Fluent Plays Elder Scrolls Online

[Deleted Member 16721]

Even with the level scaling I'm having a God damned blast. Morrowind is something else, brings back a lot of memories. The content is endless and yes, you get a tradeoff of good and bad things with a level scaled world but I'll be damned if I'm not enjoying the hell out of it. And bosses don't seem to scale, at least some of them. If you go to Elsweyr for example you may run into tough enemies that will slaughter you quickly. There's still hard challenges sprinkled in the world that range from hard to impossible at your level.

 

[anvi]

The bosses are fun, world bosses and the one in dungeons/delves/whatever. The group dungeons are tuned to be hard too. Many groups rage quit half way because of a few failures.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I also ran into a crazy spirit boss in Alduron (Summerset). He killed me in one shot, so he definitely didn't scale. There's challenges around. Those Dark Anchors too are challenging.

 

[ADL]

The thing about level scaling in MMOs in particular is... Why would you want potentially thousands of hours of content to be invalidated by a leveling system? Just because I'm CP810 shouldn't mean I play in god mode for anything outside the "end game zones". This ain't Gothic 2. If I want to go back and do some quests/delves in the Deshaan, I should be able to do that and have a good time and be rewarded for my time at my respective level.

 

[Norfleet]

And yet doing this invalidates a levelling system and the thousands of hours invested into it. Why even have a levelling system if you actually end up getting worse for your trouble? I'm in a game JUST like that where you actually want to remain low-level as long as possible, because gaining levels impacts you in a completely negative way, and the only reason to do it is to be allowed into the endgame content that requires it after you check off your bucketlist of everything you have to do before levelling up has rendered the game nigh-unplayable.

 

[Mud']

And yet doing this invalidates a levelling system and the thousands of hours invested into it. Why even have a levelling system if you actually end up getting worse for your trouble? I'm in a game JUST like that where you actually want to remain low-level as long as possible, because gaining levels impacts you in a completely negative way, and the only reason to do it is to be allowed into the endgame content that requires it after you check off your bucketlist of everything you have to do before levelling up has rendered the game nigh-unplayable.

Because the moment you step into PVP areas or world bosses you will get your ass whooped, staying low level means you dont get any skills at all and the "real" content will fuck you over hard.

The only positive side to the level scaling is how easy you can convince someone to play this game since there is no grind to play the PVE content with a friend, all they need to do is just play the game and both of you can fuck off in any random direction and enjoy whatever content you find, i think the biggest strength that this game has is how accesible it is for casual players since you can pick it up and play it and even if your friend is level 36 and you are level 10 you can help the team (in PVE casual stuff, not dungeons).

However this comes at the cost of feeling of progression or how everything feels so damn easy all the time, if you are enjoying this game, you are playing it only for the story of the quests and the world.

 

[anvi]

Norfleet is retarded.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

BRING BACK PROC SET GANKBLADE PVP METAS

 

[Doktor Best]

It gets a lot of shit for being an MMO but it's actually pretty decent as a standalone TES title.
I'd probably still play it if there was a way to play open world content at a higher difficulty

Isnt ESO completely levelscaled? Like not even like in Skyrim, but more like Oblivion - you level up -> enemies level up?

How on earth could any decent gameplay exist in such a system?

It wasn't to begin with, they did the level scaling as an expansion years later. People like it because all it really does is mean you have 10000x more content. So say you are level 15 and you reach a fork in the road and you take a left up through a valley, and you find a village with some quests. Before level scaling you could get there and find that it was all made for level 8's so you would have to travel all the way back to the fork in the road and take a different direction and hope it leads to somewhere level appropriate. With level scaling, everywhere you go is perfect for your level. Just head in any direction and anywhere you choose to stop and get quests or kill people, will be suitable. There is less running around looking for something to do, and gaining levels doesn't instantly make all lower level content obsolete.

