FF14 has fucking terrible class design flexibility. Have you even played it? All it has is the ability to not make alts if you wanna change classes... THATS IT. You can pick 5 extra abilities from an EXTREMELY tiny pool of options and allocate 30 stat points that go into your primary stats anyway.
That's it. 5 extra skills and 30 stat points.
Its one of the most restrictive MMOs in terms of class spec/skills/stats. Even vanilla WoW had more options in how you specced your character. FF14 1.0 had a bit more options and was far less restrictive if that's what you meant... and even then the choices of what to cross class were very much no brainers.
One of the major things I look at in an MMO is how I can effect what my character does. My skills, stats, gear, etc. I also consider how valid various options the game gives me are, since some games (RIFT) give you a ton of options, but they still end up being a no brainer in the end result. One of the most noticable things I've found in ESO so far was the PVP is amazing and the class/skill customization is deep.
Do you play very many MMOs? Because you listed Secret World for its story and what not... but didn't even mention how it has an amazingly deep classless customization system, yet somehow consider FF14 to have a good one when its about as complex as a game of checkers in that regard.
I play Secret World every day but was trying to give an overview of the range of MMOs out there that are doing different things. Personally I'm not a fan of FF14 either but it has its fans. The reason I did was because a lot of people posting here don't see to have played many MMOs outside of WoW, and so stuff which has become standard (exploration, hidden elements, more options for classes, lack of quest hubs) is being treated as something amazing and new.
I love TSW class system but it is absolutely off putting for new players. I could witter on for hours about how much it gets right but I wasn't trying to big up one particular game, rather comment on the changes within the overall genre.
First time I successfully tanked the NYE yesterday as well and finished my 10.4.4 set!
Shockingly, it doesn't apply to Daggerfall either. Christmas is cancelled. But yes, you are correct, Skyrim's backlash was relatively mild, even if I feel you're greatly underreporting it for the sake of trying to make your point (1%? Really? Must've been reading some other PA forums than myself), or perhaps misremembering because all those people play the game with mods and have shut up about it since.
The fact that Skyrim didn't crash for the first hour I played it and didn't wipe my hard drive out of vindictiveness was a huge step forward in my opinion for the Elder Scrolls series... ;-)
I play Secret World every day but was trying to give an overview of the range of MMOs out there that are doing different things. Personally I'm not a fan of FF14 either but it has its fans. The reason I did was because a lot of people posting here don't see to have played many MMOs outside of WoW, and so stuff which has become standard (exploration, hidden elements, more options for classes, lack of quest hubs) is being treated as something amazing and new.
I love TSW class system but it is absolutely off putting for new players. I could witter on for hours about how much it gets right but I wasn't trying to big up one particular game, rather comment on the changes within the overall genre.
First time I successfully tanked the NYE yesterday as well and finished my 10.4.4 set!
I play just about every MMO. Either a bit, or for a long time. Even the shitty indie ones if they have an idea I wanna see in action.
Except Entropia... I just can't bring myself to see how its real cash economy works.
I am waaaaay the fuck outside of seeing things compared to WoW. I also don't hate WoW at all, its a great game. Its just nothing new and I have no reason to play it.
I don't think anyone is really treating things in ESO as amazing or new either. No quest hubs, class options, exploration.... people are pointing that shit out because it shows the game isn't like WoW and isn't shit like some are saying. I saw one post straight up saying "this feels like WoW with a Skyrim skin, its just quest hubs".... so people are pointing out that shit like that is 100% false.
Very little is being touted as "amazing and new". Even the PVP that I'm super hyped about isn't amazing and new. But its designed fantastically and it fixes all the Guild Wars 2 fucks ups in WvW.
If I wanted a similar RvR experience I have about 5 options right now and they are all dated or just not as good:
Darkfall - but requires shittons of grinding and time between actual PVP is dull. Also totally underpopulated.
Regnum - Apparently the RvR is good, but its dated and the combat is pretty much EQ1.
Mortal Online - Actually a pretty good option and last I played it was improving a ton. Just the community... fucking hell.
GW2 - Very fun, good combat. Terrible map design and shallow metagame due to said map design. Also competative only in the forum warrior regard.
DOAC is still going and I think people still consider it the best of the RvR stuff right?
ESO on the other hand, I played the RvR all weekend as soon as I hit level 10. It has a GIANT ass map and a lattice system. You can deploy forward camps temporarily to spawn from.
Easiest way to describe the flow of spawning > getting back to the fight vs balance of actually taking something.... Planetside 2. Feels very much like that, but in a fantasy world.
Plus it has a ton of smaller resource objectives that help split up the zerg. And even with the ability to teleport around the waystones, you still have a few minutes trek from a keep/castle to actually counter a small group taking a small objective. So unlike GW2, the zerg would just be wasting their time if they did the giant ass game of follow the leader on every single little thing there is.
Shit... even the looting system in RvR feels like a direct "fuck you" to GW2. Loot for taking objectives goes to your mail. So you wont miss it AND you wont run outta bag space while in PVP. You can just goto your mail later on and pick through all your loot baggies.
I don't PvP at all, ever, but from my understanding the top servers in GW2 don't use huge zergs either - or rather, specialist PvP teams from small groups for targeted Pvp whilst new players join the zergs.
To be fair, I think I'm probably the one person posting who really does think this game is terrible. Most people are definitely more on the 'not as bad as expected, not worth paying for though' line.
I generally play most MMOs when they come out and this one really doesn't seem to have anything special in it at all. Everything it does other games do better from my experience - GW2 the open world with exploration and dynamic events,
The problem with GW2's "open world" was it wasn't really open at all. You had an exact list of everything that could be found on that map, then you just uncovered all the tiles until your map was listed as "complete" and then you moved on to the next one. And every zone was gated by level, and every zone flowed from low to high. You couldn't just pick a direction and go. You'd clearly and easily run into a spot where the monsters one shotted you and you had to get back on the path. It was a nice illusion of being open, but that doesn't make it open.
