The Elder Scrolls Online

[Falconeer]

I disagree with AngryJoe.

The game is cool for explorers and solo players but it stinks as an MMORPG. Not bad at all as a single player RPG although not even remotely on par with a real Elder Scrolls game. Most importantly so far the PvP is incredibly disappointing.

It looks GREAT, and it makes you believe it's going to be great. Instead, the poor combat makes it painful, not fun. The netcode is good enough to let literally hundreds of player roam the land in a realisitc looking manner but lots of skills (especially pulls) react poorly to the input from many players trying to do the same thing at once and the result often feels unresponsive and wonky. On top of it all, the terrible job the game does at giving players feedback about what's happening, how, why, from and to where, makes many of your PvP-raid deaths not fun at all once the novelty wears off. Let's not forget that everything you see here has been done before, and quite well although far from perfect, by Guild Wars 2. TESO was supposed to improve that formula, and it did in many ways, but it also took a few steps back in giving the players unsufficient tools to find some order in the chaos of siege warfare, and while I still like a lot the occasional engagements of 10 to 20 players per side, I find the zerg war absolutely not fun in this iteration.

And let's not talk about the apparently cool but actually stupid mechanic of everyone being able to hide. Since I mentioned how annoying the zerg can be, let me spend a few minutes telling you about those nice smaller groups engagement.... EXCEPT THE SMALL GROUP IS NOT A SMALL GROUP BUT INSTEAD A FULL CLOAKED KLINGON FLOTTILLA. Basically, wherever you see a player, there's ten to fifty times that amount hidden nearby. What's the fucking point?

As I said, it's great for videos, it really looks gorgeous, but it's not fun to play. Especially now that a few ridiculous AOE casters build are spreading and the game is evolving into roaming bands of magical supernovas of death.

I am not giving up on the PvP, but after the first few WOW! moments, I have to say that open world PvP in TESO needs work, especially in the UI/feedback department.

[Lantyssa]

So you're saying the game is even worse than Angry Joe thinks?  Considering it felt like he had to stretch to find anything nice to say as it was...

[Signe]

I kind of almost agree with nearly everyone.  Mostly.  It's good and bad, depending on how you play.  PvP sucks, in my opinion.  At least so far.  I do like the fact that much of the armour and weapons are suitable for both PvE and PvP.  At least it feels that way.  I won't bother with PvP anymore until something happens to make it more fun.  PvE, as a solo player, is really fun for me.  I wish everyone else in the game would simply disappear sometimes though.  Of course, the tougher mobs in dungeons and stuff that would give me problems are relatively easy because others are fighting them too, all you have to do is help to update your quest or get the loot.  Other than buggy bits and a few other minor issues, they've made this game extremely easy to play solo.  I'm not all that high level yet, but the main story quest line seems to be very solo-able.  I've switched characters and I'm playing an armoured sorcerer with an axe and shield.  I'm not entirely sure that's the weapon set up I want to keep so I haven't taken any weapon skills yet.  So far, though, it's good fun.  Much more interesting than a dragon knight.

[Surlyboi]

I've gotten to level 25 with a dragon knight and I've enjoyed the ride so far. If you're looking for Skyrim with a shitton of people (which is what I think most of the reviewers are looking for) you're going to be woefully disappointed. If you're looking for an Elder Scrolls flavored shared world, populated by the occasional asshole that's not of the NPC variety, it's not a bad game at all.

[satael]

I'm getting fed up with some of the bugs. Spent most of the last week stuck on a quest that was part of the main quest line for the area (motes in the dark or something like that) since it was bugged and today it finally worked for me so I was able to proceed only to get stuck in another quest of the same quest line (moonlit path). You'd think they would atleast get the main quests working but so far the response time has been pretty dismal (well atleast I can use the overpowered shield bash for the foreseeable future since they won't be tuning anything soon judging by their record so far )

[Zetor]

Really, the two things that make this game not crap are the exploration and the quests... when the quests work, that is. I pretty much encountered a broken quest once a day, and there aren't that many quests in the first place (~45 per map, and about 1/3 to 1/2 of those being simple fetch or return types). Some of the workarounds to un-break the quests are somewhere between and   -- if there's anything that'll stay with me, it's standing in line for ~20 mins at motes and ship graveyard (seriously, people standing in line to do a quest!), doing THAT JUMP during the final assault, doing a soft-reset in the second room after THAT JUMP in the same quest by having everyone on that step log off and wait 5 minutes, and deleting my first character 4 hours in because I did some of the intro quests in the wrong order, preventing me from doing the main storyline on the first island.

That said: I finished the main storyline yesterday, and overall I think I got my money's worth. This isn't a game to pay a sub for... but I think everyone knows that by now.

