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Elder Scrolls games are terrible, but Elder Scrolls Online is a masterpiece.

anvi

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They could have just given me $200 million but they decided to blow it on this shit instead?
It isn't shit though, not even close. Why not at least watch a video of it? There is plenty about it I wish was better and might not play past 2 months, but it is one of the best MMO's out there, and waaaaay better than any other Elder Scrolls game.

how is the combat similar to the Gothic games (which only went up to #2)?
Yeah DAOC, EQ, Vanguard, they are the only big ones. And TESO. The combat is a lot like Gothic, mobs charge at you and if you don't block or dive, it hurts. Then you fight back and have to right click to block some big attacks, or dive. Some stuff you can't dive out the way of so blocking is essential.

The combat could be a lot better, it needed more depth, but it is still the best action RPG combat I've ever seen.
  1. I've played every MMO you have ever heard of, and 50 you have never heard of,

Guys, guys. We need an intervention. Meet me at the main floor of his mother.
The problem is that they only entertain me for 1 month max. I have only played a few MMO's longer than a month. And there have only been two MMO's I've played past 2 months.
 

kris

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  1. I've played every MMO you have ever heard of, and 50 you have never heard of,

Guys, guys. We need an intervention. Meet me at the main floor of his mother.
The problem is that they only entertain me for 1 month max. I have only played a few MMO's longer than a month. And there have only been two MMO's I've played past 2 months.

"Only a month"

More severe than expected, might need to put him down.
 

anvi

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"Only a month" More severe than expected, might need to put him down.
Lol. You should look at EQ and WoW players. There are people who have been playing EQ for 17 years straight, no exaggeration. Most WoW players have played it for at least a year. I played EQ for a huge amount of time but all these modern MMOs are minor distractions. But I think a month is good, most single player games don't last me that long. Playing through stuff like Rift and The Secret World gave me some great gaming memories, even though I didn't stay with them long.
 

King Crispy

Too bad I have no queen.
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Strap Yourselves In
I decided to try this again after having read all the effusive praise heaped upon it by anvi. It took approximately seven hours to download, and...

It still sucks.

I don't have time or the inclination to address each and every one of his frankly ridiculous comments about what supposedly makes the game so great, especially now after all its updates, but it looks exactly like the same shitty game it was at release.

Just some quick hits to ward off anyone else at least attempting to feign his or her prestigious status here at Codex from falling for the bullshitz:

- The overall feeling of this game just oozes derp. It's the way the character moves, the way he looks, the behavior of the physics of the game, the general atmosphere it conveys. It feels like (and you are) playing a MMO designed for consoles.

- The population of the game, as is very common in most MMO's is very triggering. You've got people running around bunny hopping with all these crazy magical effects going on, pets following them around, shouting stupid shit, and you feel like you've just stepped into a fantasy world holding cell for Disneyland employee rejects. I had to get out.

- The UI, although they were going for a more "immersive" experience akin to the real TES games, is annoyingly Spartan. You get the typical Bethesda Quest Compass across the top that points you like a retard to your next goal, but mostly, especially if you're just starting out, it's a vacuum of info on what to do next that just leaves you asking yourself why you're even here.

- While there isn't a steep learning curve, because you basically just run around and kill shit and collect shit, jumping back into this game once being gone for a while leaves you with a bewildering mess in your inventory. Good luck figuring out where you left off and what you were trying to accomplish. No way I'm starting over at the beginning and I think it's just a testament to the poor design that the crafting and collection of shit is so chaotic and unfocused. If you're going to do Quest Compii, do them for everything in the game to complete the braindead experience.

Seriously, stay away. There's nothing compelling to see here. If you want the feeling of a huge gameworld to explore in 3rd person with flashy graphics and a nearly endless list of things to do, stick with Witcher 3. At least that way the only retard playing the game at the time is you.
 

jungl

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You can tell by this games graphics and lack of anti aniliasing that it was specifically designed for consoles in mind. The game itself is the perfect template in 101 how to make a generic mmorpg. I'm trying really hard to find something compelling about this game but there is nothing.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
The only interest I have is what they've done with Vvardenfell and the rest of Morrowind. I tried looking at a few LPs on YouTube but they seem to be narrated by morons.
 

anvi

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The overall feeling of this game just oozes derp. It's the way the character moves, the way he looks, the behavior of the physics of the game, the general atmosphere it conveys. It feels like (and you are) playing a MMO designed for consoles.
Graphics whore tard detected. Why even try this when you could be playing Black Desert? Awesome graphics and shitty gameplay, seems perfect for you.

