The Elder Scrolls Online

[Bubbles]

The skill system is complex and more interesting than the usual bottom-of-the barrel idiocy, I'll give them that. But good god is the combat terrible.

They seem to have worked hard on everything but the combat -- the quest design in the Elf starting area is actually quite competent, and some of the Khajit writing is downright funny. They probably paid a small fortune for Michael Gambon and John Cleese, who are turning in good work here. They also deserve major trolling points for using "vestige" as the general appellation for the heroic protagonist.

But none of that matters if you spend tens of hours hammering the auto attack button and using one or two special attacks (possibly graduating to three or four in the late game). I've never seen so many people in a starter area complain about how bored they are. Tanks are leveling with bows just to avoid having to go into melee combat.

And god fuck the amount of instancing in this. It's absolutely revolting. You can't open a fucking barn door without secretly getting shoved into a new instance.

 

[shadow9d9]

And I'm telling you there is no ONLY subscription anymore.

And it died for a reason.

The only reason WoW hasn't gone F2P yet is because people are willing to pay to use a chatroom. They'd have to make using chat an extra feature you have to pay for.

The reason is that no one will pay for tiny zoned off worlds, where you hit max level in 5 minutes, just to repeat 5 dungeons over and over and over.

 

[Bubbles]

where you hit max level in 5 minutes

Currently I'd rank TESO a fair bit slower than TOR on this, and obviously much much slower than GW2. The skill system also promises hundreds of hours of skill point farming at max level. Probably still way too fast for the old school players, but it could extend the initial wave of subscriptions by another month.

 

[abnaxus]

Paid subscriptions made good or bad irrelevant.

 

[Bubbles]

The devs generally seem smart about including addiction-exploiting time sinks to extend the end game (skill grinding treadmill, fuckload of busywork achievements, hunting down every single book in the game to max out mage guild rank, battle for being crowned Emperor in PvP) even at this early stage. They've obviously put more of a pre-launch effort into this than the people behind TOR, Rift and TSW ever did. This game may actually stay subscription-only for over a year, maybe even for two full years. The devs can be proud of that.

 

[Mastermind]

I wish this was a single player mmo so i can at least get skyrim level quality of combat out of it. i guess even mods can't fix that.

 

[Turjan]

If everyone thinks this is going to be shitty, even Skyrim fanboys, this game is really doomed.

Aren't the TES games the ultimate solitary experience, where you can do whatever you want without anyone bothering you? Somehow, MMO screams the exact opposite to me, which is other people everywhere. Not sure whether there's much overlap in the audience.

 

[subotaiy]

I wish this was a single player mmo so i can at least get skyrim level quality of combat out of it. i guess even mods can't fix that.

 

[Bubbles]

I'd say the Destruction spell casting is roughly at Skyrim quality levels

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Got into the Beta.

Spent around three days downloading 45GB of data.

Tried to install, said data was corrupted and I needed to run the repair tool.

The repair tool does not exist in the game's folders, and it is not an option anywhere in the launcher.

Tried to install game, said it needed to download another 20GB.

Deleted everything. Fuck it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

If everyone thinks this is going to be shitty, even Skyrim fanboys, this game is really doomed.

Aren't the TES games the ultimate solitary experience, where you can do whatever you want without anyone bothering you? Somehow, MMO screams the exact opposite to me, which is other people everywhere. Not sure whether there's much overlap in the audience.

Yea, that's why it's so damn weird they're making this game. I mean, when you're hiking across a landscape the last thing you want is some other fashion travesty like you waltzing into view (the "what the fuck are YOU doing here" effect, had plenty of that while playing GW2).

 

[Bubbles]

Got into the Beta.

Spent around three days downloading 45GB of data.

Tried to install, said data was corrupted and I needed to run the repair tool.

The repair tool does not exist in the game's folders, and it is not an option anywhere in the launcher.

Tried to install game, said it needed to download another 20GB.

Deleted everything. Fuck it.

That happens when you have less than 51 GB of free disc space (will probably be more in the release version, since the pre-rendered cutscenes are still missing). Even when none of the files are corrupted, the game will still delete the entire installation and redownload the whole 26 GB archive.

