Well, obviously it all depends what you want to get out of the game. I couldn’t be bothered to craft anything and there is SOOO much content included in the base game already, that the subscription zones are irrelevant.
I’ve sunk 260 hours into this game, which is a HUGE time investment for me (I’m not used to playing grindy MMOs), but I’m guessing that would still classify me as a “beginner” player in this scene.
Basically the levelling is soooo slow that it might as well not exist for me. While fighting you have 2x5 active action skills that you can use to fight and these level initially before quickly remaining flat for the rest of the game. After that you get a dripfeed of points to increase a miniscule 1% growth in one 72 possible stats. So if you’re not willing to invest at least a magnitude of my 260 hours, you might as well ignore it and just run around hitting things.
So, I don’t think the monthly fee is necessary and the basic game is enough to play. Once you’ve played all the initial maps (after 150 hours?), you might consider an expansion pack to get a few pretty new maps to run around in. If you’ve finally covered all of those, you could consider the subscription stuff…
The story content really is quite good. As above, crafting bag is a huge quality of life bonus, but if you’re not crafting not all that necessary. If you just want to get the base game and play the story content, there is oodles of quality fully voiced stuff to do and experience.
The levelling is fine, but a little hard to grok initially, since you are always scaled to ‘max’ level. What this means in practice is that you can go everywhere and do everything (good), but you need to keep an eye on your gear and make sure it is generally pretty close to your character level, otherwise you outlevel it and do less damage (your weapon damage goes down the more outlevelled you become, which is initially counter-intuitive).
Great game, I have 450 hours and one level 50 CP100 toon, all solo and barely scratched the surface of base content, let alone all the expansions up to Eslweyr.
I don’t get why people say ‘It’s not Skyrim’. I think if you liked Skyrim, then you’ll like ESO. Combat is a little bit MMO’y in that it doesn’t feel weighty, but it’s more interesting, I think, than GW2. Only general complaint I’d have is that it is mechanically pretty DOT heavy.
Oh yeah, and if you get it, it will probably just plonk you down with not a lot of direction on how to start the actual original story content. Just google how to start the main quest and get on your way - that will begin to take you through various zones and stuff, though you can just as freely head out and explore.
Thanks for the tip. The game does have a lot of Skyrim feel to it at the graphic level and that’s a good think. Skyrim (and therefore ESO), is beautiful. If they don’t have Online tagged to the title, I wouldn’t think that this is a MMO game, granted, my MMO experience is limited to Wow. There are tons of things to read, lots of lore, which is what I like from Skyrim too and yes, sometimes it is just too much especially if you are in a party with friends and they just want to get the things done. I will have to find out if I can read those notes, scrolls and books again in my quite time.
I just completed one random quest - about this merchant and his brother who tried to convert prisoners into some stone workers in a mine - and this random quest turned out pretty long! I am glad it wasn’t a grinding game (farm 10 items in this location) like Wow and if all the quests are tied together in a nice story like this one is, I will want to spend more time on this game. Looking forward to an enjoyable game during this Covid-19 work/play from home.
The John Cleese voice work is worth the price of the game on its own. ESO is great if played as a single player RPG, great story, great voice acting, and a lot of freedom. You can take off running in any direction and find something to do if that’s what you enjoy, or just follow the main story.
Crafting is pretty unnecessary, but if you do want to do it, you absolutely need the crafting bag or your inventory will be crammed full of crafting resources at all times. There’s definitely a ton of game to get through in the base game, but FWIW, the DLC zones (and the expansion Chapters) are a big step up in quality of design and writing. Which isn’t to say I don’t like the base game zones - they’re still decent. You can just tell they’ve figured some shit out for the later content that they had not to begin with.
Oh, just a tip: you can just talk to the NPCs the quests tell you to talk to and be fine. But there will be a bunch of other NPCs around, and they will all have things to say, and if they have anything to do with the quest they will probably have different dialogue every single step of the quest. It’s kind of absurd how much writing they’ve put into these things. They also not infrequently have little voice-acted interactions after quest completions and similar.