[Miasma]

There was an amusing and actually helpful bug (until they patched it Monday) where, for some reason, every female mob in this dungeon would drop the dungeon boss's loot.  If she was in a pack with a male npc it did not work, but any solo female mob or group of mobs that were all female had the boss' loot table.  The boss was male, and did not have loot.  It just seems like such a crazy bug I would have loved to find out how that happened.

The boss' item loot wasn't actually important but since every dungeon boss drops a level appropriate soul gem and five potions you were able to stock up for as long as could convince yourself that hunting down every female and ignoring men wasn't going to turn you into a misogynist.  I have a stack of 100 grand soul gems and each type of level 50 potion now...

They need to stop mentioning the new craglorn group oriented content they are working on until the actual game is more stable.  Also, as mentioned, questing and groups don't work so well together so basing the next content pack around exactly that is probably going to wind up being a terrible idea.

[Paelos]

If you're looking for Skyrim with a shitton of people (which is what I think most of the reviewers are looking for) you're going to be woefully disappointed.

Honestly, that's what they should have delivered or not bothered with the concept. The people aren't wrong to expect this to be an Elder Scrolls game when its name is plastered all over the box. This was my biggest concern about farming out the IP to shell studio that will impact the brand for the worse.

[Simond]

There was an amusing and actually helpful bug (until they patched it Monday) where, for some reason, every female mob in this dungeon would drop the dungeon boss's loot.  If she was in a pack with a male npc it did not work, but any solo female mob or group of mobs that were all female had the boss' loot table.  The boss was male, and did not have loot. 

I...what? What? 

[Teleku]

Bitches be gold diggers.

[Falconeer]

So you're saying the game is even worse than Angry Joe thinks?  Considering it felt like he had to stretch to find anything nice to say as it was...

I am saying that he didn't enjoy the single-player exploration aspects as much as I did. I would give the game a 6/10 score for PvP, just based on the effort. And I would give the game a 6/10 score for PvE, just because they managed to keep me hooked despite the not-so-interesting combat. At this point I am pretty sure I don't consider the game worth a monthly fee (and on this we agree) but since I said I consider it a pretty decent single-player RPG with a solid 8/10 score when it comes to exploration and lore/quests, it's only fair to play it for a month and then put it away.

I think it's slightly better than what Angry Joe says cause the boredom he talks about is what I experienced in the beta, but didn't experience in the final product due to a more streamlined questing experience. So it's a better game than he says, but it's a bad MMORPG.

[Simond]

So has anyone started bitching about Veteran Rank yet?

[Zetor]

Well, after finishing up the main story (you need to hit level 50 for it), I started the main quest thing over in the second faction's area, noted the enemy scaling and xp gained from doing a quest compared to the size of the veteranxp bar, and haven't logged in since. Does that count?  

e: though really, the veteran level grind isn't that egregious compared to what other games do at 'endgame', and at least you get to do interesting content instead of farming the same dungeon 54324325 times or whatever. It's just not very good at motivating me to keep playing...

[Bhazrak]

Each zone in veteran rank content equates to about one veteran rank, so yeah it's a good amount slower. Mobs hit harder and have more health which can be annoying and depending on where you allocated your skill points, you might need to change things up a bit.

[Modern Angel]

I would like to tell you whether PvP is good or not but my faction on the battle server I chose took everything in the first three days and nobody's taken more than two farms from us since.

[Miasma]

So has anyone started bitching about Veteran Rank yet?

I don't like that the veteran areas are harder.  Breaks a basic video game rule that people are supposed to feel more powerful as they level up, not less.

[amiable]

So has anyone started bitching about Veteran Rank yet?

I don't like that the veteran areas are harder.  Breaks a basic video game rule that people are supposed to feel more powerful as they level up, not less.

I'm in the opposite camp.  I am enjoying the veteran content more because it is actually a bit more challenging.  I can still solo/duo a lot of the group mobs with my sword/board DK (lol shield bash, spell absorb, shield charge and dark talons).

I only went into PvP once and had a reasonably fun time zerging around.  I was decently successful in my first outing ganking enemies running from their spawn.  But yeah, do not engae groups of 1 or 2 who seem to be circling around an area, there are guaranteed to be 10-15 people cloaked and waiting for you.

[Samprimary]

I think the general consensus so far is still something along the lines of "There's such a great game hidden in this and it kills me that you have to work so hard to find it"

as well as, I'm guessing, crap like dupe crisis issues and other megabugs are going to keep the developers' time monopolized and class and skill retooling won't happen in the timeframe it needs to happen in.

During the time that class imbalance and ridiculous skill cheese (and zerg) remains only tentatively prodded at, people are going to get way tired of the state of the game. They'll love the singleplayer main campaign, talk up Cleese, and then unsub.

