The Elder Scrolls Online

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, but without them why would anyone remain playing?  Achievers use those as a "this is worth it" currency, even if they are meaningless.

[Miasma]

Hehe here's a good one.  So they put in a hotfix to undo the bug where all mobs were 100% stronger than they were supposed to be right?  People go out and try again and still get annihilated if they are solo.  Turns out the fix doesn't affect any of the mobs that have already spawned.  You have to kill them first (which you can't do solo) and then only after they respawn will it be fixed.  So the whole weekend if you were trying to quest you might meet mobs that were normal because a group killed them but then if you go off the beaten path you will meet mobs that are still buffed and die.

An interesting mitigation to this nonsense is that they, predictably, missed several ways to get far more xp than they probably intended in the new content, so most people who were in the veteran zones just went there and ground out levels much more quickly than possible normally.

[KallDrexx]

Can't they just ... reboot the servers....

lol

[Simond]

Shutting them down would probably be a better idea at this point.

[Miasma]

Shutting them down would probably be a better idea at this point.

No net yet I still have four zones of quests to get through!

They are rebooting the servers today.  They have also started patching out the methods where people were getting very good xp by grinding certain aspects of the new content.  I went from VR7 to VR11 in a couple days even though I didn't really grind much on the second.  To put that in perspective it took me probably three weeks to get from VR1 to VR7 via questing.  Current max is VR12 so I really hope there will still be a way to grind that out because then I can go craft my legendary armor making the last four zones I want to quest through less tedious from a mob killing perspective.

I think I've decided to just go down with this ship.  All mmos suck so why not just stick with a pretty one where I've already done a bunch of stuff.  Embrace the sunken cost fallacy.  Out of 13 people in our small family guild (which I am unfortunately the guild leader for since all of us know how much it doing it sucks and I drew the short straw) it's only me and one other person who still log in much.  The other person is from f13 who hasn't posted in three years so I don't really know them :).

Edit: Actually now that I think of it if any of you are quiting anyways could you do me a favor and join my guild so we can try to keep bank access (you need 10 people but so far unsubscribed people still count).  I think you can invite offline so just send an ingame mail to @Stopgap, or PM me here.

[Fordel]

Hehe here's a good one.  So they put in a hotfix to undo the bug where all mobs were 100% stronger than they were supposed to be right?  People go out and try again and still get annihilated if they are solo.  Turns out the fix doesn't affect any of the mobs that have already spawned.  You have to kill them first (which you can't do solo) and then only after they respawn will it be fixed.  So the whole weekend if you were trying to quest you might meet mobs that were normal because a group killed them but then if you go off the beaten path you will meet mobs that are still buffed and die.

An interesting mitigation to this nonsense is that they, predictably, missed several ways to get far more xp than they probably intended in the new content, so most people who were in the veteran zones just went there and ground out levels much more quickly than possible normally.

I sort of like that bug, where the more remote monsters are lethal. Stray off the beaten path will you! 

Reminds me of when in DaoC, every Hib learned the importance of a the presence of a letter H in Pooka's. 

[Samprimary]

I think I've decided to just go down with this ship.

Patch Notes 6/1 — Deck chair arrangement on the lito and quarter decks has been reoptimized. Passengers complaining of enhancing degree of tilt will find that the positioning of the chair legs allows for more stable grip along the wooden planks.

[Miasma]

Got max level and crafted my nice set of armor.  It was kind of disappointing.  I wear heavy armor (more on that next) and like two styles the most - Breton and Daedric.  They changed all the colors with the craglorn patch (most of the veteran armor was all plain before that since they obviously ran out of time to dye it) and my Breton set has this weird blotchyness all over and a color I don't much care for.  The Daedric was looking okay until I upgraded it to purple (epic) quality, then half of it took on this ugly flesh tone.

Also found out that to upgrade it to legendary takes eight very expensive components per piece instead of the five I was expecting.

I won't bore you with a detailed explanation of the mechanics but as an added let down currently the best armor in the game is light (cloth).  If you want to min/max you wear light armor, in any role.  Tanks should wear light, dps should wear light and of course casters should wear light.  I don't want to wear light since I am a melee focused knight so I'm not going to, even though it will make things more difficult for me.

In PvP if you aren't in the veteran ranks you get boosted to level 50, which is good idea but they are still at a pretty big disadvantage to maxed out veterans.  Now they made it even worse by making all of the npcs in PvP veteran rank 5, they used to be level 50.  The difference between a level 50 player and a vr5 player is moderate but mobs get hugely more powerful along that same level range.  So now you basically have to be a veteran to kill the PvE mobs in the PvP zone.  There is no way to gain xp in PvP that wouldn't take years of playing to get that high.  They also bugged an ability that makes all siege weapons useless.