And a few mobs don't scale so you can still 1 shot a passing mudcrab or whatever to feel that sense of progression, sorta. There are downsides of course, like you don't get the fun of taking on content a few levels higher for the extra challenge and fun. And you don't get a feeling that the world is consistent because you are level 50 doing chores in a primitive village surrounded by newbies doing the same quests. It kills a lot of the sense of progression though, and you don't get the fun of reaching a high level area with only a few other l33t players around and feel like you really achieved something and took your character on an epic journey from bashing wasps at level 1 to fighting huge drakes at level 50.

Overall I would prefer a game to not have level scaling but it isn't really terrible and it suits this casual sort of game.

It gets a lot of shit for being an MMO but it's actually pretty decent as a standalone TES title.
I'd probably still play it if there was a way to play open world content at a higher difficulty

Isnt ESO completely levelscaled? Like not even like in Skyrim, but more like Oblivion - you level up -> enemies level up?

How on earth could any decent gameplay exist in such a system?

There's still progression, it's just not tied to your level. You have hundreds of skillpoints to unlock, champion points to gain, and gear to acquire.

But in rpgs you have character progression in order for you to beat harder enemies. If every enemy is the same strength compared to your power level, there is no real need for progression. You could do away with all stats, levels, gear attributes etc and it would have the same effect.

I mean are there harder zones in the game that require you to gain a certain amount of skillpoints/champions points or get a certain set of quality gear?

 

[ADL]

And yet doing this invalidates a levelling system and the thousands of hours invested into it. Why even have a levelling system if you actually end up getting worse for your trouble? I'm in a game JUST like that where you actually want to remain low-level as long as possible, because gaining levels impacts you in a completely negative way, and the only reason to do it is to be allowed into the endgame content that requires it after you check off your bucketlist of everything you have to do before levelling up has rendered the game nigh-unplayable.

I actually agree with you. Fuck the leveling system. I've been saying leveling systems should disappear for a long time. At least in the linear sense. In MMOs, they only serve as an annoying tutorial that makes any gear prior to gear cap automatically irrelevant. ESO handles gear right for the most part but I'd argue the leveling system that makes players weaker as they level because they weren't properly introduced to the importance of food buffs and set bonuses until endgame does more harm than good for the endgame.

 

[anvi]

But in rpgs you have character progression in order for you to beat harder enemies. If every enemy is the same strength compared to your power level, there is no real need for progression. You could do away with all stats, levels, gear attributes etc and it would have the same effect.

I mean are there harder zones in the game that require you to gain a certain amount of skillpoints/champions points or get a certain set of quality gear?

There are dungeons and raids and pvp and things that don't scale, so yeah, you still need to progress. You just have more options on where you go to do it.

 

[anvi]

And yet doing this invalidates a levelling system and the thousands of hours invested into it. Why even have a levelling system if you actually end up getting worse for your trouble? I'm in a game JUST like that where you actually want to remain low-level as long as possible, because gaining levels impacts you in a completely negative way, and the only reason to do it is to be allowed into the endgame content that requires it after you check off your bucketlist of everything you have to do before levelling up has rendered the game nigh-unplayable.

I actually agree with you. Fuck the leveling system. I've been saying leveling systems should disappear for a long time. At least in the linear sense. In MMOs, they only serve as an annoying tutorial that makes any gear prior to gear cap automatically irrelevant. ESO handles gear right for the most part but I'd argue the leveling system that makes players weaker as they level because they weren't properly introduced to the importance of food buffs and set bonuses until endgame does more harm than good for the endgame.

There are MMOs without levels. UO, TSW, Darkfall, just a few I played that had no levels. I have no preference either way.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Champion Levels are the real level system in this game, which is unlocked once you hit level 50. With the stats you gain from CLs you will outscale all the content and trivialize even the toughest world bosses. Normal levels are just for unlocking your class kit. You still feel great progress via normal levels too, however, as you gain more abilities and passives that allow you to take on harder monsters that could've whooped your ass easily before. Somehow they managed to make the level scaling work.

