The Elder Scrolls Online

[tmp]

Our loss how?  Is exploring rewarded in any way?

At least early on the best source of gear were the chests which you'd need to find on your own, they weren't where the main storyline quests would send you. Optional quests also provided the xp/rewards, and there's number of achievements which require to find certain spots in the zones.

[squirrel]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

[satael]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

I kind of like the idea (not necessarily the practical side) of crafting being something you have to invest in at the cost of your "fighting" strength.

[Bhazrak]

That's exactly what I'm doing. I've got about 18ish skill points into most of my crafting passives at level 17 right now, sans alchemy and provisioning at the moment, and all I've really lost is fighting versatility. Sucks sometimes but it'll grow out in the 20's. I just like crafting, and the option of being able to build this way and still fight well is fun to me.

[Falconeer]

It was like that in the original SWG, wasn't it? I got to Master Tailor in a few days when the game came out and as a result I was printing money (and selling them on eBay for real cash because I was stupid) but couldn't adventure with my friends as a ladybug would have killed me. Not sure I like it here though.

[Miasma]

Even by around level ten if you are only specializing in one subclass and one weapon type you start to have spare skill points available for things like crafting.  You also won't even notice the difference if you spend a couple points on crafting instead of your +3% regen passives.

You start the game being able to craft everything up to level 14 in every craft line without spending any points which is actually a lot more than most other games that force you to specialize in one or two professions.

In theorycrafting I have an idea that I might create seven alts, use the option to skip the tutorial zone making them all level 3, craft each of them up to level 3 blacksmith then buy all of them the hireling ability.  Now I'm getting sent mats each day from all my alts.  I'm going to try this with one alt first to see if it works.

[Lantyssa]

It was like that in the original SWG, wasn't it? I got to Master Tailor in a few days when the game came out and as a result I was printing money (and selling them on eBay for real cash because I was stupid) but couldn't adventure with my friends as a ladybug would have killed me. Not sure I like it here though.

To be fair, you could have spent your entire game life in SWG as some of their crafting or entertaining professions, and many people did.

I can't say if ESO has that trait, but I doubt it as pretty much every MMO expects crafting to be a side profession rather than a style of play.

[Triforcer]

Having fun so far (but release day fun does not tell you much). Love the art style and overall ambience.  Like Signe, I had to fiddle with settings to tell pcs fron npcs.

[Falconeer]

Installing Minion is very simple and basically a game changer.

Basic, mandatory stuff:

1 - Foundry Tactical Combat

Then go into the game settings and turn autoloot on, then install

2 - LootDrop

Makes the game up to 12.8% better.

[Nevermore]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

Where are all those skill points coming from?  I was only getting one each time I leveled.  I'd occasionally get one from a 'main' quest but it still seemed like nowhere near enough to invest any in crafting when I also had a main weapon, armor and a couple of class lines to keep up with.  That's not even getting into when you get weapon swapping at 15.

[Ginaz]

I logged in yesterday to make a few characters and reserve some names.  I then logged out to play Diablo 3 the rest of the day.

[Morfiend]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

Where are all those skill points coming from?  I was only getting one each time I leveled.  I'd occasionally get one from a 'main' quest but it still seemed like nowhere near enough to invest any in crafting when I also had a main weapon, armor and a couple of class lines to keep up with.  That's not even getting into when you get weapon swapping at 15.

You receive additional skill points from reading books, finishing specific quests and from collecting Skyshards in the world. Each 3 Skyshards = 1 skill point. I believe there are siz shardes on the newbie island alone.

[Bhazrak]

Where are all those skill points coming from?  I was only getting one each time I leveled.  I'd occasionally get one from a 'main' quest but it still seemed like nowhere near enough to invest any in crafting when I also had a main weapon, armor and a couple of class lines to keep up with.  That's not even getting into when you get weapon swapping at 15.

Lots of different ways.

- 1 from every level
- 1 for every 3 skyshards you acquire
- certain big quests in zones give you 1 upon overall completion
- whenever the prophet calls you back to do another quest of his you get 1 upon completion
- 1 for every PvP rank. you can 2 right when joining Cyrodiil and going through the PvP tutorial quest as it gets you to rank 2.
- 1 for the fist time you complete a dungeon's quest line
 -1 for completing a zone's public dungeon

Edit: Apparently the game already has its first level 50 after about 17 hours, hah.
Edit 2: added a few things.

[Signe]

If you're pretty much done with an area and you don't think you've found all the shards, Gamers Heroes has maps showing the locations.  If you have treasure maps, they have those maps, too.