 

[shadow9d9]

Paid subscriptions made good or bad irrelevant.

If you cannot afford the equivalent of one meal out, then you have more to worry about than whether an MMO is right for you. Plus, there are plenty of free to play scheme based games out, where you can be happy to know that developing new content will be less of a priority than giving you barbie dress up items to buy in the cash shop!

 

[Angthoron]

Sub-based MMOs are as guilty of that as F2P, sorry. In fact, F2Ps that want to keep a steady income churning should be providing a steady stream of both gameplay content and cosmetics.

 

[Lemming42]

Got into the Beta.

Spent around three days downloading 45GB of data...Tried to install game, said it needed to download another 20GB.

I just signed up for the beta, but almost had a bowel hernia when I saw this. 65GB for something that's basically guaranteed to suck, holy shit.

 

[Caim]

Hey guys, can you guess who this bundle o' bloom is?

Click for answer!

It's Mannimarco, the King of Worms!

Yes, the necromancer!

And no, there's not a lick of worm symbolism (wormsign?) on him!

Spoiler

 

[DeepOcean]

Hey guys, can you guess who this bundle o' bloom is?

Click for answer!

It's Mannimarco, the King of Worms!

Yes, the necromancer!

And no, there's not a lick of worm symbolism (wormsign?) on him!

Spoiler

Fuck this shit, placing an elf on generic fantasy armor 101 on his place is worse than I expected those hacks to go.

 

[Brayko]

I am really getting fed up with "on the rails" questing. Follow the marker dispatch a few opponents, take item, and return for a reward. How about having more of a say on how the quests unfold or having more branches of quest archs that make room for failure? Really getting tired of being a docile fed ex "adventurer".

 

[Broseph]

I am really getting fed up with "on the rails" questing. Follow the marker dispatch a few opponents, take item, and return for a reward. How about having more of a say on how the quests unfold or having more branches of quest archs that make room for failure? Really getting tired of being a docile fed ex "adventurer".

It's staying true to the formula laid down by the RPG classic Skyrim.

 

[Brayko]

I'm aware of that, and that's by far my biggest gripe about Skyrim. The questing sucks.

 

[Bubbles]

About a third of all the (early?) quests in TESO have a choice at the end. It's almost always an otherwise completely inconsequential "let person x die/be arrested or spare them", but hey, choice!

What I really hate about the quest system is the fact that doing quests for your guilds feels completely uncoupled from your guild rank. You're very strongly encouraged to join both the Fighters and the Mages to get passive skills (Fighters give intimidate, mages give persuasion, and both are needed to bypass the "bribe" system that forces you to pay NPCs with truckloads of gold in order to complete quests).

Rank in the Fighters guild increases solely based on the number of Daedra und Undead you kill, while rank with the Mages depends entirely on collecting lore books. The Unbound guild gives you skills based on how many dungeons and raids you run. I'm pretty the guilds give quests entirely based on player level, like any other random quest giver.

When the Thieves and DB are finally patched in/sold for 20 bucks each, they'll probably determine rank based on the number of battles you start from stealth and the amount of human enemies you kill. There is glorious grinding potential here, but the immersion fanatics are going to be extremely disappointed.

 

[Direwolf]

I played this game already a few years ago. It was called Age of Conan, it had better combat, better graphics and better everything.

 

[Bubbles]

I played this game already a few years ago. It was called Age of Conan, it had better combat, better graphics and better everything.

TESO spans a pretty wide range in terms of visuals. It looks very pretty in the Elf areas and incredibly dull in the Nord areas (= low res Skyrim). The engine itself is probably the most stable and efficient MMO engine I've played so far. It's almost disturbingly well polished for a game that's still months from release. I'm starting to believe that those $200m cost estimates might have been accurate.

 

[Direwolf]

The pirate/tropical island starting zone looks way too generic. Too empty. It feels like "Johnny's first Unreal level" in terms of visuals.

 

[Mastermind]

I'd say the Destruction spell casting is roughly at Skyrim quality levels

It's not. None of it is. Skyrim at least mostly feels like your spells/weapons make contact with an actual physical enemy while TESO feels only slightly better than the usual floaty, disconnected MMO shit.