At at max level, there wasn't any "exploring" left to do. Again, you just looked on your map for what zone wasn't 100%, went to that zone and uncovered all the tiles, with important stuff already marked on your map, just not "explored". And dynamic events, were just reoccuring group quests that reset after they finished. They had zero impact on the world or zone. In the beginning, ArenaNet touted how success and failure was going to matter. It didn't. If you failed, you just waited 15 minutes for the event to restart and do it again. If you succeeded, you finished the chain...then waited 15 minutes for it to start again. That's the very definition of "static".
Secret World with the storyline and lack of quest hubs,
Yes, the story and writing was unbelievable in TSW, as were the environments...but it ABSOLUTELY had quest hubs. You 100% bounced from hub to hub as you completed the zone. From the very first police station in Kingsmouth to the village in Transylvania, these were stereotypical quest hubs. Get quests. Finish quests, return to hub, get more quests. If anything, TSW just did a pretty good job of seamlessly moving you from hub to hub. But to say it lacked quest hubs is 100% wrong. False. Incorrect.
FF14 with the open class design and flexibility,
FF14 has one of the most rigid class designs I've seen in a recent MMO. Nearly every single class at max level is identical. And no, just because you picked one of five or six different, limited cross-class skills and someone picked another one that has virtually no impact on your class doesn't make it flexible or open ended. Early on FF gives you the illusion of an open class design, but there's no of it once you're at the end. Every single class is nearly identical, wearing the same armor, same weapons, same skills, same stats.
Rift with the large scale zone changing events etc.
A zone event NEVER changed anything on a map. If you won versus an invasion, you got loot, everything disappeared and the zone was identical to how it was prior to the invasion. If you lost, you didn't get loot, everything disappeared and the zone was left identical to how it was prior to the invasion. The entire world was static. Nothing ever changed regardless of how many "zone" events fired off at any given time.
The reason I point all this out is...most of your opinions on other MMOs that you're comparing ESO to are pretty much wrong. Sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if this is your perception of other MMOs, your entire basis for comparison is just flat out wrong. None of what you claimed you "liked" about the above games actually exists. It's almost nonsensical in any context, let alone in the ESO thread you're trying to participate in.
To me, it just comes across as you throwing whatever you can against the game. You're literally making stuff up in an effort to bash it.
I'm probably a bit jaded but if you combine my love of Elder Scrolls with my general apathy towards MMOs the game really does come across very badly to me. It's like something designed badly by a committee that's never actually played an Elder Scrolls game.
And if you take anything away from my post, let it be this.
Elder Scrolls Online...is an MMO. If you don't like MMOs, you won't like ESO, no matter how "good" of a game it is. Take a deep breath. Focus on that. Think about it. Let it sink it.
People, it's an MMO. It's not multiplayer Skyrim. It's not Skyrim. It's not a sequel to Skyrim. Now take a another deep breath, and get the fuck over it already. There should be a note at the top of this thread, "If you're coming here to complain that ESO isn't a multiplayer Skyrim, we know. Don't waste your time posting. Thanks."
ESO is an MMO version of Elder Scrolls. And it's going to happen. Zenimax isn't all of a sudden going to pull back on everything, cancel the project and tell you how wonderful you were for finally convincing them that all they needed to do was give you a multiplayer version of Skyrim. That's not going to happen. Let it go.
And again, see my earlier feedback. It blows my mind how you can play this game for more than 30 minutes and not come away thinking that it plays very much like an ES game. It's boggling, really.
Ya know I didn't really notice. I think it might. You seem to get an abundance of the PVP currency though and that might be used for repairs.
I was getting more PVP loot than I needed, which was vendored for gold and that can cover repairs easily. Loot seemed to just be a random piece of anything in your level range.
The RvR map also has dragons. They seemed to be guarding entrance to the middle of the map's megacastle-keep thingie. They looked fucking mean and I didn't try to poke them.
I don't PvP at all, ever, but from my understanding the top servers in GW2 don't use huge zergs either - or rather, specialist PvP teams from small groups for targeted Pvp whilst new players join the zergs.
I think I'm allergic to Pvp in general... ;-)
Again, another falsehood thrown out there. Top servers absolutely used huge zergs. They just had enough great commanders to take charge and keep pointing the zerg in the right direction.
But a lot of the end game in ESO is suppose to center around large-scale, open-world PvP...so probably another sign that ESO just isn't the game for you.
I don't PvP at all, ever, but from my understanding the top servers in GW2 don't use huge zergs either - or rather, specialist PvP teams from small groups for targeted Pvp whilst new players join the zergs.
I think I'm allergic to Pvp in general... ;-)
Again, another falsehood thrown out there. Top servers absolutely used huge zergs. They just had enough great commanders to take charge and keep pointing the zerg in the right direction.
But a lot of the end game in ESO is suppose to center around large-scale, open-world PvP...so probably another sign that ESO just isn't the game for you.
Speaking of endgame being very PVP centric in ESO.... we might as well get this out of the way RIGHT NOW, so LISTEN UP peoples.
When your PVP rank goes up in ESO, you gain skill points. The SAME exact skill points that you gain in the PVE side of the game.
Unless there is something I don't know about yet, (and I only made it to level 13, so who knows) you will never get as many skill points if you do only PVE. This is an assumption, but I don't see how it wouldn't be true.
Now before people freak out. Just realize this, you easily will end up with enough skill points from just PVE to max out what you NEED in PVE. When you join the PVP stuff and do the tutorial it unlocks two more skill trees that are PVP specific, so part of the reason a PVPer is going to get extra points is so they can spec into PVP stuff without losing the ability to PVE. With the way passives work and the ability to swap skills, there wont be a need for dual specs or anything to swap between the two.
Well I guess I should be flattered someone spent a lot of time picking apart my posts in such detail... ;-)
But Secret World did not have quest hubs. If you were playing them as quest hubs you were missing one of the main points of the questing system. The entire thing is designed to keep you moving rather than completing all the quests in one spot then moving to the next. Every zone is littered with bread crumb quests to push the player towards *not* taking the standard quest hub approach. It's incredibly inefficient - you're supposed to wander the map following the different story lines individually, rather than going back to the hub for another quest once one is finished,
Not going to bother for the rest because I don't think others would appreciate us posting huge diatribes. I've said what I think, no point us arguing over stuff we fundamentally disagree on and neither can prove.
