The Elder Scrolls Online

[Ingmar]

Remind me which MMOs you actually liked, Hoax?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Personally I've played just about every modern MMO to varying degrees and both Rift and GW2 were a million times better than SWTOR.  It got box sales because of the IP and the game company, it couldn't retain it's box sales past what, the first two months?  That is the opposite of doing well. 

I honestly don't give a shit about SWTOR anymore but to claim that game is somehow an indicator of anything is ridiculous. 

[Paelos]

Rift and SWTOR will both be looked upon fondly compared to this.

[Rasix]

Remind me which MMOs you actually liked, Hoax?

I think he liked that submarine game that no one ever heard of.

The SWTOR hate is interesting.  It's probably the only MMO that I'd actually pay for currently. It improved greatly since launch.  Rift's too boring and tiered.  WoW's just too old.  TSW's just too quirky to jump back to (it's free anyhow).

[Tannhauser]

I don't get the SWTOR hate either.  It's a thoroughly mediocre MMO but not a bad one.  Just bland like Rift.   

[sam, an eggplant]

Yes, but TOR promised to be so much more, and failed to deliver.

Rift never promised to be more than a competent WoW clone, and that is exactly what we got. No more, no less.

[Paelos]

And then we got a freaking confusing cash shop in Rift before I bailed out.

[koro]

Confusing how? I've never played Rift, so I'm curious.

[rk47]

[Numtini]

On the Rift cash shop, I had the same reaction at first. They combined the cash shop with merchants and it made it more difficult to use either. The first time you go to sell your grey stuff and they're asking you to buy junk from the cash shop it's pretty confusing. Once you "get it" there's no problem though. It's not even an "aggressive cash shop promotion" thing as much as just "why is this stuff on my NPC merchant? and where is the stuff he sells?"

For me, SWTOR died when I realized the extent of how little the voiceovers and my choices mattered. That was the only thing it had going for it, so when that went, it was nothing.

On Skyrim/ESO art, it's not that it doesn't look good I guess as much as it looks dreary and repetitive. It's a little too game of thrones for my taste.

[Fabricated]

Confusing how? I've never played Rift, so I'm curious.

Rift's cash shop interface is integrated into every single NPC shop window now, and they have all these various loyalty reward things and bonuses which while being nice clog the interface up into a gigantic mess.

I thought SWTOR was pretty okay until they basically fired everyone and all the new content after the Rhakghoul stuff wasn't anywhere near as good as the original stuff and I realized the story/choice stuff was never going to heavily factor into future 5-mans. The very first flashpoint is literally the only one where the story integration stuff is prevalent, integrated into the flashpoint well, and interesting.

The Eternity Vault was basically the graphics department and raid designers blowing their load for the entire game forever. Everything else after is boring and doesn't look like anything you'd see in Star Wars.

[Threash]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU07krDtruw&feature=youtu.be

Best part of the game actually.

[Ironwood]

Hmmm.  Some of that looks kinda cool.

[Threash]

It actually is.

[Nebu]

Hmmm.  Some of that looks kinda cool.

In theory, yes.  In practice, I doubt it.  The MMO community is so hell bent on min maxxing that they will quickly determine the most potent ways to build a character and will then use this information to punish anyone that doesn't do the same. 

This stuff is great in single player or coop games, but lousy in MMO's unless the Dev team spends the time and energy to test and balance builds.  I'm not holding my breath on that happening.

[shiznitz]

The end quote from the dev - "we cannot wait to see what the players come up with" - is missing the ending: "so we can nerf the shit out of it."

[Triforcer]

Isn't that sort of thing what we've supposedly wanted since UO? If nothing else, watching the tank mages dual wielding garden rakes dominate will be entertaining.

[shiznitz]

It is only fun when you can kill newbie players, though. 

[Nebu]

This system is nothing more than the illusion of choice.  Sure, you can play any skill set you like... so long as you don't mind be less than optimal.  Every MMO that has has skills has demonstrated this.  Look at the GW2 forums for example.  Each class has all of these wonderful weapon and skill choices and the game still devolves into which builds are optimized for certain tasks.  GW2 couldn't balance their skill builds and I have far more faith in their development team than I do in ESO.

Then you have to consider that ESO thinks it's going to have good PvP.  I just don't see how they could possibly make this work. 

[Threash]

The fact that it is a pvp game actually means that something like trading away damage or mana  to put on heavy armor actually does make sense for a mage or healer.

[shiznitz]

PVP always comes down to the biggest nova burst.

