Razgon
3503
Merry Christmas to you as well, Mr Instant0!
Lots of new details on the Thieves Guild DLC plus release date (PTS next week)
Thieves Guild Info
Supposedly some big PvP changes (hopefully addressing the prime time lag).
Rumors of big skill changes as well. I for one hope they don’t go overboard and reinvent everything again…it’s happened twice at 6 month intervals. I almost quit last time because of the 50% damage reduction in PvP.
Tried coming back to this last night after an 8 month leave of absence. Discovered that they had retooled skills at some point in that timeframe, so first thing it asked me to do was go through and assign all my skill points over again. Shit. I haven’t played the game in months. I can’t remember what lines I was improving, or what my strategy was with skills. Hell, I’m not even sure which ones are good and which ones are a waste. I tried to hack my way through it and ended up still having a dozen points left after taking everything I thought I remembered having and some stuff I didn’t recall ever seeing. I must have screwed up, because I started doing my active quest and the first boss mob I came across handed me my ass in seconds when I should have been able to defeat it without much problem.
I guess if I want to come back I’ll need to go do a bunch of skills and character build research first. I probably just won’t go back. Despite the fact that I absolutely loved ESO for months when I started playing it, the magic is gone when I have to come back and do two nights of character maintenance and hours of research just to pick up where I left off.
I just starting playing this in earnest my own self, and I am loving it.
I have this issue every time I try to come back to a game I left off of months ago. My enthusiasm to try it again ebbs as I get snarled in retooling. What I often do is start a new character to get the hang of how things are before I try to revive my existing characters. Of course, that’s not always either feasible or desirable.
The falling in love stage is really nice and there is certainly a lot of content to enjoy. But eventually that will get stale. At least it did for me. The latest DLC called Orsinium I went through perfunctorily just to the grab skill points. The PvP was what kept me subscribing and playing.
But speaking of losing the magic. I am heart broken myself. I’ve been playing since one of the last couple of beta weekends in 2014. I’ve played just one character the whole time. A magicka melee Khajiit night blade. I almost strictly just pvp and having spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours playing solo pvp without a group, I managed to claw my way to Alliance Rank 33. My last kill count was 50K+ kills with a .42 killing blow rating.
I survived the change to 1.6 and even soldiered on when the IC DLC nerfed damage an extra 30% and changed the “feel” of pvp significantly. The growing lag during prime time since then was also a huge problem but I always told myself it would get better eventually. Top people were supposedly working on it.
The irony that it is the Thieve’s Guild DLC and it’s changes to stealth and invisibility that put the final nail in the coffin for me is so perverse that I am still a bit shell shocked. It’s not even the minor nerf to cloak but rather the buffing of a skill called mage light that was the last straw. There are already dozens of ways to squish a night blade but none of them currently disable the cloak skill completely…until now. No other skill in the game can be disabled by your opponent. You can’t even use it to activate passives. I could QQ all night about this but it’s apparent from the devs silence on this that their combat team has a different approach to tactical invisibility in combat in mind for the game.
Well, it was simply beautiful while it lasted. I will miss you Cyrodiil and ESO.
Oghier
3510
Yep. I’ve never seen an MMO with such extreme, guardrail-to-guardrail balancing. Anything considered overpowered is not likely to be reduced in strength so much as utterly destroyed. The decisionmaking of their Combat & Mechanics team has been a mystery to me since launch, especially with regard to Cyrodiil.
Between that and the intractable lag in Cyrodiil, I don’t play anymore, either.
For the two year anniversary of ESO, everyone (essentially) is getting a 100% XP gained buff for the next week.
I haven’t been to PvP-land lately, but I haven’t heard much about the cloak nerf since Thieves Guild DLC went live. I guess the reduction from 5 to 3 seconds of cloak lockout made a difference? Or is the Vicious Death set overshadowing everything?
I have been following the forums and have heard from some friends the the cloak changes were not as bad as people thought but they are still annoying…especially the skill lockout from inner light. Old problems like cloak breaking from single target attacks seem to be back somewhat. I’ve been keeping my eye on the game because I did love it so much and I do miss the PvP. The lag though still seems to be pretty bad during prime time. That wasn’t a huge issue for me since I tended to play at all different hours. I’m hoping the can set their house in order and get things under control. The huge shifts just were too much for me. Which brings us to VD aka Vicious Death.
VD seems to have really not been thought out very well. For those who don’t follow the game closely, VD is an item set that causes a player to explode for massive damage when killed by another player. The idea was to try and discourage zerg blobs and stack on crown groups. But what you have now apparently is a cheesy mad bomber craze with players charging in from stealth and popping burst skills like Proximity Det and Soul Tether. Proxy Det used to be very hard to acquire because it was an alliance rank 10 skill. They lowered the Alliance Rank points needed to hit rank 10 significantly so now everybody is running around with it. Used to take months to unlock instead of a week or so.