[squirrel]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

Where are all those skill points coming from?  I was only getting one each time I leveled.  I'd occasionally get one from a 'main' quest but it still seemed like nowhere near enough to invest any in crafting when I also had a main weapon, armor and a couple of class lines to keep up with.  That's not even getting into when you get weapon swapping at 15.

Also, I meant to type with the shards, not without. There's 107 points or so if you collect all the shards (321).

[satael]

I'm enjoying some parts of the game like going through dwemer ruins with a npc in tow but most of those moments have very little to do with the mmo side of it (and would work just as well in Skyrim if not better). The pvp side has so far been lacking due to the absence of enemies (with "our side" dominating the map) but that will hopefully change once the pve leveling quiets down a bit.

[Signe]

Some how I've been able to mostly ignore the fact that there are people milling about a room or obviously doing the same quest I'm doing and play
it like a single player game.  Before, it was totally distracting.  Once I start getting distracted by people again, I'll have no problem leaving this behind
and just wait for the next single player Elder Scrolls/Fallout/Whatever game.  It's good fun for the time being, though.

[Threash]

Apparently if you craft with a helmet on your helmet is gone.  That's SB level retarded.

[Miasma]

Apparently if you craft with a helmet on your helmet is gone.  That's SB level retarded.

Haven't seen that and I've crafted a lot and have four craft/mule alts...  You can hide your helm, I'm guessing the person who said that hid it and then forgot.

I'm having a lot of fun in this game.  The quests are great, the exploration is there, the mmo is half there.  I'd say it's as fun as Oblivion plus being able to play with friends.

There are a fare number of rookie mmo mistakes but the good outbalances the bad by a long shot.

[Wasted]

I've had it happen to me, not every time but the last time I crafted a helmet my equipped one went poof.

[Falconeer]

PvP so far, and I'd say "as usual", is a mixed bag and totally reliant on server population and behaviour. For example on our server one faction is dominating, which means there's a huge zerg of about 100+ of them taking all the resources. There is zero chance for my party of five friends to do anything other than PvE  ( ) in the PvP zone hoping to flip a few lumbermills for... no reason. And of course hope to find a few stray enemies to gank. This is pretty much what happened in GW2. It's either big zerg vs big zerg, which is quite OK, or you wander for hours in the PvP zone/Frontier bouncing from outnumbering to being outnumbered over and over and rarely having a fair fight.

It's not even a criticism to the game. Given a large PvP area, I can't really see how this could be fixed without more instances or arenas.

[satael]

I was kind of impressed with how well the game has been holding up during the headstart serverwise as the megaserver idea seemed to be working (broken quests are another matter entirely).
... that was before the current maintenance hit the NA server without a prior warning (and has now been going on for over 6 hours).  

edit:as a bonus they are only saying that they are performing maintenance and giving no better explanation for the downtime

[Threash]

I've had it happen to me, not every time but the last time I crafted a helmet my equipped one went poof.

Apparently if you hit craft without having any specific item highlighted it salvages your helmet, because of reasons.

[Paelos]

You don't need helmets!

[Draegan]

Not going to buy this right away.  It's fun to me, but there are things about the game that bug me.
-Looks like an xp grind to 50.
-Crafting is a real grind as well.
-Some of the mobs are tuned poorly for the level.
-Hard to find mats out in the world except ore.  Even with the glowing mat perk.
-The UI is TOO sparse.  I'd like some information on what I'm doing, not a lot mind you.
-The paywall locked Imperial is total bullshit.
-Guild Wars 2 does everything this game does for $10 less box and no sub.

I've grown tired of WoW keyboard combat, so here's a game that breaks the mold mostly and I pass on it.   

I will almost definitely pick this up in a couple of months, once it has its inevitable player implosion and the devs throw sparkly mud crab vanity pets at us and drop the sub.   

There is no more of an experience grind in this game than any other "modern" MMORPG. Do quests, get levels, 40+ hours later you are level 50 (then you do all the other faction quests for VR10). The fun thing is, you can also just grind mobs mindlessly if that's your thing and it can be as fast or faster if you find a sweet spot.

Who cares about crafting? Anyway, you should be deconstruction gear of your chosen profession to level up/get mats versus the gathering then crafting. It's a grind, but no more or less than any other profession. They put a twist on it for traits. Each trait takes real life hours/days to learn. Makes things interesting I suppose. The real pain in the ass is the rarity thing. Getting enough green/blue upgrade thingies is a pain.

Mobs tuned? The PVE in this game is laughably easy with any spec. Unless you are fighting with broken gear you shouldn't be having an issue with anything. Or maybe you skipped the newbie island and wandered to far into the first area without leveling?