[Falconeer]

State of the Game Address

A lot of "Sorry everyone, we are combatting the issues!"

 

[Modern Angel]

I unsubbed. And I like it! I don't think there's anything unfun about it. I'll revisit it in the future. It's just going out of town for Easter for four days broke that rhythm an MMO needs to keep me invested. Then I came back and there's this big work thing blowing up plus final exams plus some activities with the kid.

So there it is. This weird thing where I like the game a lot (in fact, I think I was one of the first ones coming out of beta going "no no, it's actually pretty good") but I'm just not going to play it right now.

Plus, it weirdly made me miss GW2.

[Paelos]

State of the Game Address

A lot of "Sorry everyone, we are combatting the issues!"

 

It made me try to log in. Are the forums member only?

[Miasma]

They have far and away the worst official forums I have ever seen.  Ever.  I'm not talking about the users/moderators, it is the layout, format, registration, categories etc.  Just insane.  Like it was designed by a psychopath.

I tried to sign in but it doesn't find my account.  So I assume since it's so terrible it probably has its own login/password I have to create.  I try to create one and it wants an "Invitation" that does not exist.  I thought it was the worst ever just reading, I should have known it would get even worse trying to login.

Copied from SA:

"As it’s now two and a half weeks since we officially launched on April 4, I think it’s a good time to bring everyone up to date on The Elder Scrolls Online service, maintenance windows, and what we’re doing to add content, make the game better, and address some issues that are near and dear to the community.

First and foremost, please know that we are doing everything we can to combat the gold spammers and bots – especially ones that “camp” dungeon bosses – that you see in game. I play the game every day; I see them too, and yes, they drive me crazy. We have had a daily running battle with them ever since the game launched – moving them from global chat, to in-game email, to creating bogus guilds and inviting players – and we continue to take measures to keep them away from players, even when it isn’t always apparent that we are. Most of the battle has been on the back end of the game – we regularly ban accounts involved in spam and bot activity – our teams are working on better systems to identify those accounts and characters that are doing black market activities, and we’re also working on some game feature refinement to make it harder for them to acquire gold in the first place. Fighting black market activity like gold selling spam and farming bots is a marathon, not a sprint, but we will do whatever we can to reduce their impact on the game.

The scope of the black market activity accounts for up to 85% of Customer Service emails/calls. Because of this huge influx of contact relating to this one issue, our CS team has been slower to react to other problems than planned – our sincere apologies if you have been held up for a long period of time waiting for CS to respond to you. Again, our goal is to keep this activity away from you so you don’t have to contact Customer Service in the first place.

Also very visible was last week’s gold “duping” (duplication) bug – where players could manipulate stacks of items in their inventory to create copies. We fixed the problem and banned the accounts of the worst offenders And yes, we erroneously caught up some legitimate accounts in that ban, for which we apologize – all erroneously banned accounts were reinstated within about 8 hours. Contrary to some reports, exploitation of this bug did not result in destabilizing the ESO economy in any way. We did turn off guild banks to limit the spread of the problem, but that was only until we put up a new version of the game that fixed the exploit later that evening.

All of these fixes have resulted in several more maintenance periods than we planned for – we know that everyone wants to play the game and hates downtime – but please be aware that every time we take down the servers for maintenance, it is either to fix a problem or put up an update that makes the game better. We are working on shortening the length of maintenances, this will get better over time.

So, here’s the list of our more prominent fixes since launch, as well as info about ongoing support that we’re doing for ESO:

Fixed the bug where a small percentage of players lost their expansion bank slots.
Fixed quest-blocking bugs, especially ones in Coldharbour, that prevented players from completing either a main quest step, or the Coldharbour zone.
Fixed many other quest bugs not related to the above where items/NPCs didn’t spawn properly.
Fixed the Greenshade (Aldmeri Dominion zone) problem, which caused the zone to crash every few hours. This one was fixed on 4/4, but was a problem during early access.
Fixed two dupe issues: the above one involving stacked items, and another (on a much smaller scale) involving crafting hireling emails.
Put many back-end fixes and procedures in place to block black market gold farmer activity.

We still have much to do – there still other quest problems on our fix list, most of them involving the situation where they become “de-synched” from the zone and don’t spawn their items or NPCs properly. We are in process of putting up our first major update to the game on our Play Test Server (PTS), which includes many updates to the game, including class and weapon ability tweaks, content fixes, and updates to almost all game systems. It also contains our new end-game Adventure Zone, Craglorn, with Veteran content aimed at 4 and 12-man groups. So stay tuned for PTS patch notes for all the other fixes that we’ve been working on. This is a major update to the game, so it will be on PTS for at least a week or 10 days for testing before we take it live.

