The Elder Scrolls Online

I don't like the repair fees. Rent is too damned high. I'm used to mmos where you either:

1. Fix your own gear
2. Pay some nominal fee to have a NPC do it

This "Oh, just throw away your broken stuff and buy more" is kind of irritating, especially when you're trying to keep sets together. Usually run with two sets of gear bonuses, haven't checked but I assumed I was getting both of the buffs from each set I was wearing.

Don't know why they planned it this way when the whole game is just one big money sink anyways from paying to feed horses every day, cuts for guild sales and teleport fees. Other games have those too but it seems like ESO put all of them in one game for your convenience.

Kedwyn_sl said:

I don't know how you can even say that.

The game is exactly opposite what an Elder Scrolls game is. Everything is static just like Tuco describes and you have a set path that you follow through the entire game doing quests mostly in the exact order that the developer designed them in.

It plays more like WoW with fewer seed quests than any ES game I've played.

Click to expand...

Outside of mods, Elder Scrolls single player games are static worlds. In TESO you can run in any direction and do any variety of quests or none and the world is far larger than Skyrim. The only thing you really need to do is the main quest which is exactly like any Elder Scrolls Game. There are a bunch of small dungeons, just like the single player game, and there are a ton of small events hidden throughout the world.

The game plays nothing like WOW, which is the problem. There's not much emphasis on groups or multi player.

The problem is the fun in an Elder Scrolls game IS those mods. Without them, the game gets stale fast, regardless of if they scale the difficulty to require more people.

Gecko_sl said:

Outside of mods, Elder Scrolls single player games are static worlds. In TESO you can run in any direction and do any variety of quests or none and the world is far larger than Skyrim. The only thing you really need to do is the main quest which is exactly like any Elder Scrolls Game. There are a bunch of small dungeons, just like the single player game, and there are a ton of small events hidden throughout the world.

The game plays nothing like WOW, which is the problem. There's not much emphasis on groups or multi player.

The problem is the fun in an Elder Scrolls game IS those mods. Without them, the game gets stale fast, regardless of if they scale the difficulty to require more people.

Click to expand...

The single player games have living worlds and cities. People move, do things and behave believably. As do NPCs out in the world. They just don't stand there with a stick up their ass like in TESO. The world might be pretty but it is in no way similar to the single player game in terms of life / activity.

In addition, you can not leave Daggerfall and just run to even the very north of that zone and be super successful as you will be fighting mid teens mobs at level 6 or so. Much less go to another ZONE which is higher and do much of anything. Thus your comment that you can go anywhere and do anything like in a single player game is dead wrong. Getting zoned into a level based walled zone is NOTHING like the single player game.

Tuco_sl said:

It can be fun but the world is extremely sterile and non-interactive. It's a lifeless husk propped up by theme-park quests. Which is the opposite of what Elder Scroll games represent. This is basically the fundamental problem I have had with ESO since they first announced information about it. If they took their budget and made the kind of living and changing world that would be worthy of being called Elder Scrolls Online it'd be great.

Click to expand...

Must be playing a different game. There are Theme-park quests, sure, but with the large amount of phasing that exists they do a great job bringing the game alive with changing the environment based on what quests you are completing. Honestly, it has more life than Skyrim. The only complaint that makes sense is from 1-30 you are saving more towns than anything else, it would be nice to change it up a bit.

Maybe you have been pvping to level more so than pve? The questing is pretty great, albeit slower than I would have liked.

Kedwyn_sl said:

The single player games have living worlds and cities. People move, do things and behave believably. As do NPCs out in the world. They just don't stand there with a stick up their ass like in TESO. The world might be pretty but it is in no way similar to the single player game in terms of life / activity.

In addition, you can not leave Daggerfall and just run to even the very north of that zone and be super successful as you will be fighting mid teens mobs at level 6 or so. Much less go to another ZONE which is higher and do much of anything. Thus your comment that you can go anywhere and do anything like in a single player game is dead wrong. Getting zoned into a level based walled zone is NOTHING like the single player game.