Maledict66 on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
I quit The Secret World before I even got out of the first zombie infested town, but there was definitely a quest hub there, the barricaded police station or whatever.
Well I guess I should be flattered someone spent a lot of time picking apart my posts in such detail... ;-)
But Secret World did not have quest hubs. If you were playing them as quest hubs you were missing one of the main points of the questing system. The entire thing is designed to keep you moving rather than completing all the quests in one spot then moving to the next. Every zone is littered with bread crumb quests to push the player towards *not* taking the standard quest hub approach. It's incredibly inefficient - you're supposed to wander the map following the different story lines individually, rather than going back to the hub for another quest once one is finished,
Not going to bother for the rest because I don't think others would appreciate us posting huge diatribes. I've said what I think, no point us arguing over stuff we fundamentally disagree on and neither can prove.
This is true with TSW. The devs even said, if you do a quest and it doesn't lead to another one with 20 feet or so of the one you just completed then send in a bug report ASAP.
They did indeed have quest "Hubs", but in the same way ESO has them. Main areas towns/cities have multiple quest givers and you could say that's a quest hub. But both TSW and ESO can function where you just grab one of those quests and go with it. To me a real "quest hub" based MMO is where you grab 10-20 quests in a single spot, then you go complete every single quest and return them all at once. Rinse, repeat, until next zone. This usually means there is less story and the progression of each quest feels lacking.
Both ESO and TSW have strong points of each quest feeling like there is something going on there and the story that goes with it keeps you engaged. Both however could be treated like quest hubs and you would lose track of each quest because they don't take you to the same areas at all and the storys will get mixed up and just ruin the experience.
I gotta play this game, so I can see how much of "run around wherever I want, discover a little dungeon, explore it, fight some spiders, etc." is something I can do. There are some people in here saying it's all quest hubs, then there are people saying it's not so and it feels like Elder Scrolls, etc.
What I can say is the class/skill flexibility sounds fantastic. IMO the thing with MMOs is that one person might love the exactly same elements that another person hates. MMOs are very much about "feel" and not mechanics a lot of times. Not always, but often. I don't think any other genre is one where playing it yourself is absolutely mandatory to determine your feelings as much as this one.
The way the quests flowed for me on the Dominion faction was that there were quest givers in towns, however there were also various quests to be found in the world and you didn't necessarily find them while performing other quests either.
For example, on the starting isle I had finished the entire thing and was ready to go when I decided to have another run around the isle, in case I missed anything. And I had indeed, there was a burnt-down farm on the Eastern side of the island where a farmer's daughter needed me to help recover stuff from their ruined farm while she tried to keep her father alive (no spoilers, but my choices in that quest actually resulted in a rather heart-breaking outcome. I'm curious if I could have prevented it by choosing differently).
Similarly on the next island I discovered some quests just by exploring the coastline, or spotting something in the distance and heading that way. Some of these you could bump into while on the way to other places, but even then you could have easily chosen another path and never seen them.
Yeah, that's another positive note for me. There are some ethically tough decisions to make where the "good" or "bad" choices are really tough to suss out, if they exist at all.
See that doesn't sound that theme parky to me. When I think theme park I think of a WoW zone that has been carefully laid out so that you do 8 quests at hub X, and the final one sends you to hub Y where there are 7 more quests. It's pretty rare that there's any off the beaten path quests that you'd just find running around, or at least that you wouldn't be sent near from one of the other quests.
So are there dungeons or caves and what not that aren't part of quests that are just there to explore if you run around and find them? And i'm assuming because it's an MMO there's no awful 'enemies level up with you' stuff so you can run into stuff that's higher than you?
That's possibly the biggest positive I can think of re: TESO versus ES games proper, the enemies have set levels. You can venture out if you wish, but it'll just get harder and harder (but consequently, the potential rewards will also be level appropriate). I know this'll rub many people wrong, but I liked it.
I can't say I've found any optional caves though, unfortunately. I only got to level 9 during the stress test, though (which means I played the tutorial dungeon, the starting island and half of the island after it).
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
edited January 2014
So some people think it improved greatly and some people still think is dookie. interesting.
Still wont event think about it till the monthly is gone.
Is RvR loot going to your mail really a fuck you to gw2? They added a huge aoe loot. If you forget to loot is that the games fault? Should the game also wipe and powder your behind?
Is there an inkling of how ESO will handle coverage? IE when you server is asleep the other server is active?
And the top end meta in gw2 'rvr' is and will always be giant zergs-> They over balanced defense to the point where a tower is not take able in a reasonable amount of time (even when held by like 1 person) without 70 people to handle the reinforcements. Its so bad at the top end that on reset night when its new top end fighting theres a couple of hours where there isnt that much fighting as the three sides fortify everything.
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
So some people think it improved greatly and some people still think is dookie. interesting.
Still wont event think about it till the monthly is gone.
Is RvR loot going to your mail really a fuck you to gw2? They added a huge aoe loot. If you forget to loot is that the games fault? Should the game also wipe and powder your behind?
Is there an inkling of how ESO will handle coverage? IE when you server is asleep the other server is active?
And the top end meta in gw2 'rvr' is and will always be giant zergs-> They over balanced defense to the point where a tower is not take able in a reasonable amount of time (even when held by like 1 person) without 70 people to handle the reinforcements. Its so bad at the top end that on reset night when its new top end fighting theres a couple of hours where there isnt that much fighting as the three sides fortify everything.
Looting has nothing to do with forgetting to loot, it means you can focus on the actual PVP then go fuck with your loot bags later. This is just for objectives and what not... the NPCs in the RvR zone are still normal looting.
And yes it feels like a direct "fuck you" since GW2 made that kinda odd.