 

[thesheeep]

Champion Levels are the real level system in this game, which is unlocked once you hit level 50. With the stats you gain from CLs you will outscale all the content and trivialize even the toughest world bosses. Normal levels are just for unlocking your class kit. You still feel great progress via normal levels too, however, as you gain more abilities and passives that allow you to take on harder monsters that could've whooped your ass easily before. Somehow they managed to make the level scaling work.

I have to agree it is better than other, way less thought through level scaling systems, but "work" is a stretch.
Still doesn't solve the problem that most of the leveling doesn't feel very rewarding, and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake.

After spending some more time with it, though, what actually bothered me more was the limited amount of skills and combined with that the limited amount of synergies that you can build a character with.
I never really had the feeling that the system allows me to create something interesting. It doesn't have to be Path Of Exile-levels of build-craziness, but there should at least be way more skills per weapon and class. And more classes. And more weapons.
Maybe you could do more in the Champion Levels, but I'm not gonna play a game for weeks until the fun starts...

 

[Hobo Elf]

But the skill pool is immense in TESO. You don't just get skills from classes and weapons, but from armor as well as the various guilds and miscellaneous skill sets that you pick up while playing. Not to mention that all skills have 2 ways to morph them, which in some cases can change the way an ability behaves, instead of being a simple statistical upgrade. If you're struggling to create synergies then that's more on you than the system itself, since I found it to be one of the most flexible character systems I've played with. I've done tons of oddball experimentation and come up with lots of fun builds. Some of them were incredibly powerful, too, in ways that I did not expect. The lack of FOTM builds helps as well and really drives home the message that this game is all about freedom of experimentation and coming up with your own unique solutions.

 

[MajorMace]

What's the difference between this and Guild Wars 2 (besides the art direction and lore, I'm talking gameplay and game design) ?
Actual question.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.
If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

Level scaling in an MMO is completely different from a single player RPG.

 

[anvi]

What's the difference between this and Guild Wars 2 (besides the art direction and lore, I'm talking gameplay and game design) ?
Actual question.

Similar but some things are different. ESO world feels bigger and more like a real world, and you just explore however you feel. GW2 is a bit more planned and gamey, and there are skill points in out of the way places, one in each region, that you have to fight towards and collect. It makes exploration more methodical. And you have to do some sort of 3rd person platformer jumping to reach some places. The quests are a bit more dynamic than ESO, and things happen in the world like a wagon will travel from one town to another and it will be ambushed, and people nearby will get a notification to go and get involved, if they want to. But mostly I found it to be gimmicky and boring. ESO has open world bosses that people go to and fight which I found to be more fun. But still kinda mindless.

GW2 tried to destroy the concept of combat roles, so nobody can tank or heal. It sounded good on paper but I thought the reality sucked. In a dungeon everyone just runs around like headless chickens, if they get attacked they run away and the enemy attacks someone else. Basically everyone tanks a bit. Everyone does damage a bit. And most people have a little heal they can use on themselves etc. I would guess it became meta at some point and people figured out some tricks or something, but when I played at release, it was really stupid and a huge failure in terms of improving the trinity concept. ESO is more traditional, tanks, healers, dps. ESO dungeons are highly scripted, highly tuned, bosses throw lava at you and you have to dive out the way etc. Really challenging too, weak groups can fail over and over. I can't really remember the GW2 dungeons but I think it is similar, only not as good. GW2 has some fun PVP maps where you have to capture locations and stuff, like WoW battlegrounds. I don't think ESO has that. But ESO has a big open world PVP region which is much better than GW2's open world PVP region. This might have changed since I played though, I haven't played GW2 since it was released and everyone thought the open world PVP was stupid and a clusterfuck, so maybe they changed it.