We’re working on fixing problems, we’re combatting black market gold farmers, and we have a hefty new patch coming shortly. ESO is already an awesome game, and it will only get better from here. Thanks for your patience and support, and I’ll see you in Tamriel. - Matt"

His dismissal of the dupe bug pissed me off.  It did not "result in destabilizing the economy" because there is no economy since the AH system sucks so much ass.  It's absolutely going to result in some PvP guilds having all their gank squads decked out in legendaries.

[Paelos]

D3 said the same thing, that they got the biggest offenders, no huge effect, blah blah blah. It was horseshit. The economy became completely unsalvagable because of it, and I believe it was the last nail in the coffin that forced them to remove the AH.

You can't handwave dupes like this in a MMO, and then in the same post say you are combating gold farmers. What?

[Signe]

I wish they had an AH system that sucked.  I wish they had any AH system at all!  I also like the game very much but I intend to cancel my sub, too.  :(

[Hawkbit]

Remember the good old days, when MMOs would have a rocky start and then throw free months at their subscribers as a retention mechanism?  That actually did a good job of making me stick around. 

[Paelos]

Remember the good old days, when MMOs would have a rocky start and then throw free months at their subscribers as a retention mechanism?  That actually did a good job of making me stick around. 

Yeah, that's not the strategy here. They are pulling as much front loaded cash as they can.

[Modern Angel]

I wish they had an AH system that sucked.  I wish they had any AH system at all!  I also like the game very much but I intend to cancel my sub, too.  :(

It's weird, right? It's just not bad.

Here's my counter-intuitive take: for all that people said they wanted it to feel like Elder Scrolls, it feels too much like Elder Scrolls. For all the bleating about it not feeling like TES, I totally think it does, particularly Oblivion/Skyrim TES with its quest markers and every marked location having a story to follow. So you start wondering why you're not playing a single player Elder Scrolls game, since those didn't have to make concessions to accommodate large masses of players.

I bet the PvP might've squeezed a month out of me. That 90 days is disastrous. If you have a one sided battle, like mine was, there's no way you can see what it's about before your free month is up.

[Simond]

Remember the good old days, when MMOs would have a rocky start and then throw free months at their subscribers as a retention mechanism?  That actually did a good job of making me stick around. 

Yeah, that's not the strategy here. They are pulling as much front loaded cash as they can.

And then they get to do it all over again next quarter!

[tmp]

They have far and away the worst official forums I have ever seen.  Ever.  I'm not talking about the users/moderators, it is the layout, format, registration, categories etc.  Just insane.  Like it was designed by a psychopath.

Probably made by the guy in charge of making their UIs, in his spare time

[satael]

The dialogue on the npcs in Hollow City does not update after finishing the main quest which was a big letdown for me as I'd come to expect something more from this game (I admit I expected too much). I really can't see myself subbing for too long especially since the pvp (opposition) seems a bit lacklustre at the moment (and the fact that the opponents can't see what guild you represent does take some of the fun out of it)

[Lucas]

Nicely detailed review on Gamespot:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-elder-scrolls-online-review/1900-6415741/

[Draegan]

Love the game. Best class system around imo. But the reason I'm unsubbing is because of the ability lag, weapon swap lag and just the general unresponsive Ness of combat. It's hard to pull of decent combos.

[Miasma]

It's going to be very interesting over the next week as we see how many people are lost to the subscription kicking in.  Especially since actual guild features like the bank and auction house stop allowing deposits/new auctions if you dip below ten and fifty people respectively.  I am also going to assume they didn't test that well and that entire guild banks/AH's will be bugged.  Maybe even their billing run.

I like the quests so I enjoy doing the other factions' zones but I might be in the minority there.  The people in veteran ranks now probably like playing a lot so they will be fine with it but when most people get there in another month or two (if they stay that long) they are going to feel like they hit a brick wall at how slow it is.

I need to get all these quests done before something bad happens.

[Samprimary]

This is one of those scenarios that desperately needs informal anecdotal analysis, alongside queries to guilds and any form of player census that can be managed.

Because, knowing that Paelos has only a remotely nonzero possibility of being wrong about the box sales pump&dump explanation, zenimax is going to be extremely cagey or possibly completely opaque in terms of providing server population numbers and subscription numbers.

[Signe]

I really love the quests and some other things but I totally agree with the reviewer above.  I try, but can't, find any reason to group and this bothers me even though I enjoy playing MMOs solo the majority of the time.  It's nearly everything about being in a group that I don't like in ESO.  Some people like to explore dungeons, some people want to rush through;  I like to read, most people don't etc.  I suppose if you can find three very like minded people who enjoy exactly the same sorts of things you do, it would be great.  So when does THAT ever happen?