Coverage? There are no servers, its a mega server. You join a RvR campaign that has a duration, technically the map will be covered 24/7 and off-hours wont be a thing. Its going to be more competative, period. Your guild keeps a history of what they do in RvR. There is a leaderboard in each campaign. Someone can become emperor even within their campaign. These things are going to spawn much more competition. Its also a single map with a lattice sysem like Planetside 2. Building siege is way different in this, so defense will most likely play out differently. From my intial thoughts, if you try to turtle up in a tower... you are gonna fucking lose. You have to come out and actually fight. Repairing things takes repair kits, which you have to buy with the PVP currency. So if you don't leave the safety of tower walls you wont have that currency to buy kits and those walls are gonna go down. Walls also stay down until repaired, no instaflip upon capture. You have to take something and hold it. Defending will take a ton more work and having your guild history of holding a keep will mean more. Again, competative feeling. GW2 had that in only the forums, in game it just felt like a fun PVP grind with no real impactful results.
To each their own on subscription fees. After all the PVP time I got this weekend I can't wait to throw my money at this game. If the monthly fee is that big of an issue to you, I would just forget about the game.
Don't get my hate on GW2 wrong... amazing game. And RvR in it is fucking fantastic. Just the long term meta and design was kinda boring. Who knows, after 3-4 months ESO might not be as fun... I'm basing most of this off the things I saw that I wish were directly implemented into GW2. Hell if GW2 just copied their format, I would be on that in a heartbeat.
You also fight over actual Elder Scrolls, which we only saw a tiny bit of this weekend. Think of orbs in GW2. There are no walls however between where the scroll starts and where your faction holds it. Still a lot of mechanics we didn't figure out yet. But the green dudes did grab one when we were trying to assault blue for theirs and it was a fucking epic fight.
Oh and if you wanna take away one thing in my rambling.... mobile rams and mobile camps (spawn points). They have wheels and you can take down the first gate, then bash in the second one with the same ram. Hell the siege equipment's design and controls is undeniably better than anything I've seen.
and objective loot comes in a account chest in gw2 now so? moot? I dunno.
But those things you mention ie walls staying down and such... do sound like improvements.
I don't know how many each campaign supports. From what others are saying, the two campaigns they had going this weekend did hit their cap. You can also guest to another campaign where you wont be ranked or anything. I don't think they mentioned the duration they have planned yet, so who knows if it will be a weekly thing or not. Rewards and shit will be a thing though... you could end up the #1 ranked player in a given campaign, probably gain a title and a special piece of loot or something. There is a costume slot in the game which usually accounts for a full outfit, I would assume the top dudes will get something there. Plus however the emperor thing works, I would hope he gets a fancy hat/crown.
I shoulda looked at how long the rankings list was... I had only checked mine which was around 50-60. But that would have showed the number total I think.
In battle it felt very populated at least, I'd take a rough guess that the bigger fights had 40-50 people from two factions fighting in the same area. Probably 3-4 of these bigger major battles going on at once. Since it all on a HUGE single map, its a 3 way tug of war at all times. You don't have the borderlands thing where you don't get in to many 3 way fights... not to say it doesnt happen, its just not as frequent as on the enternal BG. Just think of the eternal BG, but WAY bigger. Coordination between 3-4 big zergs will be needed, along with smaller 10-20 man groups roaming for the smaller objectives. You did play Planetside 2 right? Just think of how easy it was in that game to accomplish shit as a smaller group instead of always rolling with the huge zerg. That separation is in ESO too so far.
CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
It'd help if they tested for more then a weekend, to actually give us the opportunity to get characters high enough to fight in the RvR stuff and actually contest things over a period of days/a week.
I have decided to leave the game client on my computer so that in the inevitable next beta event, I can try and power through a bit quicker and try the PvP.
Very restricted if you compare it to normal single player ES. But its there, usually mission related. I assume there is a thieves guild, didn't manage to find it yet though.
It'd help if they tested for more then a weekend, to actually give us the opportunity to get characters high enough to fight in the RvR stuff and actually contest things over a period of days/a week.
I have decided to leave the game client on my computer so that in the inevitable next beta event, I can try and power through a bit quicker and try the PvP.
Is there a full on close beta that people have been in for a while? Cause I did see people at level 30-40 when I was in RvR. I assume they have permabeta access maybe... or just leveled like a crazy person somehow.
No. Pickpocketing players would be hella bad outside of PvP and would result in people avoiding each other like the plague for fear of losing all their hard earned goods. It would be cool to see it be a limited thing you could do in PvP though, against enemies.
Pickpocketing hostile NPCs would be neat but redundant. Pickpocketing friendly NPCs would be neat but would require some kind of get caught go to jail mechanic. That seems like it would be tricky.
So, I had planned to play this weekend, but then my friends weren't available to play and there was no reason to test it since I only cared to test the grouping experience.
For those who did manage to play, did any of you group up? If so, how was it? Like, how easy was it to find each other and quest together? Was there any sense in which you were playing together, or were you playing next to each other? For instance, if there was a switch that needed to be flipped, did you both have to flip it, or just one of you? Were you seeing the same world, or both seeing your own world?
Did anyone play around with stealth? I'm curious what the benefits to it are. In the games proper it's really useful, since it lets you steal things, start fights on your own terms, get first-strike bonuses and even remain undetected post-strike if you're ranged.
However, my Nightblade's skill tree outright started with a 2s invisibility skill, with the consecutive skill triggering off being invisible while using it. And NPCs don't seem to mind you rifling through their stuff. So, is there a point to sneaking that I'd missed due to being level bugger-all?
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drunkenpandarenSlapping all the goblin hamIn the top laneRegistered Userregular
Pros; the world looks okay on highest settings and it ran smooth as silk. The voice acted quests are nice. I never played SWTOR so this was refreshing to me. I also liked that you could wander out into the wilderness and spot quest markers rather than everything being piled on you in quest hubs. I liked fishing: I found a nice little secluded fishing area and sat on a rock and fished using insect parts I got from the bugs I caught in the wild as bait. Apparently I took a screenshot of this so, BONUS:
Cons; I don't like the combat. It's supposedly "action combat" but it's not particularly fun and the ugly animations make it, well, ugly as well. I didn't mind bashing skeletons in Skyrim but for some reason I do in ESO. So yeah, the combat was far from impressive to me.