- The population of the game, as is very common in most MMO's is very triggering. You've got people running around bunny hopping with all these crazy magical effects going on, pets following them around, shouting stupid shit, and you feel like you've just stepped into a fantasy world holding cell for Disneyland employee rejects. I had to get out.
Plays an RPG, complains about magical effects...

- The UI, although they were going for a more "immersive" experience akin to the real TES games, is annoyingly Spartan.
There are about 5000000 mods that turn the UI into anything you want. L2P grandpa.

like a retard to your next goal, but mostly, especially if you're just starting out, it's a vacuum of info on what to do next that just leaves you asking yourself why you're even here.
You actually may well be retarded, seeing as this game has more content than any game ever made. You can point yourself in any direction, and run for 20 seconds, and find stuff to kill, a huge variety of dungeons, world bosses, and endless quests.

- While there isn't a steep learning curve, because you basically just run around and kill shit and collect shit,
Solo questing is easy kill shit and collect shit, but dungeons are not like that, whether you solo them or play in a group.

jumping back into this game once being gone for a while leaves you with a bewildering mess in your inventory.
Again, all signs point towards retarded. Your inventory is sorted by categories.... Weapons, armor, consumables, crafting shit, and junk. What more do you need?

Good luck figuring out where you left off and what you were trying to accomplish.
Press J... you know... for journal... Or just uninstall and go back to minecraft. Clearly this is all beyond you.

No way I'm starting over at the beginning and I think it's just a testament to the poor design that the crafting and collection of shit is so chaotic and unfocused.
It is some of the best crafting I have ever seen, and incredibly focused. You are an idiot who knows nothing about this game and is just desperate to hate it. There is only one game with better crafting than this game, and it doesn't exist anymore.

Seriously, stay away. There's nothing compelling to see here.
Says the guy who played it for 5 minutes and knows nothing about.

If you want the feeling of a huge gameworld to explore in 3rd person with flashy graphics and a nearly endless list of things to do, stick with Witcher 3.
Yes do that. And remove your RPG codex bookmark.

You can tell by this games graphics and lack of anti aniliasing that it was specifically designed for consoles in mind. The game itself is the perfect template in 101 how to make a generic mmorpg. I'm trying really hard to find something compelling about this game but there is nothing.

The graphics are really good for a huge open world MMO. If you want graphics, go play something else. There are lots of compelling things about this game.
 

Correct_Carlo

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I know zilch about Elder Scrolls online, but brofist regardless for sincerely expressing a positive opinion about a game on Codex. I wish I could be as excited about basically anything as you are about Elder Scrolls online.
 

anvi

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:salute:Yeah it is exciting because most modern MMO's are really lacking at something. Sometimes they are decent games but really lacking in content. Sometimes they have a lot of content but it's mostly grindy and the combat is terrible etc. ESO is special because it doesn't really lack anything. The MMO's I really want to play are going to be at least year off, one is Pantheon, and one is Vanguard which I used to love but got shut down and is being brought back by a team of fans. But it is a long wait, so it is nice to play something decent in the meantime.
 

Monocause

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I've bought ESO a while ago when I was drunk and it was 50% off on Steam and I thought it could be something to kill time with my GF. I regret the money spent as we got bored real quick.

1) Typical MMO-ish inflation of boring, boring content. You either do solo questing, which is focused on a "story" (which is written very poorly and was absolutely unable to grip me). Or you do dungeons, which suddenly switch the entire emphasis to lots and lots of combat. Or you run around and explore. The three systems interact very poorly with each other due to typical MMO failings - for example, I find it literally impossible to care for MMO stories as a number of mechanics, such as respawning enemies, absolutely kill the game world's coherence for me. The sheer amount of content makes everything feel inconsequential. You reach an area, you do a quest. You immediately know you'll run into a very similar quest if you go into a different zone, simply because there's only so many types of quests you will work in an MMO. Try to explore and do some sightseeing and all the feels you get from nice vistas are ruined by useless mobs attacking you every few minutes, for no reason, out of nowhere. Retrace your steps and the same mobs will attack you.

2) The abilities system is interesting in principle, but in practice it still means you're designing routines a la WoW. Cast this, while it cools down add this, do DoT, heal if needed, rinse and repeat. Add or remove CC abilities depending on the situation. The details are pretty much number crunching and optimisation. In group play it does get a little bit more interesting because of aggro management and movement becoming more important, but not enough.