[Senses]

This system is nothing more than the illusion of choice.  Sure, you can play any skill set you like... so long as you don't mind be less than optimal.  Every MMO that has has skills has demonstrated this.  Look at the GW2 forums for example.  Each class has all of these wonderful weapon and skill choices and the game still devolves into which builds are optimized for certain tasks.  GW2 couldn't balance their skill builds and I have far more faith in their development team than I do in ESO.

Then you have to consider that ESO thinks it's going to have good PvP.  I just don't see how they could possibly make this work.  

That's all we want though isn't it?  Illusions?  We want our MMOS to seem immense and grand, but comfy and social.  We want tons of people, as long as they aren't trolls, or gold sellers, or douchebags, or elitists.  We want access to game changing decisions, as long as they aren't someone else's game changing decisions.  That's what designers have become, and we basically say, create whatever you want, but make sure it lives up to our illusions.  The players are as much to blame as the idiots with the money for the state of the Union.

[Sir T]

Personally, I'd love a good co-op experience, but all the MMO's that try it keep getting wrecked by the PVP crowd. STO seems to have kept the balance on Co-op play, even though the PVP crowd keep crying their eyes out all over the forums. I think that's their power really, they are really loud and vocal and shout down everyone else as they see it as forum PVP.

In STO's case they have looked at how many people in game actually PVP so they basically ignore them.

[Hoax]

Remind me which MMOs you actually liked, Hoax?

In hindsight I appreciated EQ1 for the fact that mob spawns were less obviously there just for you to kill them. Overall the old zone design was more organic and "real" then what we get these days. I loved AC1 for being fairly twitchy as well.

I enjoyed vanilla WoW to a point, the second they added honor in I could tell they were moving away from what I liked, all instancing and sport pvp crap after that was nothing I would pay for. I thought SB was fucking amazing in terms of the open world to build on and character creation, it was a lot of fun. I still think Eve is incredible but sadly I'm just not that cerebral of a player so much of it is wasted on me. I really enjoyed AO especially the idea that there was a storyline that both interacted and happened beyond the playerbase sadly it was really buggy at launch which drove away most of my friends. I did some time in Tera and quite enjoyed running the dungeons but realistically it isn't a MMO to me, the playerbase and virtual space really didn't mean anything to me at the end of my 3 months. Beyond those I've had fun in lots of niche and strange multiplayer titles.

I also thought Matrix could have been cool if the netcode wasn't shit and the game looked a little better, the idea of the combat system intrigued me.

I only play MMO's to experience a virtual world. Otherwise I'll stick to 2-8 player co-op single player games with friends. The best MMO that played as a co-op game I can think of is STO and even there I would have traded superior gameplay for losing big hordes of ships floating around certain places and capital cities full of randoms in a heartbeat. I'd much rather play Starfleet Command in some kind of campaign mode with friends than STO though STO was good enough.

SWTOR is the absolute worst. Its zone design is as bad as the worst korean grindfest. Like maybe its zones have a little more thought and life than Scarlet Blade but not by a whole lot. Meanwhile SWTOR is trying to sell me on this "you are the hero" voice acted story. But nothing in instanced so I'm literally walking along behind someone doing the same quest and being followed by someone doing the same quest. Its a pathetic joke how bad that game is. The combat is refried WoW but much more clunky and jank aka shit. Nothing about SWTOR beyond some of the voice acted personalities is above average for the medium. But yeah I must be broken for not thinking that TESO or SWTOR have a redeeming feature between them.

[shiznitz]

Remind me which MMOs you actually liked, Hoax?

In hindsight I appreciated EQ1 for the fact that mob spawns were less obviously there just for you to kill them.

That really was the captivating magic of the world, even if the players created certain areas where it was just grind spawns.

[Samprimary]

I don't get the SWTOR hate either.  It's a thoroughly mediocre MMO but not a bad one.  Just bland like Rift.   

I think, ultimately, the issue is that a mediocre MMO *is* a shit MMO. Mediocrity in fundamentals like a combat system or overworld traversal or pvp compound their frustrations and cannot be forgiven in a way they would be forgiven in a relatively quick singleplayer game experience. Instead, as the hours pile on in an MMO, mediocrity eventually abrades your patience too much to continue. It burns you out and you quit because you now hate the game and it tested your patience and was found lacking.

And with SWTOR, a lot of the hate has to do with wasted potential and squander. Or, to put it on a basic front: SWTOR represented a really potentially huge pinnacle of potential that people don't like to see squandered. Bioware spending a $lots on a Star Wars MMO. Plenty of force user classes. Lightsabers, blasters, jedi, sith, bounty hunters, smugglers, the whole nine yards.