No physics in the world. So you can't go around collecting stuff just lying around. I wanted to pick up food and books and toss bowls around and collect endless cheese but you can't interact with much in the world except for opening containers of various kinds from what I could see.
Dumb A.I. Hard to give an MMO much grief for dumb A.I but nothing really gave me a challenge in the game. I was playing as an archer and came across a polar bear resting on a piece of ice and I figured it'd pose a danger because in early levels bears could be really dangerous in Skyrim and Oblivion. But it just got up, yelled into the air and fell over and died as I plinked it from afar with my bow. Nothing was dangerous at all. While most of the world becomes trivial in Elder Scrolls Games once you level up and get overpowered the world can usually present a lot of dangers to you during low levels. I noticed no such challenge or danger in ESO which kind of just made the questing really boring
Did anyone play around with stealth? I'm curious what the benefits to it are. In the games proper it's really useful, since it lets you steal things, start fights on your own terms, get first-strike bonuses and even remain undetected post-strike if you're ranged.
However, my Nightblade's skill tree outright started with a 2s invisibility skill, with the consecutive skill triggering off being invisible while using it. And NPCs don't seem to mind you rifling through their stuff. So, is there a point to sneaking that I'd missed due to being level bugger-all?
I only got to level 10, but I felt like I was getting major attack bonuses for attacking people from behind, while stealth and using certain skills.
I know for a fact that the Assassins leap/teleport attack skill (sorry for not remembering the name) was basically a one-hit kill on most mobs if I hit them from behind while stealthed. Otherwise, it seemed to do about 20% or so of their health.
I'm assuming when you're saying "in the games proper" you mean like stealth in the traditional ES sense. So as far as that goes, and in my limited PvE experience, I can say yes, it felt like it worked a lot like a traditional ES game.
No. Pickpocketing players would be hella bad outside of PvP and would result in people avoiding each other like the plague for fear of losing all their hard earned goods. It would be cool to see it be a limited thing you could do in PvP though, against enemies.
Pickpocketing hostile NPCs would be neat but redundant. Pickpocketing friendly NPCs would be neat but would require some kind of get caught go to jail mechanic. That seems like it would be tricky.
Mortal online actually handled pickpocketing of players well. You can only pickpocket stackable items and in very small amounts. So if I have a stack of gold over like 60, no one can pickpocket it and without high skills invested in pickpocketing you could barely get above 5-6 gold at once.
Of course this isn't a FFA pvp game and it would just not work anyway.
So, I had planned to play this weekend, but then my friends weren't available to play and there was no reason to test it since I only cared to test the grouping experience.
For those who did manage to play, did any of you group up? If so, how was it? Like, how easy was it to find each other and quest together? Was there any sense in which you were playing together, or were you playing next to each other? For instance, if there was a switch that needed to be flipped, did you both have to flip it, or just one of you? Were you seeing the same world, or both seeing your own world?
I grouped in PVP... so I can't say much for the PVE side. Its not GW2 at all with the ease of not having to be on the same page as someone else. There is dynamic stuff though that pops up, as well as the open world dungeons that it instances to not get to crowded, feels organic to work with others in there to get your shit done.
I wouldn't even bother if you have GW2 expectations in how grouping works though. Two totally different games in that regard.
Nothing was dangerous at all. While most of the world becomes trivial in Elder Scrolls Games once you level up and get overpowered the world can usually present a lot of dangers to you during low levels. I noticed no such challenge or danger in ESO which kind of just made the questing really boring
Might've just been my glass cannon build (Shadow-focused dual wielding Nightblade), but for me the difficulty started changing on the second island. I could stunlock one enemy to death no problem, and with two of them I could survive the second guy well enough, but 3 or more +1 mobs, or a proper (solo quest) boss? Then I had to start getting inventive, because I could barely take 20% of the boss' health off before they killed me.
Sheogorath's puppy hurt. Evade his charge and stab him in the bum while stunned, sure, but even just his normal attacks could kill me right quick if I just stood there and took them (or tried to weapon-block them).
For some odd reason I enjoyed this weekend more the prior ones. Perhaps it was because i was less "RAWR Elder Scrolls!" and more "Lets just play it and see how it goes."
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No. No. No. No. NO.
FF14 has fucking terrible class design flexibility. Have you even played it? All it has is the ability to not make alts if you wanna change classes... THATS IT. You can pick 5 extra abilities from an EXTREMELY tiny pool of options and allocate 30 stat points that go into your primary stats anyway.
That's it. 5 extra skills and 30 stat points.
Its one of the most restrictive MMOs in terms of class spec/skills/stats. Even vanilla WoW had more options in how you specced your character. FF14 1.0 had a bit more options and was far less restrictive if that's what you meant... and even then the choices of what to cross class were very much no brainers.
One of the major things I look at in an MMO is how I can effect what my character does. My skills, stats, gear, etc. I also consider how valid various options the game gives me are, since some games (RIFT) give you a ton of options, but they still end up being a no brainer in the end result. One of the most noticable things I've found in ESO so far was the PVP is amazing and the class/skill customization is deep.
Do you play very many MMOs? Because you listed Secret World for its story and what not... but didn't even mention how it has an amazingly deep classless customization system, yet somehow consider FF14 to have a good one when its about as complex as a game of checkers in that regard.
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I love TSW class system but it is absolutely off putting for new players. I could witter on for hours about how much it gets right but I wasn't trying to big up one particular game, rather comment on the changes within the overall genre.
First time I successfully tanked the NYE yesterday as well and finished my 10.4.4 set!
Oblivion or? Only game that ever did that to me was Half-Life 1. Fucking Sierra Utilities.
I play just about every MMO. Either a bit, or for a long time. Even the shitty indie ones if they have an idea I wanna see in action.
Except Entropia... I just can't bring myself to see how its real cash economy works.
I am waaaaay the fuck outside of seeing things compared to WoW. I also don't hate WoW at all, its a great game. Its just nothing new and I have no reason to play it.
