The Elder Scrolls Online

[Crispy]

My, I'm handsome:

 

[Irenaeus]

Performing under a cross:

Facing horrible creatures:

Take that, wench!

Interracial marriage:

 

[Angthoron]

Show us your monkies.

 

[Metro]

I honestly never understood the appeal of big cities, fuck, cities in general. There should just be one city for each faction; you need to get people to congregate to make MMO magic happen. If everyone fucks off to their own little corners/instances all you've done is create a massive... and pointless lobby for a dungeon crawler.

Players should be the ones to give life to cities, and the developers should be there to help them do it; but naturally, TESO is like any other themepark MMO - the world is static and flat and the most interaction you're going to get is "NPC here with ! over their head" or "chair you can sit down in" and if you're lucky "NPC shouting something in local chat", but even that was a rarity in WoW.

Of course, in a themepark MMO, smaller towns have no purpose beyond being questing hubs for the leveling up process (and who cares about that if all it takes is 24~ hours of gametime to reach max level). In more true-to-form MMOs, each cityscape/town has its own purpose, be it for trading, storing your items, pvp, or restocking during travel...

But I'm just rambling for no reason; we expected this. Zenimax made TESO under the idea that, "Hey, Skyrim sold like fresh cheap hookers. And hey, you know, WoW makes lots of money every year on subs?" I guess they thought they could merge the two, or something... who knows what they were thinking, but it certainly had nothing to do with making a genuinely good title.

I feel like such an idiot for even wasting my words on this game. Who cares? Nobody in the industry, that's for sure; and the common gamer? What do they care? As long as they get their instant gratification they'll settle for $100+ to play a crappy MMO for a few months, perhaps in the vain hope of capturing some nostalgic tingle in their groin. And so the cycle continues.

WoW has proven that more than one capital city is pointless. Outside of Stormwind and Orgrimmar the other capitals are abandoned save for maybe two or three people leveling in the area. With TESO I guess they expect people to E-Larp in towns.

 

[bonescraper]

I don't get all the hate for this game here. This is the first MMO with a truly persistent world. Every quest you do, stays done forever. When, for example, you're told to get rid of an undead curse in some ruins, all the undead in the area will be gone forever. And there's even C&C. Binary choices so far, but fuck, that's still more than you'd expect from a mmo. So, at one point 2 places got attacked and i could only go to save 1. It was a fort and a village. I went to the village and repelled the attackers. And when i returned to the raided fort, it was full of dead bodies and smoking buildings, completely annihilated. And i was there 20 mins earlier, trading with merchant NPCs and doing quests. Pretty impressive shit, since there are still players who didn't go that far in that quest yet, chose differently, or simply didn't bother with it altogether. They did a lot of work to make this feel like a proper TES game. Hell, the NPCs even comment on your accomplishments. Quest NPCs, guards and common folk alike. "Oh, so you're the guy who saved somethingsomwhere". That's what Skyrim was definitely lacking.

You may dislike MMOs in general, fine. But there's a chance Bethesda will learn something from this game. Just, so their next game doesn't feel cheaper than a third party MMO spinoff.

I like the character development system, i like treasure maps (you get a drawing of a place, and that's it, Skyrim style). Those maps make all the quest compass kiddies rage really hard in game chat. Enchanting and alchemy works exactly like they work in Skyrim and otehr TES games. You need to find/buy soulstones, then fill them with souls, and then use them to refill your enchanted items. That's pretty hardcore for your average MMO gamer. And i thought they'll just reskin a generic MMO and fill it with mudcrabs for that TES feel.

Haters gon'hate.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Created my character finally, if anyone wants to add me to their friends list and whatnot, here goes:

Left Hand of the Gods - Sorcerer, Aldmeri Dominion, Europe Megaserver.

 

[bonescraper]

BTW there are those two guild skills i can invest a point in. One is allows to intimidate some NPCs in conversations (Warriors Guild) and the other one allows to persuade them (Mages Guild). Have anyone tried these out yet? They're tempting, but i don't know how useful they really are. So, anyone?

Oh, and i'm playing on the EU server if anyone cares. Derpyderp Mcderp - Dunmer Nightblade, Ebonheart Pact.

 

[Bubbles]

There are lots of quests that offer two options to complete - one is to persuade/intimidate (usually just one of the two, depending on the quest) an NPC, the other is to bribe them with about an hour's worth of farmed gold. It's a clever system because it requires you to balance skill points against money.

 

[Ranselknulf]

In general, I'd avoid bribery skills or any other trait that might lessen the impact of money expenses in an online game.

Give it time and gold farmers will inflate the value of money beyond whatever you might spend on bribing a npc.

 

[Dwemer Puzzle Box]

The only PvP is Guild Wars 2/DAoC style World vs. World in Cyrodiil. No arenas or regular world PvP. I really like that, it focusses the game on the PvE aspects that have been the core of the series since Morrowind.

Yes, yes, shekels must flow.

Spoiler

inb4 it's a satire, duh

 

[Lerk]

There are lots of quests that offer two options to complete - one is to persuade/intimidate (usually just one of the two, depending on the quest) an NPC, the other is to bribe them with about an hour's worth of farmed gold. It's a clever system because it requires you to balance skill points against money.

 

[Bubbles]

They reached max level by grouping up and AoE grinding packs of mobs. People on the official forums are petitioning to make AoE grinding a bannable offense; let's see how that turns out.

update: The devs have found a compromise solution that was implemented with today's server maintenance patch. XP gains from dungeon mobs have been reduced by 99%. Farming them is still possible, but it's slower now.

 

[Metro]

Lol?

