a bad relic from 2008.
As for saying its 'Skyrim, unmodded'. Sorry, but that's flatly not true. It bears only the passing resemblance to normal Elder Scrolls games at best. It's got about as much in common as WoW has barring the lore. It's instances to hell, full of standard MMO tropes, and has dreadfully tedious quest design. Action click combat isn't enough to separate this from the pack, and it's going to sink faster than TOR did.
It also has a truly dreadful engine. Not sure what they are using, but everything feels ultra-light, nothing has any impact and the third person view is god awful.
This is seriously one of the worse MMOs I have played. Astonished at how bad it is for this amount of cash spent - it feels like a bad relic from 2008.
As for saying its 'Skyrim, unmodded'. Sorry, but that's flatly not true. It bears only the passing resemblance to normal Elder Scrolls games at best. It's got about as much in common as WoW has barring the lore. It's instances to hell, full of standard MMO tropes, and has dreadfully tedious quest design. Action click combat isn't enough to separate this from the pack, and it's going to sink faster than TOR did.
It also has a truly dreadful engine. Not sure what they are using, but everything feels ultra-light, nothing has any impact and the third person view is god awful.
To say this is one of the worse MMOs? That's a pretty big exaggeration I feel. It's not a great game by any means but it's not bad. There's no good way to make a Skyrim MMO and have it still BE Skyrim, for what ESO is though, it's a damn good attempt. Quest design is also pretty decent. I've played to level 7 and have encountered uhh, 0? Kill X quests. The quests actually require you to think in some cases. And in others, there's plenty of action and the characters don't feel super flat. Even when I went and retrieved someones pig it was more than just "Oh, my pig got out, please go save him sir!" There was more at play.
Beyond that, it also feels like there's a lot more choice in quests. I have no idea how far that'll go, but I've already made decisions that have caused some people to not like me. Oh, and the fact that you actually have some choice as your character develops: skill choices etc. My level 7 is unlikely to be the same as your level 7, for example.
How much did you actually try to play?
+2
reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Generally speaking, TES games are all awful in 3rd person. ESO on the other hand feels pretty decent in 3rd person. So far I've preferred 3rd person.
That's probably because the regular TES games are designed as first person games and the third person mode was added due to popular demand, whereas ESO was designed as a third person game and the first person mode was added after massive backlash.
Here's the thing. There's always going to be a large portion of the MMO audience that wants everything to suck. They think everything is going to be terrible. They talk about how everything is terrible. Then, suprise, when they actually play the game, everything IS terrible. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and there's not much you're going to do to change that.
It's why I rarely rely on anyone's opinion if I don't know them personally, know their play habits and have an idea of what games they like and don't like.
Been playing the PVP for the last 4-5 hours. Take notes Guild Wars 2, this is how you do this shit.
The engine is just fucking awesome for huge PVP.
Lattice system is great. HUUUUUGE map counters the zerg fucking well. Tons of big and small objectives all over.
Even the little things that GW2 needs are in there, like the ability to deploy camps to spawn from.
Siege weapons are fucking fantastic. Walls/doors need repaired, its not just mindless flipping.
I went from optimistically enjoying the game on the PVE side to ready to throw money down their throats for this shit now.
Badwrong is a guy I can take as a credible source here. If he's saying that PvE ain't bad and there's some juice to the PvP side, then I'm going to give that some weight.
@ironzerg@Badwrong Ooooh holy shit the game is far better than when I tried it the last time I was in beta. So much better. It felt CLUNKY last time, the animations were just not up to snuff but now... Man. I made a Nord, got some major Skyrim feels when I got out of the tutorial.
can someone instruct me how to get into the PvP as fast as possible? I just want to betatest that stuff today. Do I need to be a specific level to get it going?
This is seriously one of the worse MMOs I have played. Astonished at how bad it is for this amount of cash spent - it feels like a bad relic from 2008.
As for saying its 'Skyrim, unmodded'. Sorry, but that's flatly not true. It bears only the passing resemblance to normal Elder Scrolls games at best. It's got about as much in common as WoW has barring the lore. It's instances to hell, full of standard MMO tropes, and has dreadfully tedious quest design. Action click combat isn't enough to separate this from the pack, and it's going to sink faster than TOR did.