I don't think anyone is really treating things in ESO as amazing or new either. No quest hubs, class options, exploration.... people are pointing that shit out because it shows the game isn't like WoW and isn't shit like some are saying. I saw one post straight up saying "this feels like WoW with a Skyrim skin, its just quest hubs".... so people are pointing out that shit like that is 100% false.
Very little is being touted as "amazing and new". Even the PVP that I'm super hyped about isn't amazing and new. But its designed fantastically and it fixes all the Guild Wars 2 fucks ups in WvW.
If I wanted a similar RvR experience I have about 5 options right now and they are all dated or just not as good:
Darkfall - but requires shittons of grinding and time between actual PVP is dull. Also totally underpopulated.
Regnum - Apparently the RvR is good, but its dated and the combat is pretty much EQ1.
Mortal Online - Actually a pretty good option and last I played it was improving a ton. Just the community... fucking hell.
GW2 - Very fun, good combat. Terrible map design and shallow metagame due to said map design. Also competative only in the forum warrior regard.
DOAC is still going and I think people still consider it the best of the RvR stuff right?
ESO on the other hand, I played the RvR all weekend as soon as I hit level 10. It has a GIANT ass map and a lattice system. You can deploy forward camps temporarily to spawn from.
Easiest way to describe the flow of spawning > getting back to the fight vs balance of actually taking something.... Planetside 2. Feels very much like that, but in a fantasy world.
Plus it has a ton of smaller resource objectives that help split up the zerg. And even with the ability to teleport around the waystones, you still have a few minutes trek from a keep/castle to actually counter a small group taking a small objective. So unlike GW2, the zerg would just be wasting their time if they did the giant ass game of follow the leader on every single little thing there is.
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I think I'm allergic to Pvp in general... ;-)
The problem with GW2's "open world" was it wasn't really open at all. You had an exact list of everything that could be found on that map, then you just uncovered all the tiles until your map was listed as "complete" and then you moved on to the next one. And every zone was gated by level, and every zone flowed from low to high. You couldn't just pick a direction and go. You'd clearly and easily run into a spot where the monsters one shotted you and you had to get back on the path. It was a nice illusion of being open, but that doesn't make it open.
At at max level, there wasn't any "exploring" left to do. Again, you just looked on your map for what zone wasn't 100%, went to that zone and uncovered all the tiles, with important stuff already marked on your map, just not "explored". And dynamic events, were just reoccuring group quests that reset after they finished. They had zero impact on the world or zone. In the beginning, ArenaNet touted how success and failure was going to matter. It didn't. If you failed, you just waited 15 minutes for the event to restart and do it again. If you succeeded, you finished the chain...then waited 15 minutes for it to start again. That's the very definition of "static".
Yes, the story and writing was unbelievable in TSW, as were the environments...but it ABSOLUTELY had quest hubs. You 100% bounced from hub to hub as you completed the zone. From the very first police station in Kingsmouth to the village in Transylvania, these were stereotypical quest hubs. Get quests. Finish quests, return to hub, get more quests. If anything, TSW just did a pretty good job of seamlessly moving you from hub to hub. But to say it lacked quest hubs is 100% wrong. False. Incorrect.
FF14 has one of the most rigid class designs I've seen in a recent MMO. Nearly every single class at max level is identical. And no, just because you picked one of five or six different, limited cross-class skills and someone picked another one that has virtually no impact on your class doesn't make it flexible or open ended. Early on FF gives you the illusion of an open class design, but there's no of it once you're at the end. Every single class is nearly identical, wearing the same armor, same weapons, same skills, same stats.
A zone event NEVER changed anything on a map. If you won versus an invasion, you got loot, everything disappeared and the zone was identical to how it was prior to the invasion. If you lost, you didn't get loot, everything disappeared and the zone was left identical to how it was prior to the invasion. The entire world was static. Nothing ever changed regardless of how many "zone" events fired off at any given time.
The reason I point all this out is...most of your opinions on other MMOs that you're comparing ESO to are pretty much wrong. Sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but if this is your perception of other MMOs, your entire basis for comparison is just flat out wrong. None of what you claimed you "liked" about the above games actually exists. It's almost nonsensical in any context, let alone in the ESO thread you're trying to participate in.
To me, it just comes across as you throwing whatever you can against the game. You're literally making stuff up in an effort to bash it.
And if you take anything away from my post, let it be this.
Elder Scrolls Online...is an MMO. If you don't like MMOs, you won't like ESO, no matter how "good" of a game it is. Take a deep breath. Focus on that. Think about it. Let it sink it.
People, it's an MMO. It's not multiplayer Skyrim. It's not Skyrim. It's not a sequel to Skyrim. Now take a another deep breath, and get the fuck over it already. There should be a note at the top of this thread, "If you're coming here to complain that ESO isn't a multiplayer Skyrim, we know. Don't waste your time posting. Thanks."
ESO is an MMO version of Elder Scrolls. And it's going to happen. Zenimax isn't all of a sudden going to pull back on everything, cancel the project and tell you how wonderful you were for finally convincing them that all they needed to do was give you a multiplayer version of Skyrim. That's not going to happen. Let it go.
And again, see my earlier feedback. It blows my mind how you can play this game for more than 30 minutes and not come away thinking that it plays very much like an ES game. It's boggling, really.
Ya know I didn't really notice. I think it might. You seem to get an abundance of the PVP currency though and that might be used for repairs.
I was getting more PVP loot than I needed, which was vendored for gold and that can cover repairs easily. Loot seemed to just be a random piece of anything in your level range.
The RvR map also has dragons. They seemed to be guarding entrance to the middle of the map's megacastle-keep thingie. They looked fucking mean and I didn't try to poke them.
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Again, another falsehood thrown out there. Top servers absolutely used huge zergs. They just had enough great commanders to take charge and keep pointing the zerg in the right direction.
But a lot of the end game in ESO is suppose to center around large-scale, open-world PvP...so probably another sign that ESO just isn't the game for you.