3) Combat does a nicer job at pretending it's actually responsive than most MMORPGs, but still feels flimsy. That sword swing never feels impactful. Fiddling with archery brutally reminds you what you're playing if you've managed to fool yourself a bit - there can be no things like good physics in a game like this when they need to make sure a varying number of players stay in sync.

4) Crafting, just like in most MMOs, is a dreadful grind and never feels exciting. For every one thing you craft that has any impact on your character development, there's a hundred you'll craft for no other purpose than to grind the skill up.

5) ESO absolutely fails at encouraging player interaction. I feel this is counterproductive; player interaction is one of clear advantages an MMO can bring to the table compared to SP games. Here, however, you have the freedom to solo and you actually need to go out of your way to meaningfully interact with others; if you play solo, you're essentially playing a bastardised single player RPG with a ton of mute NPCs running around in ways that suggest they're mentally challenged.

6) Loot balance, just like in most MMOs, means that itemisation fails to excite. Improve your damage by +2 or your resistance by +5%. After 10 levels, you'll get gear that makes your character look different but still very much the same as other players in the same level range. Non wearable items are either potions that do very basic stuff like healing, or plain junk.

6a) You can get mildly exciting stuff from the cash shop; whatever excitement they bring doesn't really counterbalance the grown up in your head giving you tons of shit for thinking about spending real money on some kind of video game bling. If it was F2P I'd happily consider it but this is B2P and I already fucking paid.

In the end, I didn't enjoy it and neither did my GF. We played it for maybe 7 hours in total, and then just forgot about it. One of us would, for a time, occasionally make halfhearted suggestions that maybe we should dive in, but immediately dropped when it was clear there's no enthusiasm from the other side.

Now, I'm admittedly not the target audience for this game and quite possibly if you are an MMORPG person you might enjoy it, but as someone who rarely enjoys these games I'd put TOR over ESO any day - TOR took a while to get boring and some story bits were actually quite fun, and I did enjoy flashpoints. I actually bought the first paid DLC (something Hutts something) for 9 pounds even though I knew i'll never reach that content as I had some 30 hrs of half-decent fun there and thought Bio should get some money for it.
 
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anvi

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1) Typical MMO-ish inflation of boring, boring content.
What? I don't think you know what inflation means.

You either do solo questing, which is focused on a "story" (which is written very poorly and was absolutely unable to grip me).
The stories are as good or better than any other MMO. Try again.

Or you do dungeons, which suddenly switch the entire emphasis to lots and lots of combat.
Wrong again. There is a whole huge PVP part of the game, there are world bosses, and raids. And there are tons of dungeons and a full crafting system etc. What do you think it is lacking, and tell me an MMO that has something this doesn't have.

I find it literally impossible to care for MMO stories as a number of mechanics, such as respawning enemies, absolutely kill the game world's coherence for me.
But that is how every MMO works.... This game does a better job than any MMO I've seen (including modern ones like GW2) because you can actually change parts of the world with your actions and what you do on quests.

The sheer amount of content makes everything feel inconsequential.
Gotta love these posts, lots of content is a bad thing herpy derpy doo. Nothing you do is inconsequential because it moves you forward in terms of skills and exp. I've played it hardcore for about 2 months and today was a huge landmark for me, finally reaching CP160 which is the maximum level that gear goes up to. But there are still about 400 more levels for me to make and each will build me up more. I also have still have lots of gear to get, and even at level 160 I still need to make more progress until I can start
doing Veteran dungeons and raids. I also can't even think about doing PVP without getting a whole second set of gear for that.

There is tons of content and it all achieves something. Clearly you just don't care about the game and don't want to give it a chance. I am sure most people who have played Skyrim but not MMO's feel the same way. You want to be the one person who saves the world and you want it to end after a few weeks. MMO's are not about that.

You reach an area, you do a quest. You immediately know you'll run into a very similar quest if you go into a different zone, simply because there's only so many types of quests you will work in an MMO.
There are only so many types of quests in any game... it has nothing to do with being an MMO. And there are more in this game than Skyrim.

Try to explore and do some sightseeing and all the feels you get from nice vistas are ruined by useless mobs attacking you every few minutes, for no reason, out of nowhere. Retrace your steps and the same mobs will attack you.
Stop dying like a spaz then... Nothing comes out of nowhere, all the mobs are easy to spot, and even ones that respawn don't attack for a while. It is hard at low levels because you have bad gear and no abilities. But that is why you try to progress because it all changes. At level 15 the number of spells/abilities you can use will double, and you start to feel stronger. I can now just charge through any number of mobs and survive, or turn and fight them and kill them all in 10 seconds. And they aren't useless, they give exp and they drop gear that is scaled to your level, and crafting materials.