UI is shit in this game. For real shits. If you care, here is how you make it better with addons:

Code:

Download Warlegends - Good HUD.
Download PBST - Good scrolling combat text. You can change font/size/color of stuff. Very basic version of some WOW SCTs. Should be improving as time moves on.
Download Wyykd's Framework - This gives you a good toolbar that you can put at the top of your screen to display a variety of info (AP, XP, Gold, Horse Feeding, Zone, Clock etc.)
Download FTC .23 - Disable everything but buffs. You can see your buffs/debuffs again! Yay work around. (FTC also has a combat text and HUD as well. I don't like the look personally)
Download Lootdrop - Shows loot that you pick up in your chatbox and in a separate panel.
Download Multiquest - Gives you the ability to track multiple quests at once on your screen. Kind of buggy, but works real well.

Apparently there is a minimap addon, but screws up the ability to port in the main map interface. 

You can also download Minion from ZAM which is their version of curse's program that organizes your mods. With minion, you can have this set up in like 5 minutes or less.

As far as the imperial race thing, seems pretty standard money grab to me. I'm personally not offended by it but I guess people can whine about it if they like.

If you want to compare to GW2, I don't agree. GW2's class system is terrible and boring. ESO's class system and customization is probably the best on the market in my opinion. It's really the only reason why I picked up this game. TESO's WvW system is a 100x better than GW2's in my opinion. Did a lot of PVP on Sunday night. I thought it was much better, especially the sieging. It's pretty cool.

GW2 and TESO's PVE is an interesting discussion. I really like how TESO has a combo of instance dungeons and open world dungeons. There are small dungeons littered all over the map with quests and boss with drops in them. Really fun. GW2's group PVE is an awful experience, in my opinion. Their PVE world design is pretty cool though. We could probably get into a bigger discussion about that.

Whether this game is sub worthy or not is yet to be seen. Right now I wouldn't mind spending $15 to play another month. We'll see how I feel in 30 days.

[Draegan]

The biggest problem with the crafting system was having to invest the same skill points you use on all your combat abilities into improving the crafting skills.  They should really be separate systems.

My understanding - possibly wrong - is that you get enough skill points to max everything you could want, I think there's 320 skill points without the shards. Apparently it's not an issue overall, but yeah if you want to craft early on I can see how you could wind up in a bind with skill points.

304 with shards I believe. I spent a bunch of hours Sunday night getting all 45 skyshards in Cyrodil.

[Signe]

I also agree with the UI being shite.  Don't forget, however, the game is open to addons and some of those that I've dl'd have made it better.  I use Lootdrop, Wykkyd Framework and some other of his stuff, MultiQuestTracker and the one that gives you an inventory grid.  Oh, and that minimap one which I love, too.

[satael]

So finally after 12 hours of downtime they have an estimate of 1-2 hours (more) until the NA server is back up. 

[Signe]

Really cuts into that whole head start thingy which I'm not really sure is much of a reward anyway.  It just seems like a bit of fluff prize that doesn't really matter anyway.

[satael]

Really cuts into that whole head start thingy which I'm not really sure is much of a reward anyway.  It just seems like a bit of fluff prize that doesn't really matter anyway.

The only reason I care is that I had time to play today from early on (which was more or less unexpected) and I've now been waiting 8 hours so far for the servers to get back up since they were unable to guess (or the CS really sucks) how long the maintenance would take before this latest announcement (almost 12 hours in to the maintenance)

[KallDrexx]

[Paelos]

 

 

[Nebu]

Whether this game is sub worthy or not is yet to be seen. Right now I wouldn't mind spending $15 to play another month. We'll see how I feel in 30 days.

Damn you.  Until you wrote this line I was happy to be avoiding this game.  Knowing that we enjoy similar games,  I'm now considering buying this to dabble in for a month. 

Thanks for nothing!   

[Modern Angel]

It's just not that bad of a game! It's got issues and inexplicable decisions (oh auction house...) but it's got a solid core. Character progression is fun. And like Falc (I think it was Falc) said, it's one of the only MMOs which rewards you for not hitting it hard. It, like single player TES games, wants you to wander around a bit, listen to the voice acting, read the books, etc. That alone is breaking certain paradigms.

[Draegan]

Whether this game is sub worthy or not is yet to be seen. Right now I wouldn't mind spending $15 to play another month. We'll see how I feel in 30 days.

Damn you.  Until you wrote this line I was happy to be avoiding this game.  Knowing that we enjoy similar games,  I'm now considering buying this to dabble in for a month. 

Thanks for nothing!   

Siege warfare in this game is fucking good. It's still up in the air about 90 day campaigns and how they can stay competitive. The reason to play this game is the character builder. Love the class/skill system.