It also has a truly dreadful engine. Not sure what they are using, but everything feels ultra-light, nothing has any impact and the third person view is god awful.
That's not an engine thing, it's the really poor animations. Stiff or floaty or light animations will completely change how combat feels in a game
Not since TOR's beta have I seen so many polar opposite opinions about a game. Everybody is saying it's super fun or the worst MMO they've ever played, lol.
Based on the aggregate of stuff I've seen posted about it, I feel like it's going to be an average game that cost way too much to develop, but will appeal to some people because it's a wee bit more sandboxy than the average MMO release, not to mention some elder scrolls fans are going to buy in regardless of its quality. I still predict a failure that leads to F2P because with a budget like this game has, it's going to require many more subscriptions than I think they can retain. That's not to say it won't be an okay game that services some people. I just don't think it'll be successful enough to carry a standard sub model.
I really want to try it myself since you can't really know until you do so. Are they planning any sort of open beta?
Here's the thing. There's always going to be a large portion of the MMO audience that wants everything to suck. They think everything is going to be terrible. They talk about how everything is terrible. Then, suprise, when they actually play the game, everything IS terrible. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and there's not much you're going to do to change that.
Heh you said exactly how I feel sometimes when people post about MMOs.
I seriously think some people can't fathom that its ok for something to be a notch or two below the best games. Although I think number scores are dumb and to subjective, its still worth pointing out that the 7-8 range is still a great game, it doesn't have to be a 9-10 in order to not be "worst game ever".
Personally I would rate the PVP I've already experienced in this as my TOP 5 for open world "siege" type. And my initial enjoyment is easily ABOVE what Guild Wars 2 did with RvR.
For PVE... its still very much up there. Its very much separated from WoW and its clones. Its totally sandbox-lite. I still want some of the full on AAA sandbox MMOs like Archeage and Black Desert to come out already, but this has a very solid game in there to enjoy. However anyone going into it for a single player ES experience should just not bother.
The game also does one very important thing for me that other MMOs simply don't do. Choice in character customization (no appearance, but skills/stats/gear). Of course its not EVE levels of complex, but once you start realizing how much there is past your starter class selection its extremely satisfying.
Not since TOR's beta have I seen so many polar opposite opinions about a game. Everybody is saying it's super fun or the worst MMO they've ever played, lol.
Based on the aggregate of stuff I've seen posted about it, I feel like it's going to be an average game that cost way too much to develop, but will appeal to some people because it's a wee bit more sandboxy than the average MMO release, not to mention some elder scrolls fans are going to buy in regardless of its quality. I still predict a failure that leads to F2P because with a budget like this game has, it's going to require many more subscriptions than I think they can retain. That's not to say it won't be an okay game that services some people. I just don't think it'll be successful enough to carry a standard sub model.
I really want to try it myself since you can't really know until you do so. Are they planning any sort of open beta?
I'm kind of in the middle myself. I don't think it's a bad game. I also don't think it's a super fun game. It's okay, but it hasn't really managed to grasp me, and it mostly just made me wish for more Skyrim/single player ES games.
I think the reason people really pile the hate on MMO's is because it's already a pretty formulaic, "grindy" genre. There's folks, like me, who are absolutely hooked on the MMO concept, but being a step or two below the "best" MMO, when the best is still not the greatest example of digital entertainment, is a pretty dull experience for quite a few people.
Sadly though I must agree. I have tried the game without reading anything but official news, so I was not influenced by any negative user commentaries. I was actually quite eager to try it since I have always liked the ES games. Well... the game is not bad, but it is not good either. Mediocre at best. Let me elaborate:
The graphics are decent. Not like skyrim vanilla (played both Skyrim and ESO on high / ultra high settings), but not as bad as Oblivion either. Somewhere inbetween I guess. The world itself is done well, but ESO being an MMO I do not really feel immersed with a lot of other players running around, doing the exact same stuff I do. While this holds true to most if not all MMOs out there, it is especially significant for a game like ESO which you will automatically compare to its singleplayer predecessors. If you have played them that is. The lore as far as I can tell looks fine, the quests were nice, too. Better than the generic kill/gather x of that at least.