Ironically I quit the game just when magicka nb’s somehow (probably accidently) got a huge cheese boost. I hated using proxy det myself but was forced to because magicka nb had really lost any burst. Now apparently it’s a FOTM suicide bomber which just doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Maybe just maybe Dark Brotherhood will fix everything. I hope so.
A quick noob question! I just picked this up (Imperial Edition was $16 on GMG) and started out as a Nord Dragonknight. As I level I’m just kind of slapping points where I figure they’ll be useful and picking up skills that sound fun. Is there an easy way to respec down the road so that I’m not gimping myself or should I go grab a build online and start new now and follow it all the way up?
Respec is really easy and relatively cheap. You just go to your faction’s main city…for EP it is Mournhold. The main building has 3 shrines. You can pay gold to respec your skill points (all of them or just your morphs) as well as your attributes. Attributes was something like 3k for all 65 points at max level VR 14. The skill points cost something like 100 gold per point but don’t qoute me on that.
The short of it is that the system is very flexible and you can remake your character with ease. i.e. switch from magicka to stamina, try out unusual skill morphs and combos.
Cool thanks Vic. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t prohibitively locked in to my early “mess around and try stuff” phase decisions.
np. “mess around and try stuff” is what kept me playing this game so long even though I only ever played the same character. The 5 skills per bar and 2 bar limit really makes for some agonizing decisions. Trying to synergize your limited skill choices with your gear and play style was always such a fun challenge.
KevinC
3517
Just curious, Vic, do you have any interest in similar style PVP MMOs coming down the pipe, such as Camelot Unchained or Crowfall?
Hehe. Funny you should mention that. Yeah, I signed up recently as a builder for Camelot Unchained. It looks very promising since it seems to be built around PvP. I don’t think I will dip my toe in until really late in the beta though.
I haven’t given up hope on ESO either. Don’t mean to be overly negative about it. It has a great combat system and I have had some awesome times playing it.
KevinC
3519
That’s awesome. I backed both Camelot and Crowfall back in the day as both seemed to be right up my alley. I’m with you, though, I plan to wait until they’ve matured a bit before really giving them a shot.
ESO was close but it just didn’t quite do it for me, at least not as a long-term game. It sounds like you’re mostly a solo person in ESO, but if you ever want some company in Camelot in the future, shoot me a PM!
Hey yes thanks for the offer! I tend to play a solo glass cannon stealther built around a quick burst and then an annoying evasion and escape routine if the burst fails (which it often does lol). But I could be a good scout for a group or guild.
Up to level 9 on my Nord Dragonknight and have to say I’m really enjoying the world so far. Combat is pretty fun and each ability really tends to bring something new to the equation. I really like how they let you mod your abilities to customize out your build.
So far the only thing that’s kind of confusing me is the tradeskill system. Does anyone have a good link to how things are supposed to work? Between crafting, deconstructing, researching etc it feels a bit overwhelming.
Deltia has some nice guides. Here is a link to his Blacksmithing guide
Basically, you want to level these crafting lines up as you level from 1-50. Many players make special alts just to level and mule/collect hireling resources. This doesn’t work as well nowadays since resource gathering in the DLC zones is scaled to your characters level. So if you want the high level materials you need to be VR 14 and having blacksmithing maxed out at 50 will not help you.
I only have one character but I’ve got almost 300 skill points so I can keep the crafting skill lines open on whatever I need and still have enough points to fill out my build quite comfortably. I got bored with some lines like provisioning and just kept the points that gave me longer food/drink durations and bought the drinks that I needed from guild scores. Enchanting is the hardest skill to level but with enough gold you can do it in a day or if you have a partner to swap runes with it is even easier.
You can level them up by deconstructing the junk gear you get as you explore. You will also need to find or buy motifs that determine the styles that you can craft in. The other big to do item is to research the “traits” that go on the gear. You do this by finding or buying an item that has the trait that you want to research and then “consume” it from your research tab. The item is destroyed but after the research period is complete you can now craft that trait on that item type i.e. a gauntlet or a sword or a jerkin. Crafted item sets often require that you first know a certain number of traits before you can craft a particular piece. High level sets that require 9 traits that take months to research.
Having Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking at 50 will let you make your own crafted gear and not have to hassle with finding somebody to do it. If you are a long term player this can be nice otherwise you can just pay the gold to a high level crafter or buy dropped sets off of guild stores. Either way can work.
