- Joined
- Jul 27, 2024
- Messages
- 432
ESO+ is practically essential to truly enjoy the game, unfortunately. There's a lot of quality of life elements built into it to the point where the further you get into the game itself, the more valuable it becomes.
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The Elder Scrolls Online
- Thread starter Nattvardsvin
- Start date
Drakortha
Prophet
The best option is to just uninstall.exe the game and return to Guild Was 2, which is what I did almost a month ago.
Cryomancer
Arcane
Drakortha
Prophet
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ESO
Cryomancer
Arcane
Yes, GW2 despite being vastly inferior to GW1 at least has cool skills.
Even the freaking skill making in ESO, they made extremely boring, you can't do interesting stuff with it.
Even the freaking skill making in ESO, they made extremely boring, you can't do interesting stuff with it.
Drakortha
Prophet
Trust me, I know. I was playing Warden until about level 30 and I got to try out a lot of skills. I struggled to put together a build that felt good to play because how bad many of the skills are. Even the most useful skills felt so shitty to use they weren't worth using. The feedback and animations on them felt like they weren't iterated on beyond their Alpha state.
At least ArenaNet re-work some of the older skills from time to time. Paying for ESO+ so you can access a crafting bag is a terrible joke when Zenimax can't even be bothered to update some skills. GW2 combat will forever be superior to the shitfest that is ESO combat.
Val the Moofia Boss
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2022
- Messages
- 1,364
This week, a group of my online friends decided that we would be playing Elder Scrolls Online together, so I bought it to play with them. My thoughts remain overall unchanged from when I played the open beta a decade ago. The game feels lackluster. Not bad mind you, but I don't feel excited to play it.
Visually, the game still has that washed out, plastic look. Shiny plastic surfaces. Blocky, shiny characters that look like grotesque toy action figures, but not as cool as say in WoW. Character animations are stiff and the spell effects weak.
One plus is that you can start customizing your character mechanically from the get go. You create your character and within 2 minutes you walk into a room with different weapons for you to pick up (bow, 2H axe, 1H sword and shield, and a staff. There are also pairs of daggers in a side room a little up ahead). When you level up, you can invest in one of three talent trees for your class, including magic spells, so if you want you could ignore the weapon types and just focus on spamming spells from one of those three schools of magic (or all of them). So I made a 2H weapon wielding warrior who has a couple of frost abilities.
Unfortunately, the class system gets in the way, ie you can't mix and match talents from different classes, and the classes thus far do not feel like they have distinct identities/class fantasies. I don't see why only Sorcerers can access the lightning magic tree while only Wardens can access the frost magic tree, and so on. And what is the difference between a sorcerer and an arcanist? Maybe the further into the game you get and the more lore you absorb these classes will wind up feeling more concrete, but at character creation they felt feel vague and illdefined compared to rival MMOs, and as such the talent tree restrictions feel arbitrary and archaic.
I like how you can transmog your appearance, and then don't have to reapply the transmog every time you equip new gear. Wish my transmog was always maintained in WoW, GW2, and FF14.
One other positive I will say is that it is like Guild Wars in that the number of abilities you can have equipped is limited, in this case you can have up to 6 abilities on your hotbar (as opposed to GW1's and GW2's 10), so you do not need to have 20+ different keybinds to execute your rotation like in WoW or FF14, and that also means less time spent looking down at your hotbar looking at cooldown timers.
Now we get to my real issue, which is the boring gameplay. I do not feel like I am playing an MMO. I feel like I am playing a singleplayer RPG, and just so happening to do a playthrough at the same time as other people. We are not really playing together like in FF11 or GW2. About 90% of my playtime was spent running to talk to NPCs, reading dialogue boxes, running to interact with the next quest objective such as clicking on a magical artifact or clicking on diplomatic papers, running back to an NPC, etc. That's not playing with people. That's playing a singleplayer game. Occasionally in between running to the next NPC or plot device to click on, there would be some wildlife I would leap at and attack out of boredom, but since there was 3+ of us the wildlife died within a couple seconds. Mobs die so fast, I don't even get to execute my full 3 button rotation (gap close with leap, cast the icicle DoT AoE, and then start using my heavy swing ability). I am lucky if I can leap to a target and get in a quick basic attack swing before it dies. But again, the mobs weren't the quest objective. They were just occasionally there in between running to the next objectives, and I killed a mob and only got 50 EXP while I had the 50% EXP scroll active, so without the scroll it probably would have been 33 EXP per mob, when I needed 4,000 EXP to level up. That would be 121 mob kills, and the mobs are nowhere near dense enough. Farming them with your friends to level up is not viable. You're clearly supposed to be doing the singleplayer questing to progress.
Another issue is that so far, there is nothing to look forward to, no real reason to progress. I do not feel like I have become more powerful when I level up. I am fighting the same mobs at level 10 that I was when I was level 2, and the still die in the same amount of time. It's not like FF11 where you level up and become noticeably more powerful fighting the same mobs, and you become excited because now you can venture into new areas, and there are dozens of new zones you will eventually become powerful enough to go to.
Music thus far has been forgettable.
UI is unattractive.
I guess it's serviceable enough to fire up and spend time playing with friends, but I don't love the game holistically (aesthetics, setting, character customization, ability animations, etc) like WoW/GW2/FF14, nor do I look forward to the next stage of my journey like when I was playing FF11.
That being said, I did enjoy the game to plop down another $10 to buy a Guar mount for my Argonian, so I am not riding around on that inappropriate starter horse, and I am willing to give it at least a few more goes. Two and a half weeks until TWW launches and I become preoccupied playing that. Hopefully the group dungeons provide a better experience than the singleplayer questing.