The most important parts though are combat and interaction with the world. Because that is what a player will do most of the time. Combat just feels unresponsive. While they have tried a more action oriented approach, your attacks just don't seem to connect. Combat also feels rather slow if you want to deal acceptable damage with your weapons. You can of course just spam-click your auto attack, but it just doesn't deal any damage. So I felt it was more effective to charge up your attack. But that takes ages.
When I tried melee combat I was headed straight for the enemy while charging the sword attack. I then actually passed through him and my attack missed. There was no collision. I tried again and stopped running right in front of him, my attack went through and I dealt damage. But there was no real indication that I actually hit him, I just noticed that he had less HP after my attack. That just didn't feel right.
My next attempt was using a bow. The bow also takes ages to charge a strong attack, and the weak ones don't deal nearly enough damage. With a bow (and other ranged weapons) you need to aim, but the game is very forgiving. It felt like I could aim miles beside the enemy and still hit. The enemy is actually marked with a red outline once your aim is close enough. Then again you can be too far away to hit, but there is no indication when you are. The enemy is still marked, whether you're too far away or not.
Last but not least you can do sneak attacks, which is cool. But - I don't know whether this is intended or just a bad compromise - if you charge your bow and decide you would rather do a sneak attack, you "uncharge", go into sneak mode and start charging again. That's annoying as hell.
Interaction. Interaction with... almost everything in ESO just feels clunky. First of all, whenever you want to interact with something, your character has to put away his weapons, which takes time. And is annoying. Second, if you move during an interaction (using a door, picking up stuff, etc.) the interaction is aborted. I don't know if the following was related to the lag I was experiencing, but interaction was not instant. When I saw something I wanted to interact with and pressed E nothing happened. I usually had to press E twice. Perhaps this was also related to the not moving part of interaction, because I usually stood still when pressing E for the second time.
Another minor issue I found was that they salvaged the the "pick up items from dead enemies" system for gathering stuff. First you have to wait for the gathering animation to finish. Then, instead of just instantly getting the items you just gathered, an inventory screen pops up where you have to press R to pick up all. And if you move while the screen is open it closes and you have to start all over.
While all of this sounds just like minor issues, they add up quickly to the point where it gets annoying and frustrating. Like this:
See a butterfly to gather
Run up to it, hit E
Hit E again because it didn't work the first time
Wait for weapons to be put away
Wait for the gathering animation to finish
(Start running once the animation finished because you thought you were done)
(Redo the animation)
Press R to actually get your butterfly
Once you know an inventory screen pops up, steps 6 and 7 don't happen of course. But this is how it actually went down for me for the very first time.
There are probably a lot of people who don't mind about the stuff I mentioned, but to me it is really important. It's basically the most important part of the game. And it just doesn't feel right.
You can of course just spam-click your auto attack, but it just doesn't deal any damage. So I felt it was more effective to charge up your attack. But that takes ages.
This is why the PVP combat has a very nice feel to it. Having to commit to an attack or ability gives choice which is important in the long run for combat to have any depth.
The rest of what you said, you want single player ES and this is just not it.
For the graphics not being as good as Skyrim.... thats a GOOD thing. Its much more important that the game can support hundreds of players at once than having pretty looking tree leaves. This is important in PVE and even more important in PVP. After getting in some really HUGE PVP battles, I can say this game's engine is fantastic and they balanced looks vs performance extremely well.
Your description of looting something is just plain comical. I feel its a good thing that moving can immediately stop the looting process, if something suddenly attacks you its nice to not have anything in the way. Plus I never had to hit the interact button twice, sounds like lag or just impatience? You also have to hit "take all" or pick what items to loot because there are often things you don't wanna loot. Which is just like a single player ES game, sometimes you check a corpse or chest and it has "old bread" in it, you aren't going to wanna loot that. If you do wanna just blindly loot everything you see, then its a simple button press to "take all" anyway.
If someone talked to me a few days ago I probably wouldn't defend anything about this game. But having seen a lot more of it now, I'm sold.
For the graphics not being as good as Skyrim.... thats a GOOD thing. Its much more important that the game can support hundreds of players at once than having pretty looking tree leaves. This is important in PVE and even more important in PVP. After getting in some really HUGE PVP battles, I can say this game's engine is fantastic and they balanced looks vs performance extremely well.
I agree on that. Like I said, graphics are decent. Good enough for an mmo.