I’m onto another random quest, or so I thought - and this one is about accompanying this one guy into his ancestral tomb to talk to his Living God. There’s just too many names floating around and I’m already lost at who’s who. I have a feeling this “random” quest is actually the main quest as there’s a prophecy about an Outlander (me) who’s here to save the world. Unfortunately I’m just at Level 5 and the vampires in the ancestral tomb is too powerful for me. I’ll have to LFG and do it together. But I’m indeed impressed that there’s so much spoken dialogue. No wonder this game is eating my HDD!
You should be able to solo pretty much everything except the public dungeons and the world bosses (skull and crossbones icon on the map), but yeah, you need a few levels under your belt to get some skills unlocked and rotations going. You’ll also have to avoid pulling too many mobs at once until you are pretty confident you can take the damage.
It’s important to choose a main stat. Your toon will be either magika or stamina based and use magika and stamina skills, respectively and your damage is scaled off that. A magika toon using magika skills scales damage based on magika stat. You can put a few points into health as you see fit, but dump into your primary.
Watch a quick yt on weaving and basic combat mechanics, particularly dodging, blocking and interrupts. Weaving is the art of alternating light attacks with skills. Basically due to animation cancelling, the optimum way to dps is to weave light attacks between skills. Skill1, light attack , skill2, light attack, skill3, light attack, repeat, etc. Throw in a heavy attack to restore stamina/magika as required until you have some sustain.
There is a main story line, zone story lines and guild story lines. They can be differentiated from normal quests as they will have a different quest giver icon and map markers. If you check your quest log you’ll probably notice the icon differences.
Did you start with the Cold Harbour main quest? I started playing with the Elsweyr expansion and that just dumped me in Elsweyr at level one with no background or direction to the original content. If you have the base game, not sure how it starts. You probably started in your faction zone/city with some rough direction that should have kicked off the Cold Harbour main quest, which then provides touch points into the guild story lines.
Not that it matters that much, you can just wander off and go nuts, but the main/guild stories do introduce you to a bunch of recurring characters and lore as well as reward skill points. It’s kind of a known failing that ESO does not do a good job of helping new players discover the original content.
If you are having problems surviving in fights in PvE you should consider going Magicka and getting a restoration staff for your back bar. Most classes have skills with a heal, some much better than others but if you have the staff you can get yourself out of trouble with a healing ward or a heal over time. You can try to get the stam skill vigor but you will have to do some PvP. They really lowered the requirements for AP but it still takes some effort. I haven’t played in like 8 months so things might have changed.
Thanks for that explanation! That probably crystallizes why I hate the skill bar & fighting mechanic so much. Its bloody fiddly homework! Like I said, I’ve been playing for a while and approaching it like Skyrim: take a weapon and hit something and randomly use funky skills to spice the action up to have some variety. This weaving stuff and front and back skill bar switcheroos are all just frustrating complications!
Reckon this discussion is just proving to me I need to quit this game. Whats really frustrating, is that its the only game a mate of mine wants to play.
None of that stuff matters unless you’re doing group content.
Here’s what I do to win literally every fight while questing:
Fire off an arrow storm, pop my “heal on crits and get a bonus 20% to all damage” skill, turn into a hurricane and mash the key for whirlwind attack until everything is dead.
If it’s a big single target I do the single target attack instead, but it’s otherwise the same.
It still matters if you care about speed and efficiency. You can get by just fine without optimizing your build and gameplay, but many of us enjoy that sort of thing.
It should be said that despite issues like lag and some really bad design choices like cast times on ultimates (which is why I decided to take a big long break) PvP is the best around for a MMO in my opinion. Nothing has ever come close and still doesn’t. The skill system and fluid combat really shines in that environment. If they remove cast times on soul harvest/incap strike I would be downloading and playing in heartbeat. It’s that addictive.
I kill everything in seconds. If you really care that much about killing them in 6 seconds instead of 7 or whatever, more power to you, I guess. But my point was to reassure someone turned off by all the optimization talk that you can do anything you might want to do in solo play without needing to get that deep into the weeds, which you are distinctly not helping with.
Neither approach is wrong and ESO lets you play either way. There is enough twitch and customizability to try to wring out every last drop of performance or play more laid back and focus on fewer tools.
Additionally there are various options for play - overland PvE questing, dungeons, veteran dungeons, pvp, etc. All seem to be well done and you can find whatever floats your boat. That is part of the beauty of the game.