The pretty vistas are always there no matter what.

2) The abilities system is interesting in principle, but in practice it still means you're designing routines a la WoW. Cast this, while it cools down add this, do DoT, heal if needed, rinse and repeat. Add or remove CC abilities depending on the situation. The details are pretty much number crunching and optimisation. In group play it does get a little bit more interesting because of aggro management and movement becoming more important, but not enough.
But what RPG or MMORPG is any different? Even crappy Skyrim is the same thing, hack until dead, pop a potion or cheese if injured. Where ESO is special is that you have a big selection of things you can choose to use as your own personal build, and the actual combat gets really interesting later on. When you do dungeons at higher levels you have 10 spells and use most of them constantly, all while moving carefully, avoiding stuff, diving out the way of stuff, blocking big attacks etc. How could an action RPG be any better than this? I would love to know.

3) Combat does a nicer job at pretending it's actually responsive than most MMORPGs, but still feels flimsy. That sword swing never feels impactful. Fiddling with archery brutally reminds you what you're playing if you've managed to fool yourself a bit - there can be no things like good physics in a game like this when they need to make sure a varying number of players stay in sync.
That is probably true. But I'm a sorcerer which is ok for that.

4) Crafting, just like in most MMOs, is a dreadful grind and never feels exciting. For every one thing you craft that has any impact on your character development, there's a hundred you'll craft for no other purpose than to grind the skill up.
No crafting in this game is really good. The end game is researching items, and every item you make can have several traits that you need to research from items you find. You have to level up too, and there is a lot of depth to it. The crafting is really good, and an integral part of the game. Money comes in from killing things and doing dungeons etc, so the game is made so that you can deconstruct and research most of the loot you make.

You don't have to do crafting at all, the uber end game build that I am following has no crafted items at all so I needn't have done it at all. But it is still useful because if I make a second character sometime, I can craft a whole set of gear for him and it can have any trait that I think will be useful, like an XP boost, or better tank stuff, better caster stuff, better heal stuff etc. It is the best crafting system I've ever seen. The only game that comes close was Vanguard which is now dead.

5) ESO absolutely fails at encouraging player interaction. I feel this is counterproductive; player interaction is one of clear advantages an MMO can bring to the table compared to SP games. Here, however, you have the freedom to solo and you actually need to go out of your way to meaningfully interact with others; if you play solo, you're essentially playing a bastardised single player RPG with a ton of mute NPCs running around in ways that suggest they're mentally challenged.
But it is made so that there is serious group stuff and plenty of solo stuff. Most of the best gear comes from raiding and group dungeons and you need to group from all of that. It also would be hard to play this game without a guild, and it lets you have 5 guilds. So I have trade guilds, and 2 adventuring guilds so far. It encourages player interactions by how the trade guilds work, there is no auction house like WoW, you have to sell via guilds and they need to help you to sell so they can take a cut and survive.

If you want to solo, you do questing. If you want to group, you do group stuff. Surely that is reasonable? There are only a few MMO's that ever existed which make you group almost all the time. They are a different type of experience, maybe better. But the downside is that you have to play with people all the time, you have to wait for them when they go afk for a drink, you have to wait for them to join a group etc.. At least having plenty of solo content content means you can just login for 30 minutes and do stuff.

6) Loot balance, just like in most MMOs, means that itemisation fails to excite. Improve your damage by +2 or your resistance by +5%. After 10 levels, you'll get gear that makes your character look different but still very much the same as other players in the same level range. Non wearable items are either potions that do very basic stuff like healing, or plain junk.
Nah. You are right about the way characters look, everyone looks like a noob at first and then a superhero once they get some gear. They might look different to each other but they all just look like different superheroes. But really, how do you fix this? Not many people would want to play a game for months and not look cool. But the actual balance and loot itself is really good. I can't be bothered explaining why, you just need to play more and see.

6a) You can get mildly exciting stuff from the cash shop; whatever excitement they bring doesn't really counterbalance the grown up in your head giving you tons of shit for thinking about spending real money on some kind of video game bling. If it was F2P I'd happily consider it but this is B2P and I already fucking paid.
But it is good value. It is B2P and then you don't NEED to spend anything else, so it can be great value to people on a tight budget. But if you want to buy extra stuff there is plenty of great stuff to get. The best thing you could buy would be the plus pack which is like a subscription and it basically gives you everything. But it is less than WoW subscription and it gives you more. Also there is more than cosmetic stuff on there, there are xp potions and health boosts etc which are can be really useful, especially if you don't craft your own provisions.