 

[Direwolf]

They reached max level by grouping up and AoE grinding packs of mobs. People on the official forums are petitioning to make AoE grinding a bannable offense; let's see how that turns out.

update: The devs have found a compromise solution that was implemented with today's server maintenance patch. XP gains from dungeon mobs have been reduced by 99%. Farming them is still possible, but it's slower now.

That has to be the dumbest idea for an MMO that I've ever seen.

 

[Bubbles]

Actually, 99% is inaccurate, the numbers are more complex than that:

In the world at level 13, killing enemies gives me anywhere from 50-100ish exp. When I'm grouped in a dungeon...3 exp per kill.

I've completed all 3 level 15 dungeons and the exp remains near 0 for killing in dungeons. 1-3 exp per kill, every kill. Like 40 from a boss.

the monsters in the 1st 3 dungeons are giving 1-3 exp each at level 14

Toothmaul Gully - Mobs were giving around 15 xp when an outside mob was giving 100+

For the first few days of Early Access, dungeon mobs and world mobs gave nearly the same amount of xp per kill. The main problem is that people in a group had a huge leveling advantage over single players, since coordinated groups could kill the high density dungeon mobs much faster than players could kill the few mobs in the open world, particularly since most of those are constantly killed by other players. That's why you saw people at level 50 after one day.

 

[Direwolf]

Actually, 99% is inaccurate, the numbers are more complex than that:

In the world at level 13, killing enemies gives me anywhere from 50-100ish exp. When I'm grouped in a dungeon...3 exp per kill.

I've completed all 3 level 15 dungeons and the exp remains near 0 for killing in dungeons. 1-3 exp per kill, every kill. Like 40 from a boss.

the monsters in the 1st 3 dungeons are giving 1-3 exp each at level 14

Toothmaul Gully - Mobs were giving around 15 xp when an outside mob was giving 100+

For the first few days of Early Access, dungeon mobs and world mobs gave nearly the same amount of xp per kill. The main problem is that people in a group had a huge leveling advantage over single players, since coordinated groups could kill the high density dungeon mobs much faster than players could kill the few mobs in the open world, particularly since most of those are constantly killed by other players. That's why you saw people at level 50 after one day.

How was this a problem? That's the main point of an MMO - to play with other people.

 

[Bubbles]

Sure, but group based grinding wasn't supposed to be faster than single player questing and exploration.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Sure, but group based grinding wasn't supposed to be faster than single player questing and exploration.

This is the dev mentality that makes me consider all mmo's single player games, even if you sometimes have other people with you.

"Why can't I solo and be as uber as the people who group!!!"

 

[Irenaeus]

Doesn't make any sense.

 

[Angthoron]

So the devs just made it harder to catch up with the guys that ran off ahead. Good idea.

I wonder if it could've been possible to avoid the issue by making the dungeon trash, oh, I don't know, slightly dangerous at least?

Oh right, that'd make it unsoloable by "high-skill players".

 

[Kane]

this game is already a catastrophe

 

[AW8]

Wow, Bubbles really went all-Roguey in this thread.

So I've bought this restrictive online hiking simulator. I have too much free time on my hands and am tired of replaying my favourite or KKKodex Approved™ games at the moment.

I get that the lore rape is in full effect here, but I hoped to see something that at least resembles the landscape of Morrowind (main reason I bought this actually) and so far only thing I see are the fucking oversized mushrooms.
Im in Stonefalls and have yet to see any Dunmer looking architecture. Everything looks Imperial.
I never read up on any lore outside the games, since it's piss poor and barely holds up in the series, but shouldn't Stonefalls look more like Vvanderfell in terms of architecure?

Well it shouldn't look Imperial, seeing as Morrowind has never been an Imperial province at this point. And the Dunmer are very xenophobic, so their settlements shouldn't have Cyrodiil influences, but look more like Ald'Ruhn, Balmora or Almalexia (the city).

DraQ the Morrowind maniac should chime in and tell us if this is dumb or not. Also, Johnnyboy, be a good Blazze and post some screenshots of the Imperial-looking architecture. I'll be keeping my pitchfork ready!

 

[bonescraper]

There are no traces of Imperial architecture in Dunmer lands. He's talking out of his ass because he thinks Dunmer = bug shell houses.

This kind of architecture is predominant. Imperial as fuck, eh?. I guess John_Blazze never reached Mournhold in his Morrowind playthrough...

Spoiler

 

[RK47]

Dungeon clearing is an exploit.
Just like Guild Wars 2, this is just gonna end up making a lot of mistakes over and over again.
I recall the devs of GW2 also panicked when they realized the players are clearing their 'hard' dungeons selectively, picking only on the 'easiest' segment, collect reward and leave to reset.

Why is this the 'wrong' behavior?
How does this harm the game?
Nobody knows.
But they saw fit to nerf it totally and made dungeon 100% clearing mandatory to claim your rewards.

So the casuals reaction were horrors while the hardcore crowd manned up and went in again, quickly clearing their OVERALL easiest dungeon twice, thrice, or more every hour.

THIS RUINZ MAH ECONOMY - A dev must've cried...
So now you gain diminishing return if you raid the same dungeon too much.
50%, 25% 12% 6% .....

You get the idea.
SO TESO PLAYERS...STOP THIS RIGHT NAO.
STOP REPEATING FOR THE SAKE OF GAINING IN GAME REWARDS
THIS IS THE WRONG WAY TO PLAY!

 

[Eyeball]

Sure, but group based grinding wasn't supposed to be faster than single player questing and exploration.

And Thus dies any tiny iota of interest I might have had in this POS WoW ripoff.

Ideal MMO philsophy: Lrn2teamwork or fuck off.