QFT.
It doesn’t help though that many players neglect to have a basic amount of health going into a lot of the PvE content. When I was running dungeons to level up my undaunted points/skill lines I quickly learned that my glass cannon pvp build was not going to work especially against most of the bosses. You needed about 18k health to avoid most one shots if you had a decent healer. In my case being a vampire meant some bosses were really tricky if they had fire attacks.
The nice thing about the combat system is that you could learn the tells i.e. boss jumps or raises hand and then block or dodge roll as needed. Jumping out of the big red circles was always a good idea too.
ESO just became the best MMO of 2015, according to MMORPG.com - http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/10383/page/2; Runners up are WildStar, Guild Wars 2, SWTOR and FFXIV.
Daagar
3465
Actually, thanks for pointing this out. I misread the post a few above and thought it was free weekend for xbox only.
Rock8man
3467
I played some more.
I’m simply amazed that while exploring the area outside the city, there seem to be quests everywhere. Every square inch is packed with quests. Even more so than Oblivion or Skyrim. I found a dungeon of sorts, and explored it, and at the end there was a letter which started a quest. Then I was just going across a grassy field to get to a quest and on the way I found 3 other quests. And when I finished one of them, it lead to another quest. And a lot of these are the type of quests you find in single player Elder Scrolls. So I’m kind of impressed. It’s almost like a Bethesda game, even though it’s by a different studio.
Morrowind is absolutely in the game, you just don’t get to go there because you’re in the wrong faction. I believe same goes for Skyrim. (At least until Veteran Ranks.)
Ultrazen
3469
ESO is great in that way, it’s totally possible to just take off in a direction and stumble onto to stuff. The quality and depth of a lot of the quests are pretty surprising as well, especially given how many of them there are. I’ve found so many quests that actually have fairly engaging story lines, there are a lot of ‘mini epics’ going on in that game world. The quests also tend to have pretty complex story lines, even the ones that do involve gathering up foozles.
Great game. The only thing for me that keeps this from being 100%, is the slightly generic feel that characters have art direction wise. I’ve always hated their character art, and loved the world art, this game seems to have that same formula for me. Characters and gear always just seem boring, but the world building, wow.
Rock8man
3470
The art direction is definitely off. I can’t put my finger on why exactly it is, but the game doesn’t look as good as Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Something about their art and world is a bit different from those other games. But I can’t figure out what.
Looks like no more ESO for me. Maybe I logged out in a bad place last night, but whenever I try to play today, I reach the character selection screen and the game crashes before it can even show me the character. Every time. Oh well.
Razgon
3472
Could be server issues - They have an open weekend, and its the day with most people playing. Don’t give up - its a great game to have casual fun in!
If it was server issues, I would think they’d have a more graceful way to handle it, like an error message. Not a crash to the desktop. Well, Xbox Dashboard. Same thing. I guess I’ll try it again later, but I doubt I can get out of this loop of loading and then crashing, since I can’t even get far enough to delete that character, if that’s where the problem is.
Edit: Turns out you were right. Internet search reveals that crashing to the desktop is very common in this game when they are connection issues. I tried again and got in.
Played some more yesterday and this morning. It’s a nice game for an MMO. As someone who dislikes MMO conventions and gameplay, I must say that this game does an admirable job of avoiding a lot of them. Quests aren’t just “go collect 12 hides”, but actually story based and quite okay. Not super interesting, but not boring. Combat is definitely more than just the stereotypical “go to an enemy that cons a certain color and engage autoattack if you’re in solo play, or assume your set role where you do the same thing over and over if you’re in a group.” It’s not too much beyond that, but it helps that you can block attacks and interrupt attacks, and cast spells and use stamina moves to interrupt.
With that said, it still doesn’t go far enough. The combat still doesn’t feel as skill-based as in single player games from Elder Scrolls. It still feels more level-based. Now, if the reason for that is that single player Elder scrolls game tend to make you fight things that are close to your level, then maybe that’s the reason, I’m not sure. And exploration, while nice, doesn’t feel as rewarding as in games like Skyrim or Morrowind. There’s a certain blandness to the world in all three of the starting town that I can’t explain. It just doesn’t feel as full of beauty as those other games.
Still, I’m pretty appreciative that they had this free weekend. It was nice to be able to get a glimpse at areas of Tamriel in three starting areas, all three places and corners of the world that I hadn’t seen before in Elder Scrolls games.
The combat system really shines in PvP. That said gear and numbers still rule the day and “skill” is constrained by those as well as lag. Lag is probably the biggest factor right now. But the difference between a player who has just started playing (even when well geared and leveled) and a veteran player is pretty big. Once they figure out the system (and most do) then the playing field levels a lot.
And that’s where the combat system can run into problems as well. Two really good players with meta-ish builds can drag on a fight forever to the point of boredom unless one makes a big big mistake. But since it’s an open world environment unless you are off dueling in a remote location, you usually have a limited amount of time before the combat parameters change i.e. somebody else shows up.
So it’s not a perfect system by any means. Sorcs for example if played well are OP even with a long trail of nerfs that have attempted to tame it. The only saving grace is that it’s a pretty hard class to play well so a bad sorc is generally no problem. Same goes for night blades. It seems like everybody is a night blade in Cryodiil nowadays. Luckily they are very squishy especially when not played well.
So it can be a lot of fun and there is a lot of variety to how you can approach the combat system.
Which faction gets Morrowind?
KevinC
3477
Ebonheart Pact. Anyone can get access to other faction areas once they hit L50 and complete the main story, though.
If you just picked this up, or came back like me, here is a PSA warning:
Patch Notes will say the Dungeon Party Finder Tool works now, it does, but using it is a TRAP if non veteran levels. Make groups via shout.
Why? You get scaled up. Tanks are hosed, so if tank is not highest level you will likely fail. It scales up poorly, so if a wide level range present, you will likely fail. Since most already playing know this your queue times will also be very long. Oh, and if you are a competent low level player and another dies, you can’t rez them using a soul gem, as yours will all be to low. Thanks scaling!
I’ve had pretty good experiences with the LFG scaling, but that’s as a vet player who has end up running some regular dungeons with non-vets. Generally if you’re 30-40+ and have unlocked most of your critical skills you should be fine.
What is important too is that your gear is current to your level, since I believe the scaling takes that into account. In the earlier levels when I quest, I usually depended on the miscellaneous quest rewards which end up being 5+ levels out of date and giving mismatched stats, but wearing something like that will end up giving you poor scaling numbers via LFG.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
And for someone who just started, is level 12 (recommended for first set of dungeons via UI) you will be slaughtered, and your group will bail on the run. Hence my PSA for new, newly returning players.
Oghier
3481
I updated and logged in yesterday for the first time in six months. It took me an hour to reconfigure my UI and addons, then I popped into Orsinium. It’s fantastic so far. I was looking for a while to solo my way back to competence, and this expansion appears to be exactly what I wanted.
It’s amazing how much muscle memory fades. As a PvP-primary player, I’m not popping back into Cyrodiil until I’ve got my V16 gearset complete and my fingers start punching reasonably appropriate buttons again. Happily, I have a heap of free time from now until mid-January :)
If anyone is looking for a partner for stuff, I’m wandering Wrothgar in a goblin morph costume (@oghier, US, Aldmeri D).
Zenimax Online has closed the Elder Scrolls Online customer service office in Ireland. 300 jobs lost.
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Shitty time to layoff 300 people. Not that there’s ever a great time, but yuck.
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300 people worked CS for ESO in Ireland? Why?