The veteran rank zones are empty as everyone tries to grind out xp in craglorn before they shut down the best methods.  They stopped one method of farming xp by intentionally bugging a dungeon boss...  Now when he spawns he just unspawns a few seconds later.

I don't know if I should keep posting about this game's wacky missteps or just let this thread die, only to be resurrected with the free to play announcement at some point in the future.

[Paelos]

No, if you're involved keep us updated. It's good information.

Why is light armor the best armor for tanks? Are they tanking in robes? How did that work out mechanically?

[Draegan]

It's all about mana regeneration. You can easily cap out in armor/magic resist through class abilities. For a game that has a pretty awesome class system, their stat system is shit.

[Miasma]

What Draegan said.  Here is the anti tl;dr version, it's complicated. Just badly thought out mechanics and gear design basically.

They use softcaps for almost all stats, including armor.  It gets a little easier to reach these soft caps each level.  At max level you get purple drops and are willing to spend money on good enchants for that gear.  Most classes also have some sort of "buff your armor and spell resist for twenty seconds" type ability.  The only stat benefit heavy armor has is higher armor rating.  But due to any combination of the above it is possible to hit (or get get close enough to) the armor softcap by wearing light - either you buff yourself with your resist spell or you enchant your gear with +armor.  Anyone in the party can also throw down a circle that gives a big boost to armor.

Everyone has two resource pools, magicka and stamina.  Your class abilities use magicka, most weapon abilities use stamina (staffs don't).  All magicka based abilities do more damage than weapon abilities, this is just the way they designed it.  I imagine they wanted your class defining skills to be better than a weapon which anyone can use.  Tanks need to reserve their stamina to block with, to roll out of the way and to interrupt so they shouldn't really be burning it on doing damage. 

There is no concept of strength agility and so on, the only stat diffence between light, medium and heavy is the amount of armor on each.  You can buy passive skills for each type of armor and that's what makes them different.  Light's skills are great and magicka based.  Big reduction in costs, faster regen, makes class abilities hit harder.  Heavy armor passives suck.  The bonuses add more armor (which is probably already capped), gives a pathetic increase to your white damage and a tiny increase to healing received.  One of light's passives even increases spell resist four times stronger than heavy's passive and most boss damage counts as spell.

And then for dps, since magicka does more damage than stamina, they can do more damage if they have a lot of magicka to spend.  So even though there is a medium armor line with crit and stamina bonuses they get more out of light armor because they can spam their class abilities.

[Bhazrak]

Grats on V12. It's hard for me to muster the will to grind out the quick leveling via Craglorn. My friend's are pretty much gone once Wildstar's released, so I think I may just go through the rest of the VR Ebonheart Pact zones and see how I feel after that.

Also, I remember hearing that heavy armor was going to get a new passive that increased ultimate gain, but I'm still not sure if that would make it more worthwhile than using light. I still use heavy since I solo most of the time and like the looks of it more.

[koro]

Wasn't "light armor is as strong as heavy armor and has fewer penalties" a solved problem back in Oblivion nearly a decade ago?

[Samprimary]

Also, I remember hearing that heavy armor was going to get a new passive that increased ultimate gain, but I'm still not sure if that would make it more worthwhile than using light. I still use heavy since I solo most of the time and like the looks of it more.

no appearance tabs?

[amiable]

I've been tanking trials (raids) and 5 piece heavy armor is useful there because of the block reduction, as a tank you will be blocking a lot.

[Nebu]

no appearance tabs?

This is a game with no auction house and a dev team that managed to erase a bunch of toons with no way to restore them.  Now you want appearance tabs?

[Miasma]

There are vague promises of a dye system so we can change the horrible color at some point in the distant future.

Certainly no appearance tab.  There is a 'disguise' item that you are supposed to use for quests but some people intentionally keep the disguise and leave the quest incomplete.

There are nine tiers of armor, each race has a different stlye but the last five tiers of each race have the exact same graphic and only differ by color.

[Miasma]

It's a new game and there are still places where your character can get stuck in the geometry right?  So you have to use the /stuck command to kill yourself and go back to the nearest safe area.

Using /stuck now costs gold .  If you get stuck in the geometry you have to pay for the privilege of killing yourself.  Theory is the hordes of bots that the game is plagued with in low level zones (because they didn't bother to put in any systems to combat them) was using /stuck to bot faster.