Your description of looting something is just plain comical. I feel its a good thing that moving can immediately stop the looting process, if something suddenly attacks you its nice to not have anything in the way. Plus I never had to hit the interact button twice, sounds like lag or just impatience? You also have to hit "take all" or pick what items to loot because there are often things you don't wanna loot. Which is just like a single player ES game, sometimes you check a corpse or chest and it has "old bread" in it, you aren't going to wanna loot that. If you do wanna just blindly loot everything you see, then its a simple button press to "take all" anyway.
You're mixing things up here. Perhaps I just wasn't clear enough. I didn't say all looting with that extra inventory was bad. I like that I can choose whether I want a specific item or all of them. What I dislike is having the same system for gathering items (e.g. chop down a tree, mine ore, gather a butterfly, etc.). If I gather something I am probably going to take all of it anyway. It just feels like they salvaged a system not intended for this use. You say looting with that inventory is like a SP ES game, which is right. But in Skyrim for example (when I recall correctly), mining ore or taking a butterfly was instant, without an extra inventory window.
Also having the freedom of stopping immediately during the loot process is inherently a good thing, but having to repeat it when interrupted is bad. Why can't the loot window just stay open while you have to fight? Why are you being forced to go through that process again? It's just unnecessary and a lot of other MMOs have found better solutions for this problem.
Hitting E twice might actually be a lag problem, guess I will have to investigate this. But overall the game just doesn't feel smooth. I really wanted it to be a good game.
So, I was dicking around the coastline near one of the bigger cities and, as ES games are want to do, the city was built up a large cliff face, so the castle was high up on top of a cliff face. There were also a series of rock plateaus with corroded bases in the sea below, so you couldn't get up them.
I noticed they were staggered by height and, if you could get to the top one, you could hop all the way along them, so I went to the top of the castle, out the balcony, jumped to the side over the wall normally barring access to it and discovered a small ruins and a camp, filled with book cases and supplies. No one there, nothing to loot, no normal way to get there, just there for someone to find if they go out of their way.
Yes. This game was built for me.
So, I was dicking around the coastline near one of the bigger cities and, as ES games are want to do, the city was built up a large cliff face, so the castle was high up on top of a cliff face. There were also a series of rock plateaus with corroded bases in the sea below, so you couldn't get up them.
I noticed they were staggered by height and, if you could get to the top one, you could hop all the way along them, so I went to the top of the castle, out the balcony, jumped to the side over the wall normally barring access to it and discovered a small ruins and a camp, filled with book cases and supplies. No one there, nothing to loot, no normal way to get there, just there for someone to find if they go out of their way.
Yes. This game was built for me.
I've had a few moments like that, too.
I'm on the second area now, with the orcs, and it's only now I've really started to explore - just ignore the main quests, and heading off into the hills, as I would in an offline ES game.
I must have missed a load of stuff in the first area - there's an achievement for clearing out all the caves, yet I didn't actually find any caves, as I didn't explore much.
I honestly don't know if I'm going to get it - I'm on a jprg kick at the moment, on my PS3, and MMOs scratch a lot of the same itch for me - endless fighting, lots of side quests, huge, drawn-out main quests. The problem is, my next PS3 game will cost £15, compared to £30 for ESO, then £10 a month thereafter.
The Beta has definitely made a good impression, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to tempt be to buy it at launch.
Posts
I'm guessing you're referring to "Intimidating Presence" which is a conversation skill? It's in the Fighter's Guild skill tree, so if you haven't joined up with them yet you won't see it.
*wipes tear*
That's... that's beautiful.
I'm not sure if I like that you have the 3 locked in class trees, though, when everything else can be gotten by whoever. But I guess it makes sense if you need to have classes.
Thanks - I had poked around, but must have missed it.
Yeah, I spent a lot of my time yesterday figure out what race/class/weapon combination I preferred.
Also, speaking as generally as I can so as to avoid NDA violations, I... don't hate(?) this game.
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
The options for making your character "your character" are pretty damn awesome actually. I didn't see it at first, but if you suddenly want to pick up a staff and heal then you can. Your class selection wont stop you. Same with wanting to go put on heavy armor instead of medium, you can do that and gain passives that contribute to that. THAT is how I always want armor selection to work in games, beyond a few defense numbers it represents different passives that I can choose based on what I think works best. Not some crap that is defined the second I make my character and lock in a class selection.
