Cool story, except we know the newer build exists in the real non-weekend-stress beta testing.
Yeah, how different are they?
You are missing the part where TESO isn’t released and every “mmo beta” in the past (from my recollection) has had this statement applied to it – not to mention people on forums usually posting “Its beta, it will be fixed in release” as a way to deflect any criticism/concerns raised… and the issues usually aren’t fixed.
So until TESO is released the statement holds true.
rei
1696
It’s awful close to release for so many basic starter quests to be broken still.
My brief experience with the beta told me that that the game runs decently on my 18 month-old i7 640M laptop, that I can turn the graphics settings up from the default “looks like Quake 2” to “looks like a polished version of Skyrim” while keeping a good frame rate, that their argonian models (I always play argonians) are a huge improvement on the sad, mutant creatures in Skyrim, that the character creation is as fun as ever, that there’s way too much talking expositiony crap at the beginning before you give a rat’s ass about the game, that fortunately you can skip it all quickly, that the combat is laggy and lacking any feedback whatsoever, that the combat is supposed to be much better now but I’d have to see it first, that even during the opening tutorial section you’re introduced into an open area with atronachs wandering back and forth in typical WoW-like mob fashion, that the sight of this struck terror into my heart, and that combined with the terrible combat began the steady process of sapping my will to continue.
So yeah, as others have said, the opening sucks. I almost bailed on Guild Wars 2 because of its crappy opening (at launch) but fortunately the game quickly grabbed me because the core combat experience was great fun, with plenty of fireworks and thunder to draw me in, and later tactics to keep me there. I’m a little worried that it took player feedback before ESO addressed this core issue in their game. Right now I’d need to see strong evidence of improvement here to even consider this. I’m tempted just to fire up GW2 again actually.
No, because that’s not what you said. You said the internal build didn’t exist, not that it wouldn’t fix every problem with the game.
Oghier
1699
I am planning to run a Nightblade, partly because I found a build I really like. Just now, someone sent me a link showing how a similar build plays at a much higher level:
That looks fun to me.
Neat, Oghier. I was enjoying my Nightblade quite a bit over the weekend. I went with dual wielding Breton and will probably add a secondary bow specialty next time I play (currently level 7).
I’m not sure what I will be playing on release. Have a dual wielding Nord in the beta, but usually swing more towards magic in my Elder Scrolls games.
I am so torn, as the early game really is not good, but the game gets better as it opens up.
I fell victim to the quest bug on Betnikh Saturday. Lots of people were standing around, waiting for an NPC that never appeared. After maybe 10 minutes, I logged out… And never went back.
I want to like the game, but seeing fundamental breakage like this does not instill confidence in its quality. Yes, yes… Blah blah beta gargle gargle. :) I haven’t written it off yet.
After becoming a bit disenchanted with the game in the previous beta, I found myself really starting to like it this time around… apparently because I finally got my character to level 8 or so and things started to really click along (pun barely intended). The combat got a little deeper, the world got a little more open, choices began to appear, etc.
Having an unexpected snow day off from work yesterday, I was actually saddened when I tried to boot up the game an found the beta over (to be fair, I had not had my coffee at that point). I think I’ll pick the game up at release.
KevinC
1705
It seems getting to around level 8 is a recurring theme of people (like myself) who disliked the game initially but started liking it further in. I know they’re trying to address the newbie doldrums before release but I wonder how much damage has already been done. There seems to be a lot of people who tried it for a couple hours and left extremely bored, it might be hard to get them re-engaged. First impressions are important, and I think from a marketing POV it might have been a mistake to hold this previous stress test without the latest patch. I understand it’s not ready yet, and I understand that the infrastructure needs to be tested, but they just turned off another big wave of people who got their first look at ESO and left with a “meh”.
Perhaps. Kind of a damned-if-they-do/don’t thing: it looks to me like they are really trying hard not to have the typically terrible MMO launch with horrific login queues, bad lag in the starter areas and whatnot… and it’s hard to criticize a game that wants to avoid that. And I think that a lot of the criticism from the past weekend’s beta had to do with load - the example being the quest cited above where too many people had activated the quest spawn and it locked up, or one of my experiences where there were so many extraneous people in a dungeon that the guy I needed to have spawn never showed up.
To me, those aren’t “broken quests” as much as unexpected load artifacts… exactly what a stress-test beta is intended to flush out. So yeah, they may be scaring off their target audience in their quest to find bugs that might scare off their target audience.
KevinC
1707
I agree, damned if they do/don’t. It’s so much easier being able to arm-chair everything from the comfort of my home. I like not having to make those sort of difficult decisions. :)
Oghier
1708
I wonder how much word-of-mouth from betas effects sales?
Bateau
1709
Good question. Almost every impression on the game I read before I tried it said that it was bad so I pretty much decided to skip it - I mean, how could everyone be wrong? I’ve never seen such onesided opinions about a game before. But then a friend of mine told me he spent 20h playing the beta over the weekend (he’s not normally the type to put in so many hours into a game at once) and was completely in love with it. He hooked me up with a key and once the beta was over I decided to preorder it because I really liked it.
KevinC
1710
Looks like another update has dropped (the notes continue on the first comment of that thread). From the look of it, it contains a bunch of quest fixes and some balance changes regarding health/stamina/magika scaling. Another item that stood out to me is that starting bank and inventory space has been increased substantially, although it still caps out at the same (i.e. they added increased bank storage by 30 but removed three of the 10-slot upgrades). It also looks like all tutorial content (including Cold Harbor) is now skippable once you’ve completed it with one character.
The big outstanding issue for me is quest phasing and how poorly it’s handled in groups. There needs to be a way for friends to sync up with the party leader because as it is right now, if you’re not on the exact quest step, it can oftentimes be impossible to join or see each other. Worse, if individuals choose different options in a quest (fight off the invaders at the docks vs relieve the fort), it will also split you off into different phases. It’s extremely unwieldy and confusing when you’re trying to play with a friend or two. You would think that for it being an online-only multiplayer game that multiplayer would be handled more elegantly.
Oh sweet. I’ve done Cold Harbor many times now.
SWTOR’s random roll in instances for branching the path was an interesting take on that.
But honestly, I’d prefer simple majority choice and a tiebreaker randomisation…