Speaking of endgame being very PVP centric in ESO.... we might as well get this out of the way RIGHT NOW, so LISTEN UP peoples.
When your PVP rank goes up in ESO, you gain skill points. The SAME exact skill points that you gain in the PVE side of the game.
Unless there is something I don't know about yet, (and I only made it to level 13, so who knows) you will never get as many skill points if you do only PVE. This is an assumption, but I don't see how it wouldn't be true.
Now before people freak out. Just realize this, you easily will end up with enough skill points from just PVE to max out what you NEED in PVE. When you join the PVP stuff and do the tutorial it unlocks two more skill trees that are PVP specific, so part of the reason a PVPer is going to get extra points is so they can spec into PVP stuff without losing the ability to PVE. With the way passives work and the ability to swap skills, there wont be a need for dual specs or anything to swap between the two.
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But Secret World did not have quest hubs. If you were playing them as quest hubs you were missing one of the main points of the questing system. The entire thing is designed to keep you moving rather than completing all the quests in one spot then moving to the next. Every zone is littered with bread crumb quests to push the player towards *not* taking the standard quest hub approach. It's incredibly inefficient - you're supposed to wander the map following the different story lines individually, rather than going back to the hub for another quest once one is finished,
Not going to bother for the rest because I don't think others would appreciate us posting huge diatribes. I've said what I think, no point us arguing over stuff we fundamentally disagree on and neither can prove.
This is true with TSW. The devs even said, if you do a quest and it doesn't lead to another one with 20 feet or so of the one you just completed then send in a bug report ASAP.
They did indeed have quest "Hubs", but in the same way ESO has them. Main areas towns/cities have multiple quest givers and you could say that's a quest hub. But both TSW and ESO can function where you just grab one of those quests and go with it. To me a real "quest hub" based MMO is where you grab 10-20 quests in a single spot, then you go complete every single quest and return them all at once. Rinse, repeat, until next zone. This usually means there is less story and the progression of each quest feels lacking.
Both ESO and TSW have strong points of each quest feeling like there is something going on there and the story that goes with it keeps you engaged. Both however could be treated like quest hubs and you would lose track of each quest because they don't take you to the same areas at all and the storys will get mixed up and just ruin the experience.
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What I can say is the class/skill flexibility sounds fantastic. IMO the thing with MMOs is that one person might love the exactly same elements that another person hates. MMOs are very much about "feel" and not mechanics a lot of times. Not always, but often. I don't think any other genre is one where playing it yourself is absolutely mandatory to determine your feelings as much as this one.
I would probably play f2p, but I'm still waiting for DAoC to go f2p.
For example, on the starting isle I had finished the entire thing and was ready to go when I decided to have another run around the isle, in case I missed anything. And I had indeed, there was a burnt-down farm on the Eastern side of the island where a farmer's daughter needed me to help recover stuff from their ruined farm while she tried to keep her father alive (no spoilers, but my choices in that quest actually resulted in a rather heart-breaking outcome. I'm curious if I could have prevented it by choosing differently).
Similarly on the next island I discovered some quests just by exploring the coastline, or spotting something in the distance and heading that way. Some of these you could bump into while on the way to other places, but even then you could have easily chosen another path and never seen them.
So are there dungeons or caves and what not that aren't part of quests that are just there to explore if you run around and find them? And i'm assuming because it's an MMO there's no awful 'enemies level up with you' stuff so you can run into stuff that's higher than you?
I can't say I've found any optional caves though, unfortunately. I only got to level 9 during the stress test, though (which means I played the tutorial dungeon, the starting island and half of the island after it).
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Still wont event think about it till the monthly is gone.
Is RvR loot going to your mail really a fuck you to gw2? They added a huge aoe loot. If you forget to loot is that the games fault? Should the game also wipe and powder your behind?
Is there an inkling of how ESO will handle coverage? IE when you server is asleep the other server is active?
And the top end meta in gw2 'rvr' is and will always be giant zergs-> They over balanced defense to the point where a tower is not take able in a reasonable amount of time (even when held by like 1 person) without 70 people to handle the reinforcements. Its so bad at the top end that on reset night when its new top end fighting theres a couple of hours where there isnt that much fighting as the three sides fortify everything.
Looting has nothing to do with forgetting to loot, it means you can focus on the actual PVP then go fuck with your loot bags later. This is just for objectives and what not... the NPCs in the RvR zone are still normal looting.
And yes it feels like a direct "fuck you" since GW2 made that kinda odd.
Coverage? There are no servers, its a mega server. You join a RvR campaign that has a duration, technically the map will be covered 24/7 and off-hours wont be a thing. Its going to be more competative, period. Your guild keeps a history of what they do in RvR. There is a leaderboard in each campaign. Someone can become emperor even within their campaign. These things are going to spawn much more competition. Its also a single map with a lattice sysem like Planetside 2. Building siege is way different in this, so defense will most likely play out differently. From my intial thoughts, if you try to turtle up in a tower... you are gonna fucking lose. You have to come out and actually fight. Repairing things takes repair kits, which you have to buy with the PVP currency. So if you don't leave the safety of tower walls you wont have that currency to buy kits and those walls are gonna go down. Walls also stay down until repaired, no instaflip upon capture. You have to take something and hold it. Defending will take a ton more work and having your guild history of holding a keep will mean more. Again, competative feeling. GW2 had that in only the forums, in game it just felt like a fun PVP grind with no real impactful results.
To each their own on subscription fees. After all the PVP time I got this weekend I can't wait to throw my money at this game. If the monthly fee is that big of an issue to you, I would just forget about the game.
Don't get my hate on GW2 wrong... amazing game. And RvR in it is fucking fantastic. Just the long term meta and design was kinda boring. Who knows, after 3-4 months ESO might not be as fun... I'm basing most of this off the things I saw that I wish were directly implemented into GW2. Hell if GW2 just copied their format, I would be on that in a heartbeat.
You also fight over actual Elder Scrolls, which we only saw a tiny bit of this weekend. Think of orbs in GW2. There are no walls however between where the scroll starts and where your faction holds it. Still a lot of mechanics we didn't figure out yet. But the green dudes did grab one when we were trying to assault blue for theirs and it was a fucking epic fight.