Click to expand...

Toxx answered nicely:

Toxxulian_sl said:

Must be playing a different game. There are Theme-park quests, sure, but with the large amount of phasing that exists they do a great job bringing the game alive with changing the environment based on what quests you are completing. Honestly, it has more life than Skyrim. The only complaint that makes sense is from 1-30 you are saving more towns than anything else, it would be nice to change it up a bit.

Maybe you have been pvping to level more so than pve? The questing is pretty great, albeit slower than I would have liked.

Click to expand...

Toxxulian_sl said:

Must be playing a different game. There are Theme-park quests, sure, but with the large amount of phasing that exists they do a great job bringing the game alive with changing the environment based on what quests you are completing. Honestly, it has more life than Skyrim. The only complaint that makes sense is from 1-30 you are saving more towns than anything else, it would be nice to change it up a bit.

Maybe you have been pvping to level more so than pve? The questing is pretty great, albeit slower than I would have liked.

Click to expand...

I respect your opinion, but I think questing is far from being great. It's downright horrible. I will give specific reasons why:
- First, you talk to the quest-giver. He preaches to you about what you need to do and why you need to do it. The voice acting is downright terrible in ESO - and the writing is even worse. Personally, I click through the entire NPC interaction, then open my journal to see what I need to do, if necessary.
- Now you've got the quest, you take off running . . . because you have to run a lot in ESO. I honestly think the developers thought, "We can make players think that the world is bigger than it actually is by making them run a lot".
- Upon reaching your destination, you more likely than not have to do a single, mundane task . . followed by more running to continue the quest.
- Talk to another NPC, do another mundane task, run . . . rinse/repeat.
- Along the way, you're looting crates, boxes etc and you're also harvesting items you find in the world.
- After completing the quest line you are finally given a reward. The XP gain is actually quite crappy, and often is not commensurate to the amount of time you've just spent running all over the damn place trying to get this quest line done.
- Your inventory is full, which means you have to destroy something so that you can get your quest reward.
- The item you get for your quest reward is probably unusable by your character. Sadly, there are no choices. You're stuck with what you have.
- Now you have to go to town (which requires even more running) to unload your full inventory - often times you may have to log in/out of mule characters just so that your current character has reasonable space to quest/play.
- Now you're ready to begin another quest line. Rinse/repeat.

So I like how they fixed one dupe method.....yet have at least 2 more still live in the game.

With a possible 3rd one.

Tuco_sl said:

Re: Phased quests. To me these always seemed sterile, fixed and boring to me. I don't think this is the first time I've brought this up but take the quest where you save villagers from being burnt by bandits. In the pre-quest phase the town is a ghost town, the inquest phase the town is on fire and the post quest phase the town is healthy. Yes, the player can dictate which phase it is in by doing the quest, but personally this isn't very compelling or interesting. There is no relationship between the player action and the result, you literally just click on shit that is highlighted until the quest is complete. I'm putting out fires but that's just a thinly veiled game that involves clicking on a bucket and then putting out a fire.

The alternative is to have bandits continuously spawn at a bandit base and move toward a nearby village and attempt to put it on fire. The player can interact with this process by:
1. Crippling the bandit base before the bandits spawn.
2. Stopping the bandits on their way to the village.
3. Stopping the bandits at the village.
4. Dousing the burnt village soon after the bandits succeed.
5. Rebuilding the village after it burns to the ground.
6. Help the bandits and raid the village.

When I heard Elder Scrolls Online this is what I hoped for. A very complex simulation where a player isn't a Dragonborn, vestige or Nerevarine but is rather just some joe surviving in a harsh and ever-changing world.

I did a ton of PvP leveling to 50, but virtually all of my exp came from PVE questing (almost no grinding). The XP gain in PVP is awful (Reason #2 why the PVP isn't going to be longlived).

Click to expand...