Visually, the game still has that washed out, plastic look. Shiny plastic surfaces. Blocky, shiny characters that look like grotesque toy action figures, but not as cool as say in WoW. Character animations are stiff and the spell effects weak.
One plus is that you can start customizing your character mechanically from the get go. You create your character and within 2 minutes you walk into a room with different weapons for you to pick up (bow, 2H axe, 1H sword and shield, and a staff. There are also pairs of daggers in a side room a little up ahead). When you level up, you can invest in one of three talent trees for your class, including magic spells, so if you want you could ignore the weapon types and just focus on spamming spells from one of those three schools of magic (or all of them). So I made a 2H weapon wielding warrior who has a couple of frost abilities.
Unfortunately, the class system gets in the way, ie you can't mix and match talents from different classes, and the classes thus far do not feel like they have distinct identities/class fantasies. I don't see why only Sorcerers can access the lightning magic tree while only Wardens can access the frost magic tree, and so on. And what is the difference between a sorcerer and an arcanist? Maybe the further into the game you get and the more lore you absorb these classes will wind up feeling more concrete, but at character creation they felt feel vague and illdefined compared to rival MMOs, and as such the talent tree restrictions feel arbitrary and archaic.
I like how you can transmog your appearance, and then don't have to reapply the transmog every time you equip new gear. Wish my transmog was always maintained in WoW, GW2, and FF14.
One other positive I will say is that it is like Guild Wars in that the number of abilities you can have equipped is limited, in this case you can have up to 6 abilities on your hotbar (as opposed to GW1's and GW2's 10), so you do not need to have 20+ different keybinds to execute your rotation like in WoW or FF14, and that also means less time spent looking down at your hotbar looking at cooldown timers.
Now we get to my real issue, which is the boring gameplay. I do not feel like I am playing an MMO. I feel like I am playing a singleplayer RPG, and just so happening to do a playthrough at the same time as other people. We are not really playing together like in FF11 or GW2. About 90% of my playtime was spent running to talk to NPCs, reading dialogue boxes, running to interact with the next quest objective such as clicking on a magical artifact or clicking on diplomatic papers, running back to an NPC, etc. That's not playing with people. That's playing a singleplayer game. Occasionally in between running to the next NPC or plot device to click on, there would be some wildlife I would leap at and attack out of boredom, but since there was 3+ of us the wildlife died within a couple seconds. Mobs die so fast, I don't even get to execute my full 3 button rotation (gap close with leap, cast the icicle DoT AoE, and then start using my heavy swing ability). I am lucky if I can leap to a target and get in a quick basic attack swing before it dies. But again, the mobs weren't the quest objective. They were just occasionally there in between running to the next objectives, and I killed a mob and only got 50 EXP while I had the 50% EXP scroll active, so without the scroll it probably would have been 33 EXP per mob, when I needed 4,000 EXP to level up. That would be 121 mob kills, and the mobs are nowhere near dense enough. Farming them with your friends to level up is not viable. You're clearly supposed to be doing the singleplayer questing to progress.
Another issue is that so far, there is nothing to look forward to, no real reason to progress. I do not feel like I have become more powerful when I level up. I am fighting the same mobs at level 10 that I was when I was level 2, and the still die in the same amount of time. It's not like FF11 where you level up and become noticeably more powerful fighting the same mobs, and you become excited because now you can venture into new areas, and there are dozens of new zones you will eventually become powerful enough to go to.
Music thus far has been forgettable.
UI is unattractive.
I guess it's serviceable enough to fire up and spend time playing with friends, but I don't love the game holistically (aesthetics, setting, character customization, ability animations, etc) like WoW/GW2/FF14, nor do I look forward to the next stage of my journey like when I was playing FF11.
That being said, I did enjoy the game to plop down another $10 to buy a Guar mount for my Argonian, so I am not riding around on that inappropriate starter horse, and I am willing to give it at least a few more goes. Two and a half weeks until TWW launches and I become preoccupied playing that. Hopefully the group dungeons provide a better experience than the singleplayer questing.
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2024
- Messages
- 432
It's a game I recommend as something to play on the side rather as a priority. It's easy to burn out on it due to how clunky the combat is, not to mention lacking in a challenge outside of high end content. For me, personally, I like to build stuff and so I mostly use it for the housing system. Which is pretty elaborate to its credit and you don't have to worry about losing your houses or furniture like in FFXIV if you dare to take a break for months or even years.
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2024
- Messages
- 432
Well, they're adding a non-binary Altmer as a companion in the next update...
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 4,000
Got a link?
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2024
- Messages
- 432
Yup, assuming this works:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2247685867
It's around the 1 hr 18 mins point where it's mentioned.
Brevity pro-tip: You could've just said "they're adding an elf companion in the next update" and no meaning would be lost.
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 4,000
Here it is.
Here it is.
It's got tits. How do you get non-binary out of this other than the pointy ears? They should've had the tip of a dong peeking out below the hem of the skirt.
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 4,000
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/665356/new-companions-update-44
Someone is mad
Isn't female physique with blue asymmetrical hair the absolute nonbinary cliché?
Someone is mad
Isn't female physique with blue asymmetrical hair the absolute nonbinary cliché?
Well I can't fathom something with noticeable tits (not moobs) not being female rather than whatever the fuck non-binary is. So there's that.
RobotSquirrel
Arcane
They're acting like Altmer weren't all gay already. Of all the races of Tamriel they are my most hated.
Elttharion
Learned
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2023
- Messages
- 3,930
Looking at the steam forums you need to buy the companions on the crown store lmao
Late Bloomer
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2022
- Messages
- 4,000
I vote Redguards as the most hated, for obvious reasons.
Redguard with a hard R.
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