GW2 depresses me because the beta was super difficult. Killing one enemy by yourself was pretty 50/50 whether you could survive. It did so much damage to you, and you didn't do much back. So you had to dive all over the place and run in circles and run for your life and then blast it and run some more and repeat until it is dead. I loved it because it meant that you really had to focus on perfecting your combat routine, every hit point mattered, and I was really motivated to become as strong as I could. And I would spend an hour to fight across an area to get a skill point and I would feel like YESSSSSS!!!!! because I really needed the boost. But the players said it was too hard so it got nerfed. And then it got nerfed again. And then on release it nerfed a third time. And I think since then it has been nerfed some more... So when I last played it, you just run through groups of mobs and press a few buttons and they all explode. You don't even need to fight to skill points anymore, just run there and ignore anything that attacks you. Sad times. But lots of normies like it so whatever. It isn't for me. I think ESO is a lot better but even that I only played for about a month. I would have loved ESO if the end game was better. I think if I got into the pvp I could have played it a lot longer, but I have so much other stuff to play.

 

[thesheeep]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.

You are talking about having an end-game character walk through a starter area.
I'm talking about coming back maybe a dozen or so levels later. It will be a bit easier, sure, but nowhere near what it would be without the scaling.

If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

RPGs are all about power fantasy and getting stronger. That's why level scaling doesn't work in single player RPGs.
For the same reason, it doesn't in MMOs. There's no difference here, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Otherwise, you'd want level scaling in single player RPGs as well, so you can have "all content challenging".

A few hand-picked dungeons not being level-scaled is welcome, but doesn't help too much with that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.

You are talking about having an end-game character walk through a starter area.
I'm talking about coming back maybe a dozen or so levels later. It will be a bit easier, sure, but nowhere near what it would be without the scaling.

If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

RPGs are all about power fantasy and getting stronger. That's why level scaling doesn't work in single player RPGs.
For the same reason, it doesn't in MMOs. There's no difference here, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Otherwise, you'd want level scaling in single player RPGs as well, so you can have "all content challenging".

Except single player RPGs aren't designed for multiple characters to go completely separate paths. There generally is near zero content to go back and visit that you didn't already do unlike in an MMO the size of ESO.
Have you even played the game?

 

[thesheeep]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.

You are talking about having an end-game character walk through a starter area.
I'm talking about coming back maybe a dozen or so levels later. It will be a bit easier, sure, but nowhere near what it would be without the scaling.

If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

RPGs are all about power fantasy and getting stronger. That's why level scaling doesn't work in single player RPGs.
For the same reason, it doesn't in MMOs. There's no difference here, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Otherwise, you'd want level scaling in single player RPGs as well, so you can have "all content challenging".

Except single player RPGs aren't designed for multiple characters to go completely separate paths. There generally is near zero content to go back and visit that you didn't already do unlike in an MMO the size of ESO.

Multiple characters have nothing to do with it, as they all start at 0.
And about content to go back to cause you didn't visit it yet: So, you have just beaten the mighty demon of Somethingsomething and are now level 25. You go to this other starter area you didn't do yet. The simple bandits there who you should just push over by staring at them put up basically the same fight as the demons did. Sure, makes perfect sense. Doesn't scream "It's a faaaaaake!" at all. Nuh-uh.

Have you even played the game?

More than I'm willing to admit. Problem is, it still has the best combat of all post-Morrowind Elder Scrolls...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.

You are talking about having an end-game character walk through a starter area.
I'm talking about coming back maybe a dozen or so levels later. It will be a bit easier, sure, but nowhere near what it would be without the scaling.

If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

RPGs are all about power fantasy and getting stronger. That's why level scaling doesn't work in single player RPGs.
For the same reason, it doesn't in MMOs. There's no difference here, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Otherwise, you'd want level scaling in single player RPGs as well, so you can have "all content challenging".

Except single player RPGs aren't designed for multiple characters to go completely separate paths. There generally is near zero content to go back and visit that you didn't already do unlike in an MMO the size of ESO.

