1773

This game was better than i thought it would be, but i still don’t see myself playing it.

This is SWTOR all over again. A single player game that was compromised in order to be a mmorpg so they could charge a monthly fee. What you’re left with is a an inferior skyrim with tacked on multiplayer. This is no guild wars 2 where other players seem to fit in well to your world and quest. In this game it feels out of place seeing other players running around doing the same objectives. The multiplayer seems completely unneeded and harmful to the game from what i’ve seen in the admittedly short time i’ve played the game.

So i think I will skip this and play Skyrim instead. Better game, cheaper game and support for wonderful user created content (which has always been the strength of bethesda games).

1774

I would love a mod that makes all other players invisible - then the game would be fun!

1775

Ok.

I made a new character in Dagerfall. A sorcer, bow-user, with pet. It works really well. I like that can use both energy pools for combat, mana and stamina.

My toolbox is this:

  • A skill that I can use to inititate combat, that make the mobs byte the dust and produce some mana. Long cast :(
  • A poison dot bow skill. The thing I mainly use.
  • A root skill that when finish slow mobs. The skill root in area, so maybe is a bad ideas for dungeons or precise play, but seems to work well for soloing.
  • A pet that don’t seems to make much agro, but seems to make a decent contribution of damage. Sometimes drag enough agro to distract the enemy. Do pets have a ui for pets?
  • A ultimate that spawns a lightning attronach, seems good enough to kill or weak 2 or 3 mobs.

With this build I rarelly die. I still lack a “OH SHIT” skill to break agro or run away, but the pet dragging agro has probably save me more than once.

Dagerfall seems a nice starting area. Just decent. I like how the phasing work on some quest, really really well made, very smooth. I don’t love the writing of this game, or the graphics, and so on… everything is ok enough, average.

1776

Just wait till you get your Storm Atronarch superskill Teiman - thats a nice Oh shit skill :-) (Edit - wh didn’t I read that you have it already? sorry)

In another note…there’s SO many broken quests this time around, where people just mill around, waiting for it to happen. In my brief run to level 8 this time around, I had 4 major quests that didn’t work - Main quest and Figthers guild quest just stalled. Perhaps its the same issues The Secret world had? Too many people around it? Anyways, its impossible to go on, which is a shame. I like it a lot this time around. I went the same route as Tei…Bow sorceror which seems to be a rather crazy combo.

1777

Both Champions Online and TSW had “classless” systems that seemed like a lot of fun, offering countless possibilities, until the min-maxing mavens discovered that most abilities are pretty useless and there’s only like one or two optimal builds, and then “everyone” ran around with the FOTM Tankmage (that, to top it all, was usually a conceptual mess with no conceivable rp rationale) - I wonder if this game will suffer the same fate?

1778

I never played Champions Online, but that really didn’t happen in TSW’s endgame. The devs did a pretty good job of making sure all three main tanking weapons, all three healing weapons and a huge number of DPS combinations did just fine in the endgame content (Nightmares, the Manhatten raid). I was in one of those guilds where everyone ran damage meters and min-maxed to an obsessive degree, and there were no consensus best builds for any role.

1779

That’s the important part: Dev responsiveness. Min/Maxxing will always be there, and given the game mechanics and how the metagame shapes up (something that often can’t be seen until tends of thousands of players have been hammering at the system for a while), certain builds will tend to be superior to others, either mathematically or situationally. It’s the job of the Live team to make the appropriate adjustments once those issues have come to light.

This isn’t strictly a problem with more “open” character building systems, either. The entire time I played WoW, it constantly suffered from FOTM builds and truly useless builds as well.

1780

There are many quests in TESO that don’t work with multiple players around, and I wonder why nobody thought of this in the design stage. In particular, stealth quests (e.g., go sneak into that guy’s house and find evidence that he’s a committed some crime) are just goofy. You’ll sneak into the house, creep toward the stairs, then notice there are three other people in there already rummaging through his sock drawer. These needed to be instanced.

On the other hand, at least the quests feel more like actual missions and storylines. “Go kill 10 bears” quests are rare. And they work fine in areas where it makes sense to have many people around, such as public dungeons. But overall, I agree – no game approaches GW2’s ability to make other players in the area be a welcome and sensible presence.

Why don’t MMO’s do a better job of copying best practices from their peers?

1781

When you have a line of people all rummaging about in some dead guy’s trunk for a skull, while another mass of people beat the daylights out of said dead guy’s ghost right next to you, any semblance of story or atmosphere goes poof even faster than in most MMOs. This isn’t new; all non-instanced MMO content tends to be like this in some way, but TESO’s focus on story and its roots in a single player experience do it no favors in this regard.

I am glad I’ve had a chance to preview this via the beta, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be a day one buyer. That’s not to say I won’t check it out down the line, but there’s absolutely nothing here that makes me chomp at the bit to get going. Even RIFT and Defiance had more allure for me than this does, and I love the ES single player games.

This game seems to be competent, with some interesting bits, but absolutely zero spark of life for me.

1782

I have lost the count of how many quest I can’t finish. I suppose this is some sort of stress test thingie, and this is how the game breaks. Sadly with no xp for kills, and lots of broken quest is hard to escape the low levels.

1783

The secret world and SWTOR both also focus on story a lot and both handle it by heavily instancing missions when needed.

1784

Unfortunately, when The Secret World instances stuff it often made them solo instances (and doesn’t flag them ahead of time), which makes it awfully tough to enjoy the game as a group activity. :(

1785

So, I just set what I believe is a personal record for MMO’s – six broken quests in a row. This is worse than The Secret World’s launch, as most quests in TESO seem to break anytime there is a boss spawn, if people are standing nearby. There are usually people standing nearby.

There are closed testers in my guild’s forum saying this is all fixed there, and that we’re still a build or two behind. Having heard that before, though, my caution flags are raised. All the more so since I have read that the closed beta population is very small, so they probably don’t bump into the “10 people trying to do a quest at once” issue.

I’m not going to cancel my pre-order, but my expectations are a lot lower.

1786

Lately I have gotten the impression they go out of their way to not do anything others have done. (making the same mistakes all over again). Surprised you can even find people to design games who have not played either rift, warhammer or wow at one point and learned something valuable that they could bring with them to the table. Or are there some pristine snowflakes somewhere on a ice-sheet in alaska that you can call upon to create a game without them having tried any other games before.

1787

This, pretty much. I love that it seems to be open and not very railroady right off, but all that nice immersion is killed the moment ^^ that happens.

I still want to explore this world though. Maybe after it’s gone F2P. :)

1788

I will say that i really like the ability to level up and evolve specific spells/abilities. I really hope the next single player elder scrolls game includes that as it adds a lot over just leveling up a general skill type.

1789

Yeah, there is some good stuff here to be sure. I wish it didn’t feel so floaty and insubstantial, in terms of mechanics/actions, and so generic overall. There’s very little, for me, of the thrill of something like Morrowind or Skyrim, and not enough super polished MMO standard stuff either.

1790

Also, speaking of floaty, pretty commonly in combat there seems to be some odd effects, probably caused by lag.

I will notice sometimes my swings don’t connect when it looks like they should. Pretty often an enemy will run out of health and then they standing for a few seconds. They won’t take further damage or attack me, but they won’t fall either.

1791

Interesting, I had no idea Zenimax Online hired Malukah to do some music for the game.

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/media/malukah

She did incredible covers of some of the songs from Skyrim. Pretty cool she turned that into recording for a major game like this.

1792

Yea, that’s another issue isn’t it ><