The prices of games like this are dictated by other games. That's how it works. None of them are buy to play and then no cash shop, because they couldn't afford to host millions of players on servers with monthly costs if they aren't getting any income.

In the end, I didn't enjoy it and neither did my GF. We played it for maybe 7 hours in total,
LOL..... I wish I read this first.
 

Kem0sabe

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I have played any tactical or turn based RPG you can mention, but I also like action RPG's sometimes. I just need the action to be exciting and require some thought.

I think MMORPG's are promising, generally better than the action RPG's that have dominated single player RPG's since 2000 ish. But they also leave so much to be desired. Most of the modern ones I play for a month and have done everything. But The Elder Scrolls Online has blown my mind.

I played it in beta and something unbelievable happened. A mob killed me! It is something that hasn't happened to me in an MMO since about 2001. So I bought the game cheap (on Amazon) a while after it was released and tried it again, and every mob I fought went splat. I figured that like various other MMO's I've played in beta and then release, they dumbed it down at the end and made everything too easy. So I rage quit like I did to most other MMO's, although usually I play them for a month first until I begin to hate them.

But there was a huge update recently and the game is also free to play now, so I figured I would give it another try. I have been hopelessly addicted since. I've played it every day for about 2 months and still only scratching the surface of the game. The game is huge, and really high standard. And the reason some mobs are easy and some aren't, is that there are so many different types in this game. There are several types of dungeons, most are designed for groups of various sizes, but some can be done solo if you are good. I hate the Elder Scrolls games in general, I had some fun with Morrowind but Oblivion and Skyrim I think are an insult to gaming and they are all so under developed. But ES Online only looks like an ES game on the surface. It cost $200 million and it shows. The world is enormous and varied, the mobs too, but more importantly every single game system has been changed, and changed into something far better, more developed, and more thought out. It is basically a proper RPG, with meaningful progression and character building, and the combat is really good. It is spammy and actiony, but it does a better job than almost any other action game I can think of. It is also like multiple games in one, you can do solo questing like Skyrim or something (but a higher standard), but there are really good scripted instanced dungeons, and there are LOTS of them. It has about 3 times the number of the last MMO I played.

If I like action RPG's you really should try it. Ask me if you want to know anything about it. I am still relatively a newbie so can't give pro tips on builds or anything, but I can describe the game well and how it works.

p.s. Don't be typical snooty codexers. Yeah it isn't Baldurs Gate and it is never going to play anything like that. But it offers a lot and it is really good and you shouldn't cheat yourself out of a great game just because of the "Elder Scrolls" tag. I nearly did too and it was a bad idea. I could explain in more detail why it is special but this post would be too big.
Grouping is shit, solo content is shit, class system is shit, the world is divided into instanced zones instead open world...

Plus the greatest decline of all, every fucking thing in this godforsaken game is level scaled to the player level...
 

anvi

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But all of that is bs. The grouping and soloing is great, the class system is great. The world is as open world as anything else. Every time you go into a house in Skyrim you get a loading screen... that doesn't happen in ESO. This game works like WoW, you get a huge region to play in which is open world and you could spend weeks in that same region without any loading screens. It only loads when you go to a new region which is equally as big and contains multiple cities etc. Your crappy arguments are retarded. Also the scaling thing is great. And not everything scales 100%. You can still 1 shot wolves and mudcrabs and whatever. But bosses are tough.
 

Jazz_

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World of Warcraft didn't load between regions as far as I remember. Instances and switching continent were the only thing I remember having loading screens.
 

anvi

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Yeah WoW has loading screens for continents, and ESO zones have as much content as a WoW continent. The fact is you can play in the same area for weeks any not see a single loading screen. It is a dumb argument made by an idiot looking for excuses to bandwagon with the other idiots who have never played the game and know nothing about it.
 

Kem0sabe

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Yeah WoW has loading screens for continents, and ESO zones have as much content as a WoW continent. The fact is you can play in the same area for weeks any not see a single loading screen. It is a dumb argument made by an idiot looking for excuses to bandwagon with the other idiots who have never played the game and know nothing about it.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha, elder Scrolls zones have as much content as wow continents? Who the fuck is retarded enough to say this?

You can finish up an elder Scrolls zone easily in a couple of days.
 

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