Multiple characters have nothing to do with it, as they all start at 0.
And about content to go back to cause you didn't visit it yet: So, you have just beaten the mighty demon of Somethingsomething and are now level 25. You go to this other starter area you didn't do yet. The simple bandits there who you should just push over by staring at them put up basically the same fight as the demons did. Sure, makes perfect sense. Doesn't scream "It's a faaaaaake!" at all. Nuh-uh.

Have you even played the game?

More than I'm willing to admit. Problem is, it still has the best combat of all post-Morrowind Elder Scrolls...

I get it, you enjoy not having challenge in video games.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Rolled a Wood Elf Nightblade focused on bow skills, and the game is pretty challenging so far. It takes a lot of hits to bring down most enemies so I'm hoping I can upgrade my bow soon. What I like is that you can go to any province at any point, yes it's a pro level scaling point, but it really is cool to be able to go to Vvardenfell in the early game and progress through Morrowind's main quest, working for Vivec, seeing Morrowind hundreds if not thousands of years before TES 3 was set in.

 

[thesheeep]

and revisiting old places is even counter-productive as it makes you realize you didn't really grow that much in power, it's all just a big fake

But that's not true. I was able to breeze through content when I had lots of skills/high champion point level/good gear.

You are talking about having an end-game character walk through a starter area.
I'm talking about coming back maybe a dozen or so levels later. It will be a bit easier, sure, but nowhere near what it would be without the scaling.

If anything, I want all the content to be challenging. Why do people get off to the idea of going back and facerolling content?

RPGs are all about power fantasy and getting stronger. That's why level scaling doesn't work in single player RPGs.
For the same reason, it doesn't in MMOs. There's no difference here, and you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise. Otherwise, you'd want level scaling in single player RPGs as well, so you can have "all content challenging".

Except single player RPGs aren't designed for multiple characters to go completely separate paths. There generally is near zero content to go back and visit that you didn't already do unlike in an MMO the size of ESO.

Multiple characters have nothing to do with it, as they all start at 0.
And about content to go back to cause you didn't visit it yet: So, you have just beaten the mighty demon of Somethingsomething and are now level 25. You go to this other starter area you didn't do yet. The simple bandits there who you should just push over by staring at them put up basically the same fight as the demons did. Sure, makes perfect sense. Doesn't scream "It's a faaaaaake!" at all. Nuh-uh.

Have you even played the game?

More than I'm willing to admit. Problem is, it still has the best combat of all post-Morrowind Elder Scrolls...

I get it, you enjoy not having challenge in video games.

Cute, you've run so dry on arguments that you resort to the school-grade class of nonsense.
It's extra weird here, because I don't think I ever found ESO challenging in any way. It's one of the reasons I never played a character to the "end".

I do enjoy a starter/early area not being challenging to my advanced character, because that confirms the character's growth in power - in contrast to being just as challenging, meaning that my character's growth was meaningless.
That also means I wouldn't play that starter area (with that character), of course - as it would be extra boring. I'll play that area with a different character at some point, it's not like the content is lost to me now.
But sometimes you just travel through those lower-level areas for other reasons and just notice the difference.

But the skill pool is immense in TESO. You don't just get skills from classes and weapons, but from armor as well as the various guilds and miscellaneous skill sets that you pick up while playing. Not to mention that all skills have 2 ways to morph them, which in some cases can change the way an ability behaves, instead of being a simple statistical upgrade. If you're struggling to create synergies then that's more on you than the system itself, since I found it to be one of the most flexible character systems I've played with.

The problem is not that I'd struggle to find synergies, but the exact opposite. The synergies are so clear-cut that any thinking outside of the box just isn't rewarded. It's flexible only on the surface.
The morphing is nice, though, that's true, but I don't consider those new skills - just developments of a single skill.

 

[anvi]

I don't think I ever found ESO challenging in any way. It's one of the reasons I never played a character to the "end".

But that's the only time it gets tougher... nearer the end. Do you solo the bosses in delves and things like that? Did you try soloing world bosses? I killed a few of them by myself. You can find challenge in the game. Also the group dungeons are generally challenging.