Oh and if you wanna take away one thing in my rambling.... mobile rams and mobile camps (spawn points). They have wheels and you can take down the first gate, then bash in the second one with the same ram. Hell the siege equipment's design and controls is undeniably better than anything I've seen.
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and objective loot comes in a account chest in gw2 now so? moot? I dunno.
But those things you mention ie walls staying down and such... do sound like improvements.
I don't know how many each campaign supports. From what others are saying, the two campaigns they had going this weekend did hit their cap. You can also guest to another campaign where you wont be ranked or anything. I don't think they mentioned the duration they have planned yet, so who knows if it will be a weekly thing or not. Rewards and shit will be a thing though... you could end up the #1 ranked player in a given campaign, probably gain a title and a special piece of loot or something. There is a costume slot in the game which usually accounts for a full outfit, I would assume the top dudes will get something there. Plus however the emperor thing works, I would hope he gets a fancy hat/crown.
I shoulda looked at how long the rankings list was... I had only checked mine which was around 50-60. But that would have showed the number total I think.
In battle it felt very populated at least, I'd take a rough guess that the bigger fights had 40-50 people from two factions fighting in the same area. Probably 3-4 of these bigger major battles going on at once. Since it all on a HUGE single map, its a 3 way tug of war at all times. You don't have the borderlands thing where you don't get in to many 3 way fights... not to say it doesnt happen, its just not as frequent as on the enternal BG. Just think of the eternal BG, but WAY bigger. Coordination between 3-4 big zergs will be needed, along with smaller 10-20 man groups roaming for the smaller objectives. You did play Planetside 2 right? Just think of how easy it was in that game to accomplish shit as a smaller group instead of always rolling with the huge zerg. That separation is in ESO too so far.
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I have decided to leave the game client on my computer so that in the inevitable next beta event, I can try and power through a bit quicker and try the PvP.
Very restricted if you compare it to normal single player ES. But its there, usually mission related. I assume there is a thieves guild, didn't manage to find it yet though.
Is there a full on close beta that people have been in for a while? Cause I did see people at level 30-40 when I was in RvR. I assume they have permabeta access maybe... or just leveled like a crazy person somehow.
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No. Pickpocketing players would be hella bad outside of PvP and would result in people avoiding each other like the plague for fear of losing all their hard earned goods. It would be cool to see it be a limited thing you could do in PvP though, against enemies.
Pickpocketing hostile NPCs would be neat but redundant. Pickpocketing friendly NPCs would be neat but would require some kind of get caught go to jail mechanic. That seems like it would be tricky.
For those who did manage to play, did any of you group up? If so, how was it? Like, how easy was it to find each other and quest together? Was there any sense in which you were playing together, or were you playing next to each other? For instance, if there was a switch that needed to be flipped, did you both have to flip it, or just one of you? Were you seeing the same world, or both seeing your own world?
However, my Nightblade's skill tree outright started with a 2s invisibility skill, with the consecutive skill triggering off being invisible while using it. And NPCs don't seem to mind you rifling through their stuff. So, is there a point to sneaking that I'd missed due to being level bugger-all?
Steam: pandas_gota_gun
Pros; the world looks okay on highest settings and it ran smooth as silk. The voice acted quests are nice. I never played SWTOR so this was refreshing to me. I also liked that you could wander out into the wilderness and spot quest markers rather than everything being piled on you in quest hubs. I liked fishing: I found a nice little secluded fishing area and sat on a rock and fished using insect parts I got from the bugs I caught in the wild as bait. Apparently I took a screenshot of this so, BONUS:
Cons; I don't like the combat. It's supposedly "action combat" but it's not particularly fun and the ugly animations make it, well, ugly as well. I didn't mind bashing skeletons in Skyrim but for some reason I do in ESO. So yeah, the combat was far from impressive to me.
No physics in the world. So you can't go around collecting stuff just lying around. I wanted to pick up food and books and toss bowls around and collect endless cheese but you can't interact with much in the world except for opening containers of various kinds from what I could see.
Dumb A.I. Hard to give an MMO much grief for dumb A.I but nothing really gave me a challenge in the game. I was playing as an archer and came across a polar bear resting on a piece of ice and I figured it'd pose a danger because in early levels bears could be really dangerous in Skyrim and Oblivion. But it just got up, yelled into the air and fell over and died as I plinked it from afar with my bow. Nothing was dangerous at all. While most of the world becomes trivial in Elder Scrolls Games once you level up and get overpowered the world can usually present a lot of dangers to you during low levels. I noticed no such challenge or danger in ESO which kind of just made the questing really boring
I only got to level 10, but I felt like I was getting major attack bonuses for attacking people from behind, while stealth and using certain skills.
I know for a fact that the Assassins leap/teleport attack skill (sorry for not remembering the name) was basically a one-hit kill on most mobs if I hit them from behind while stealthed. Otherwise, it seemed to do about 20% or so of their health.
I'm assuming when you're saying "in the games proper" you mean like stealth in the traditional ES sense. So as far as that goes, and in my limited PvE experience, I can say yes, it felt like it worked a lot like a traditional ES game.
Mortal online actually handled pickpocketing of players well. You can only pickpocket stackable items and in very small amounts. So if I have a stack of gold over like 60, no one can pickpocket it and without high skills invested in pickpocketing you could barely get above 5-6 gold at once.
Of course this isn't a FFA pvp game and it would just not work anyway.
I grouped in PVP... so I can't say much for the PVE side. Its not GW2 at all with the ease of not having to be on the same page as someone else. There is dynamic stuff though that pops up, as well as the open world dungeons that it instances to not get to crowded, feels organic to work with others in there to get your shit done.
I wouldn't even bother if you have GW2 expectations in how grouping works though. Two totally different games in that regard.
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Sheogorath's puppy hurt. Evade his charge and stab him in the bum while stunned, sure, but even just his normal attacks could kill me right quick if I just stood there and took them (or tried to weapon-block them).
As said, might've just been my build.