Sure there will be min/maxed solutions made with these options, but for active skills there is such a small amount you use at any given time that I assume you can be swapping things around to cover the min/maxed roles as well as other things. I'm already swapping soul trap now and then to charge up soul shards, clearly something you dont just leave on your bar.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When does the beta end? Midnight on Sunday?
Yes, midnight EST Sunday.
Unless it's different from the username/password I used to login to the website 5 seconds ago, I give up.
Make sure your username isn't your email address, but your actual username. I made that mistake earlier.
This happened to me too. I think the November beta the user ID was your email but now you use your actual user ID. I was able to reset my password and everything and it's still like "Nope, you're wrong!" but then typing in my user ID instead in the client worked. So, try that.
Ugh, even tried copy/pasting my username from the account page in case somehow I have a weird character, adding a space after it, really anything you could think of. This is frustrating.
Seems ok, lost a pile of progress to the server maintenance - had to redo a number of quests. At least crafting is important and viable. I can't see paying for it however so far, unless things get terribly exciting as I level up some. Feels like a wait for F2P shift so far.
Really wish they had stuck with the grittier Skyrim character art style.
In Skyrim, you could go wherever you wanted, kill whoever you wanted, steal from them, take their stuff and generally feel much freer and able to shape the world. The immersion is just not there.
I can't see ESO appealing to a lot of hardcore Bethesda fans who don't like MMOs since it's not a multiplayer ES but rather a theme park MMO with some Elder Scroll touches.
Note I said this in theory, Zenimax can't nuke my house from orbit now. Hopefully.
The engine is just fucking awesome for huge PVP.
Lattice system is great. HUUUUUGE map counters the zerg fucking well. Tons of big and small objectives all over.
Even the little things that GW2 needs are in there, like the ability to deploy camps to spawn from.
Siege weapons are fucking fantastic. Walls/doors need repaired, its not just mindless flipping.
I went from optimistically enjoying the game on the PVE side to ready to throw money down their throats for this shit now.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Then tried logging out and back into the website, none of the passwords worked.
Did a forced password reset, and then it worked for both.
What the actual fuck.
As for saying its 'Skyrim, unmodded'. Sorry, but that's flatly not true. It bears only the passing resemblance to normal Elder Scrolls games at best. It's got about as much in common as WoW has barring the lore. It's instances to hell, full of standard MMO tropes, and has dreadfully tedious quest design. Action click combat isn't enough to separate this from the pack, and it's going to sink faster than TOR did.
It also has a truly dreadful engine. Not sure what they are using, but everything feels ultra-light, nothing has any impact and the third person view is god awful.
It's easier to keep track of the battefield in third person.
To say this is one of the worse MMOs? That's a pretty big exaggeration I feel. It's not a great game by any means but it's not bad. There's no good way to make a Skyrim MMO and have it still BE Skyrim, for what ESO is though, it's a damn good attempt. Quest design is also pretty decent. I've played to level 7 and have encountered uhh, 0? Kill X quests. The quests actually require you to think in some cases. And in others, there's plenty of action and the characters don't feel super flat. Even when I went and retrieved someones pig it was more than just "Oh, my pig got out, please go save him sir!" There was more at play.
Beyond that, it also feels like there's a lot more choice in quests. I have no idea how far that'll go, but I've already made decisions that have caused some people to not like me. Oh, and the fact that you actually have some choice as your character develops: skill choices etc. My level 7 is unlikely to be the same as your level 7, for example.
How much did you actually try to play?
That's probably because the regular TES games are designed as first person games and the third person mode was added due to popular demand, whereas ESO was designed as a third person game and the first person mode was added after massive backlash.
Here's the thing. There's always going to be a large portion of the MMO audience that wants everything to suck. They think everything is going to be terrible. They talk about how everything is terrible. Then, suprise, when they actually play the game, everything IS terrible. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and there's not much you're going to do to change that.
It's why I rarely rely on anyone's opinion if I don't know them personally, know their play habits and have an idea of what games they like and don't like.
For example:
Badwrong is a guy I can take as a credible source here. If he's saying that PvE ain't bad and there's some juice to the PvP side, then I'm going to give that some weight.