This sounds suspiciously like the psuedo-dynamic questing using RNG like I posted about 5-6 years ago when it was still a good idea... lol

Tuco_sl said:

The alternative is to have bandits continuously spawn at a bandit base and move toward a nearby village and attempt to put it on fire. The player can interact with this process by:
1. Crippling the bandit base before the bandits spawn.
2. Stopping the bandits on their way to the village.
3. Stopping the bandits at the village.
4. Dousing the burnt village soon after the bandits succeed.
5. Rebuilding the village after it burns to the ground.
6. Help the bandits and raid the village.

Click to expand...

Sounds like EQ: N. My preference would to have players build the village, be the village leaders, and also be the bandits, with hired NPCs thrown in but by and large the world revolving around players and not static.

TESO definitely is a letdown due to being a single playerish themepark versus a vibrant alive dynamic world with empowerment.. The megaserver is nice, but whats the use of lumping all these people together if we aren't able to actually do anything except kill respawns and do a small amount of frontiers fighting...

They played it way too safe.

Gecko_sl said:

Outside of mods, Elder Scrolls single player games are static worlds. In TESO you can run in any direction and do any variety of quests or none and the world is far larger than Skyrim. The only thing you really need to do is the main quest which is exactly like any Elder Scrolls Game. There are a bunch of small dungeons, just like the single player game, and there are a ton of small events hidden throughout the world.

The game plays nothing like WOW, which is the problem. There's not much emphasis on groups or multi player.

The problem is the fun in an Elder Scrolls game IS those mods. Without them, the game gets stale fast, regardless of if they scale the difficulty to require more people.

Click to expand...

in regardesss to game playing like solo game, its true furthermore you have npc guild dungeon quests and other quests that you cant help your fellow player and team up with them to do the instance, which is some worst design ever seen in this day and age you should be doing everything you can to encourage grouping, not 3 exp per dungeon mob, not allowing guildmates and friends help them on quests and npc guild quests in dungeons cause there stuck like fighters guild etc.

Patch Notes v1.0.5 - Elder Scrolls Online

There is another line in the french and german version of patch notes about fixing infinite loadings.

The infinite loading screens are ruining my already sparse play sessions with this game.

Vitality_sl said:

The infinite loading screens are ruining my already sparse play sessions with this game.

Click to expand...

At least they are loading for you. Not sure why but I end up getting that bug where you port and then you're in the Purgatory lobby until you reset.

I thought it was some weird memory thing on my side at first, but my other mmos don't have that problem even with longer times on occasion. Not sure why it hangs up like that.

Unrelated; just did some questline in Redguard land for one of the Guilds where you have to direct these laser beams onto the center of a pedestal. Simply amazing looking area, one of the best ones I've seen in awhile.. kind of reminded me of The Secret World's puzzle quests with look and feel except.. they arrow directed you on how to do it.

Why the hell would they want to ruin even a simple puzzle in a fantastic area with "Place Tab A in Slot B dummy"?

Jackdaddio_sl said:

At least they are loading for you. Not sure why but I end up getting that bug where you port and then you're in the Purgatory lobby until you reset.

I thought it was some weird memory thing on my side at first, but my other mmos don't have that problem even with longer times on occasion. Not sure why it hangs up like that.

Unrelated; just did some questline in Redguard land for one of the Guilds where you have to direct these laser beams onto the center of a pedestal. Simply amazing looking area, one of the best ones I've seen in awhile.. kind of reminded me of The Secret World's puzzle quests with look and feel except.. they arrow directed you on how to do it.

Why the hell would they want to ruin even a simple puzzle in a fantastic area with "Place Tab A in Slot B dummy"?

Click to expand...

The other night it was getting to the point where my VR group was praying to the god of loading screens to get us through just one torch dungeon door. We ended up losing 5 minutes on the hour just to loading issues as a group, it was a pretty bad experience.

I don't really give a fuck about the quality of the content as much as I give a fuck about actually being able to do it.