I was certainly excited as all fuck about it, YEAH WOO STAR WARS, and I didn't make it too long. Too many grindingly poor fundamentals. Too much in the way of frustration oblivating potential immersion. Futzy spongy combat, horrific pvp where I am desperately swapping hotkeys to be able to throw huttballs because as a Jedi Blend-Tec I have 1.66 x 10²⁷ skills, really poorly designed planets that you begin to dread having to travel through and will never again visit if you have any choice in the matter. It eventually quashed my interest and I mustered out, as usual.

[Threash]

SWTOR had the best leveling experience of any MMO i've played so far, and about the worst end game.  Going through the story at least once is something i would not hesitate to recommend to anyone, usually i find leveling to be a chore i have to do before i get to the real meat of the game.  But once that ran out there was absolutely nothing else worth a damn in the entire game.

[Samprimary]

I may try it again someday when you can level conspicuously quickly, travel options are much more readily and quickly available, etc.

I effectively want it to be distilled into a KOTOR I can get through in two or three weeks per class.

[sam, an eggplant]

I completely agree. If TOR increased XP gains by 200%, player damage and health by 50%, and converted all heroic areas to be soloable I would play again right now, and EA would get some money out of me for it. I just want KOTOR3.

[WayAbvPar]

I was certainly excited as all fuck about it, YEAH WOO STAR WARS, and I didn't make it too long. Too many grindingly poor fundamentals. Too much in the way of frustration oblivating potential immersion. Futzy spongy combat, horrific pvp where I am desperately swapping hotkeys to be able to throw huttballs because as a Jedi Blend-Tec I have 1.66 x 1027 skills, really poorly designed planets that you begin to dread having to travel through and will never again visit if you have any choice in the matter. It eventually quashed my interest and I mustered out, as usual.

Amen. God, the fucking artificial cockblocks to shepherd everyone through the same goddamned paths on each bland theme park planet were just infuriating. FUCK travel in that game.

[Nebu]

Amen. God, the fucking artificial cockblocks to shepherd everyone through the same goddamned paths on each bland theme park planet were just infuriating. FUCK travel in that game.

You do know that there is a perk that allows you to use your zone port more often, right?  Another perk will allow you to port back to fleet more often as well. 

I personally didn't find travel to be an issue once I bought the zone port perk.  The leveling in SWTOR is as fast as I've seen in any MMO. 

[Rasix]

The travel got a lot better.  There are some artifacts that still slow it down some. I believe the orbital stations still exist for going down to certain planets, but are not there going up.  Travel was not a huge gripe my last time playing (unsubbed currently because I'm still playing the shit out of GW2).

I wish they'd finally just kill off the group only leveling content.  I can hope for the death of leveling instances as well, but that's a stretch.  I can't really any one pining for the "OK, everything else was solo, but go get 3 friends to do this one quest!". 

[Signe]

Most of the time I don't even know what game we're talking about in here anymore.  For some reason, I can't follow this thread at all. 

I still want to play this because I'm sure I'll be bored with everything by that time.  I no longer believe there will ever be a totally awesome game that I can play forever.

[Khaldun]

In a way, I'd be happy with something that gave an explorer-type at least as much satisfaction as AC 1 did: big world, lots of excess stuff that doesn't really matter for levelling, some Easter Eggs if you go exploring.

[Sjofn]

Amen. God, the fucking artificial cockblocks to shepherd everyone through the same goddamned paths on each bland theme park planet were just infuriating. FUCK travel in that game.

You do know that there is a perk that allows you to use your zone port more often, right?  Another perk will allow you to port back to fleet more often as well. 

I personally didn't find travel to be an issue once I bought the zone port perk.  The leveling in SWTOR is as fast as I've seen in any MMO. 

Hell, if you have a security key, you can buy cheap-ish consumables to port back to the fleet that only have an hour cooldown. The zone port perk is pretty great, I only just recently bought it, and am now wondering wtf I was thinking not buying it earlier. :P

If you want to just blast through a story, all you need to do is play when they've got a double XP weekend going.


As for the group quests, I just don't see them as a big deal. They never pull the shit LotRO did, where the last step of a quest chain is suddenly a group quest or anything. They aren't factored into your XP curve (in that you won't fall behind it if you skip them). The Heroic 4s are super duper ignorable (and once you have enough presence, a lot of them can be done in a duo  ). My only request would be that they mark those somehow so you don't have to sit through a conversation before you find out it's a quest you don't want to do.