That's not an engine thing, it's the really poor animations. Stiff or floaty or light animations will completely change how combat feels in a game
Based on the aggregate of stuff I've seen posted about it, I feel like it's going to be an average game that cost way too much to develop, but will appeal to some people because it's a wee bit more sandboxy than the average MMO release, not to mention some elder scrolls fans are going to buy in regardless of its quality. I still predict a failure that leads to F2P because with a budget like this game has, it's going to require many more subscriptions than I think they can retain. That's not to say it won't be an okay game that services some people. I just don't think it'll be successful enough to carry a standard sub model.
I really want to try it myself since you can't really know until you do so. Are they planning any sort of open beta?
Heh you said exactly how I feel sometimes when people post about MMOs.
I just don't get it... some just look for the bad in these games. I could easily find a few things I dont like about ESO, but "worst game ever".... that's just nonsense.
If that's true then it must be worse than this game: http://www.ign.com/articles/2007/07/20/call-for-heroes-pompolic-wars-review
I seriously think some people can't fathom that its ok for something to be a notch or two below the best games. Although I think number scores are dumb and to subjective, its still worth pointing out that the 7-8 range is still a great game, it doesn't have to be a 9-10 in order to not be "worst game ever".
Personally I would rate the PVP I've already experienced in this as my TOP 5 for open world "siege" type. And my initial enjoyment is easily ABOVE what Guild Wars 2 did with RvR.
For PVE... its still very much up there. Its very much separated from WoW and its clones. Its totally sandbox-lite. I still want some of the full on AAA sandbox MMOs like Archeage and Black Desert to come out already, but this has a very solid game in there to enjoy. However anyone going into it for a single player ES experience should just not bother.
The game also does one very important thing for me that other MMOs simply don't do. Choice in character customization (no appearance, but skills/stats/gear). Of course its not EVE levels of complex, but once you start realizing how much there is past your starter class selection its extremely satisfying.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm kind of in the middle myself. I don't think it's a bad game. I also don't think it's a super fun game. It's okay, but it hasn't really managed to grasp me, and it mostly just made me wish for more Skyrim/single player ES games.
I might still get it once it goes f2p.
Sounds like you are pretty sure that it will.
Sadly though I must agree. I have tried the game without reading anything but official news, so I was not influenced by any negative user commentaries. I was actually quite eager to try it since I have always liked the ES games. Well... the game is not bad, but it is not good either. Mediocre at best. Let me elaborate:
The graphics are decent. Not like skyrim vanilla (played both Skyrim and ESO on high / ultra high settings), but not as bad as Oblivion either. Somewhere inbetween I guess. The world itself is done well, but ESO being an MMO I do not really feel immersed with a lot of other players running around, doing the exact same stuff I do. While this holds true to most if not all MMOs out there, it is especially significant for a game like ESO which you will automatically compare to its singleplayer predecessors. If you have played them that is. The lore as far as I can tell looks fine, the quests were nice, too. Better than the generic kill/gather x of that at least.
The most important parts though are combat and interaction with the world. Because that is what a player will do most of the time. Combat just feels unresponsive. While they have tried a more action oriented approach, your attacks just don't seem to connect. Combat also feels rather slow if you want to deal acceptable damage with your weapons. You can of course just spam-click your auto attack, but it just doesn't deal any damage. So I felt it was more effective to charge up your attack. But that takes ages.
When I tried melee combat I was headed straight for the enemy while charging the sword attack. I then actually passed through him and my attack missed. There was no collision. I tried again and stopped running right in front of him, my attack went through and I dealt damage. But there was no real indication that I actually hit him, I just noticed that he had less HP after my attack. That just didn't feel right.
My next attempt was using a bow. The bow also takes ages to charge a strong attack, and the weak ones don't deal nearly enough damage. With a bow (and other ranged weapons) you need to aim, but the game is very forgiving. It felt like I could aim miles beside the enemy and still hit. The enemy is actually marked with a red outline once your aim is close enough. Then again you can be too far away to hit, but there is no indication when you are. The enemy is still marked, whether you're too far away or not.
Last but not least you can do sneak attacks, which is cool. But - I don't know whether this is intended or just a bad compromise - if you charge your bow and decide you would rather do a sneak attack, you "uncharge", go into sneak mode and start charging again. That's annoying as hell.