[Nebu]

Using /stuck now costs gold .  If you get stuck in the geometry you have to pay for the privilege of killing yourself.  Theory is the hordes of bots that the game is plagued with in low level zones (because they didn't bother to put in any systems to combat them) was using /stuck to bot faster.

ESO is the gift that keeps on giving.   

[Spiff]

you have to pay for the privilege of killing yourself.

I haven't had this much schadenfreude reading about a game since AoC, thanks  

[Paelos]

It's a new game and there are still places where your character can get stuck in the geometry right?  So you have to use the /stuck command to kill yourself and go back to the nearest safe area.

Using /stuck now costs gold .  If you get stuck in the geometry you have to pay for the privilege of killing yourself.  Theory is the hordes of bots that the game is plagued with in low level zones (because they didn't bother to put in any systems to combat them) was using /stuck to bot faster.

That's amazing. This is why you shouldn't stop posting about this game.

[01101010]

you have to pay for the privilege of killing yourself.

I haven't had this much schadenfreude reading about a game since AoC, thanks  

This. I was curious to play this at some point but thought better of it. I will give it a go when it is F2P but I doubt I will play for very long.

[Venkman]

I am far more interested in the comments from people willing to slog through this mess than I ever was about the game itself. At least they can climb high brand awareness*

* Assuming they don't mind the quality of that awareness 

[Goreschach]

This is why we still bother to even have the mmog forum.

[Nebu]

This is why we still bother to even have the mmog forum.

It's making me glad that I decided to pass on ESO in favor of Wildstar.  Wildstar has its own problems, but nothing even close to what I saw in this game.

[Draegan]

I played for a few weeks. I enjoyed the solo play and the class system. I got my money's worth I think.

[Samprimary]

no appearance tabs?

This is a game with no auction house and a dev team that managed to erase a bunch of toons with no way to restore them.  Now you want appearance tabs?

yes. i .. i .. do. i want a future where people who have been given seven years and $asmallcountry'sGDP to make a video game knows the super basic things you have to have in those types of video games for those video games to succeed. i want a world where competency in MMO making is not some sort of Star League lostech buried in the darkest recesses of the faraway worm-eaten land of Azeroth and unknown to modern times — bemoaned as a fairytale and nary but whispered about in dark taverns. The sheriff of Nottingham is back again going "oy, ay? Stuck in the geometry are ye? That'll be five pence, working as intended." and there's no robin hoooooood

[Yegolev]

I'm on board with the Protoss.

[Paelos]

I just want them to realize this was awful, shut the whole thing down, retool it and release it simultaneously with the console release.

Then I win $20.

[Miasma]

Out of curiosity when FFIXVIXVII whatever did that was there a character wipe or were people who had a bunch of levels and gold allowed to retain it after the re-launch?

Because that's what this game needs.  Shut it down, fix the core systems, fix the bugs, add the critical systems that are missing and then try again in another year.  The zones, quests, atmosphere, characters and dialogue are amazing but you have to put with seven different layers of shit while trying to enjoy them.

[koro]

There were no character wipes with FFXIV, they retained their class levels, and they got to keep at least a certain amount of money with the relaunch.

[tazelbain]

Were they ever able to kill that ladybug?

[Rendakor]

Out of curiosity when FFIXVIXVII whatever did that was there a character wipe or were people who had a bunch of levels and gold allowed to retain it after the re-launch?

Because that's what this game needs.  Shut it down, fix the core systems, fix the bugs, add the critical systems that are missing and then try again in another year.  The zones, quests, atmosphere, characters and dialogue are amazing but you have to put with seven different layers of shit while trying to enjoy them.

There were two sets of servers for FFXIV:ARR's launch: legacy servers which let people keep their old toons, and non-legacy servers so people could rush to cap in a fresh environment.

[Paelos]

I think shutting this down and starting over is the best thing for the game.



And my wallet.

[Simond]

This is why we still bother to even have the mmog forum.

It's making me glad that I decided to pass on ESO in favor of Wildstar.  Wildstar has its own problems, but nothing even close to what I saw in this game.

Wildstar's going to be the opposite of this. TESO was an obvious trainwreck waiting to happen and the only surprise was that fake-Zenimax managed to scrape it into even vaguely almost-viable status later in the beta. Wildstar's polished like nothing outside of Blizzard, but they've got some really dumb design decisions (difficulty wall, TBC-like attunement chains, grind AAs for gear, and so on) hidden away in the tall grass.