Interaction. Interaction with... almost everything in ESO just feels clunky. First of all, whenever you want to interact with something, your character has to put away his weapons, which takes time. And is annoying. Second, if you move during an interaction (using a door, picking up stuff, etc.) the interaction is aborted. I don't know if the following was related to the lag I was experiencing, but interaction was not instant. When I saw something I wanted to interact with and pressed E nothing happened. I usually had to press E twice. Perhaps this was also related to the not moving part of interaction, because I usually stood still when pressing E for the second time.
Another minor issue I found was that they salvaged the the "pick up items from dead enemies" system for gathering stuff. First you have to wait for the gathering animation to finish. Then, instead of just instantly getting the items you just gathered, an inventory screen pops up where you have to press R to pick up all. And if you move while the screen is open it closes and you have to start all over.
While all of this sounds just like minor issues, they add up quickly to the point where it gets annoying and frustrating. Like this:
Once you know an inventory screen pops up, steps 6 and 7 don't happen of course. But this is how it actually went down for me for the very first time.
There are probably a lot of people who don't mind about the stuff I mentioned, but to me it is really important. It's basically the most important part of the game. And it just doesn't feel right.
This is why the PVP combat has a very nice feel to it. Having to commit to an attack or ability gives choice which is important in the long run for combat to have any depth.
The rest of what you said, you want single player ES and this is just not it.
For the graphics not being as good as Skyrim.... thats a GOOD thing. Its much more important that the game can support hundreds of players at once than having pretty looking tree leaves. This is important in PVE and even more important in PVP. After getting in some really HUGE PVP battles, I can say this game's engine is fantastic and they balanced looks vs performance extremely well.
Your description of looting something is just plain comical. I feel its a good thing that moving can immediately stop the looting process, if something suddenly attacks you its nice to not have anything in the way. Plus I never had to hit the interact button twice, sounds like lag or just impatience? You also have to hit "take all" or pick what items to loot because there are often things you don't wanna loot. Which is just like a single player ES game, sometimes you check a corpse or chest and it has "old bread" in it, you aren't going to wanna loot that. If you do wanna just blindly loot everything you see, then its a simple button press to "take all" anyway.
If someone talked to me a few days ago I probably wouldn't defend anything about this game. But having seen a lot more of it now, I'm sold.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I agree on that. Like I said, graphics are decent. Good enough for an mmo.
You're mixing things up here. Perhaps I just wasn't clear enough. I didn't say all looting with that extra inventory was bad. I like that I can choose whether I want a specific item or all of them. What I dislike is having the same system for gathering items (e.g. chop down a tree, mine ore, gather a butterfly, etc.). If I gather something I am probably going to take all of it anyway. It just feels like they salvaged a system not intended for this use. You say looting with that inventory is like a SP ES game, which is right. But in Skyrim for example (when I recall correctly), mining ore or taking a butterfly was instant, without an extra inventory window.
Also having the freedom of stopping immediately during the loot process is inherently a good thing, but having to repeat it when interrupted is bad. Why can't the loot window just stay open while you have to fight? Why are you being forced to go through that process again? It's just unnecessary and a lot of other MMOs have found better solutions for this problem.
Hitting E twice might actually be a lag problem, guess I will have to investigate this. But overall the game just doesn't feel smooth. I really wanted it to be a good game.
I noticed they were staggered by height and, if you could get to the top one, you could hop all the way along them, so I went to the top of the castle, out the balcony, jumped to the side over the wall normally barring access to it and discovered a small ruins and a camp, filled with book cases and supplies. No one there, nothing to loot, no normal way to get there, just there for someone to find if they go out of their way.
Yes. This game was built for me.
I've had a few moments like that, too.
I'm on the second area now, with the orcs, and it's only now I've really started to explore - just ignore the main quests, and heading off into the hills, as I would in an offline ES game.
I must have missed a load of stuff in the first area - there's an achievement for clearing out all the caves, yet I didn't actually find any caves, as I didn't explore much.
I honestly don't know if I'm going to get it - I'm on a jprg kick at the moment, on my PS3, and MMOs scratch a lot of the same itch for me - endless fighting, lots of side quests, huge, drawn-out main quests. The problem is, my next PS3 game will cost £15, compared to £30 for ESO, then £10 a month thereafter.
The Beta has definitely made a good impression, but I'm not sure if it's good enough to tempt be to buy it at launch.