Elder Scrolls Online Officially Announced!
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
Give some more impressions, please. How does combat compare to traditional TES games, and also traditional MMOs? How does levelling work? Etc.
Grats on making it to PAX by the way. Say hi to Krahulik and Holkins for me, okay?
Who now ?
Sword combat plays just like skyrim. Its still way to floaty if you know what I mean. I dont feel like im hitting anything or anything is hitting me
Nagic works better than in skyrim. The attacks lock on and dont have to be aimed from the limitrd spells I got to use
For leveling up you get to select endurance health magic. Then you get to pick a skill in a catagory. Spells / swords and other greyed out stuff . Then they level as you use them and each level you get more spells.
Remeber I inky had a 15 min demo
You go to PAX and you don't know who Krahulik and Holkins is?
I spend 90% of my time in the board game section
The beta NDA has lifted. So anyone who has been in beta can talk now
My own impressions (from a not very long play experiences in beta):
- Character creation works much like Skyrim, so you can have a lot of small adjustments.
- Graphics wise, it's sort of comparable with Skyrim in default settings. AA settings is likely morphological, and does not work very well in some situation (e.g. stair case).
- Performance is good. My quite old Core i7 920 with Radeon 7850 is able to handle highest settings @ 1440x900.
- Combat is similar to Skyrim, but with a soft locking mechanism for ranged attacks (basically like eastmen said).
- If you help killed a monster another player is fighting, you'll get some awards too (similar to Guild Wars 2).
- Combat is snappier than Guild Wars 2 though.
- It's viable to play in both 3rd person or 1st person, but IMHO 1st person is better for close combat, while 3rd person is probably better for awareness.
- The skill slot is very limited by design. There's only 5 skill slots, and a quick slot for potions, etc. and a "ultimate skill" slot. Only skills on the slots can be used in combat. At level 15, you'll be able to switch weapon in combat and you can have a second set of skill slots. This makes the combat in game more action oriented, like Guild Wars 2, instead of turn-based oriented, like World of Warcraft.
- You can fast travel between "way shrines," but you'll have to find them first (similar to way points in Skyrim). Traveling between "way shrines" are free, but traveling from any other place to a way shrine costs money and have a cool down time.
- You can buy mounts but I didn't buy it (cost too much gold).
- There's no limit on learning crafting skills, but since they cost the same skill points to learn as your combat skills, normally one wouldn't want to learn every crafting skills to max.
- At least for earlier levels, crafted equipment are useful.
- There are different racial styles of each armor and all can be crafted (but racial styles other than your own need to be learned first).
- Quests are mostly in standard MMO style format. Find someone there, gather something there, or kill some monsters there.
- There are random events on the map, similar to Guild Wars 2. Most of these events will need a group of players to complete (but not necessarily in the same group).
- All quests are voice acted (though some in the beta are apparently voiced by a robot).
- The three alliances have completely different quest lines.
To summarize, I think this is fun to play, but I have yet to play core elements such as dungeons (I only grouped with some in a public dungeon), so I don't know much about the MMO part. If you want to play it as a single player game, I guess you can, but probably not enough to justify the monthly fee, and you'll have to get used to those players running around
I'm waiting for another round of beta and hopefully will be able to play some more MMO parts of the game.
My own impressions (from a not very long play experiences in beta):
- Character creation works much like Skyrim, so you can have a lot of small adjustments.
- Graphics wise, it's sort of comparable with Skyrim in default settings. AA settings is likely morphological, and does not work very well in some situation (e.g. stair case).
- Performance is good. My quite old Core i7 920 with Radeon 7850 is able to handle highest settings @ 1440x900.
- Combat is similar to Skyrim, but with a soft locking mechanism for ranged attacks (basically like eastmen said).
- If you help killed a monster another player is fighting, you'll get some awards too (similar to Guild Wars 2).
- Combat is snappier than Guild Wars 2 though.
- It's viable to play in both 3rd person or 1st person, but IMHO 1st person is better for close combat, while 3rd person is probably better for awareness.
- The skill slot is very limited by design. There's only 5 skill slots, and a quick slot for potions, etc. and a "ultimate skill" slot. Only skills on the slots can be used in combat. At level 15, you'll be able to switch weapon in combat and you can have a second set of skill slots. This makes the combat in game more action oriented, like Guild Wars 2, instead of turn-based oriented, like World of Warcraft.
- You can fast travel between "way shrines," but you'll have to find them first (similar to way points in Skyrim). Traveling between "way shrines" are free, but traveling from any other place to a way shrine costs money and have a cool down time.
- You can buy mounts but I didn't buy it (cost too much gold).
- There's no limit on learning crafting skills, but since they cost the same skill points to learn as your combat skills, normally one wouldn't want to learn every crafting skills to max.
- At least for earlier levels, crafted equipment are useful.
- There are different racial styles of each armor and all can be crafted (but racial styles other than your own need to be learned first).
- Quests are mostly in standard MMO style format. Find someone there, gather something there, or kill some monsters there.
- There are random events on the map, similar to Guild Wars 2. Most of these events will need a group of players to complete (but not necessarily in the same group).
- All quests are voice acted (though some in the beta are apparently voiced by a robot).
- The three alliances have completely different quest lines.
To summarize, I think this is fun to play, but I have yet to play core elements such as dungeons (I only grouped with some in a public dungeon), so I don't know much about the MMO part. If you want to play it as a single player game, I guess you can, but probably not enough to justify the monthly fee, and you'll have to get used to those players running around
I'm waiting for another round of beta and hopefully will be able to play some more MMO parts of the game.
To summarize, I think this is fun to play, but I have yet to play core elements such as dungeons (I only grouped with some in a public dungeon), so I don't know much about the MMO part. If you want to play it as a single player game, I guess you can, but probably not enough to justify the monthly fee, and you'll have to get used to those players running around
I'm waiting for another round of beta and hopefully will be able to play some more MMO parts of the game.
I played the beta and unexpectedly had quite a bit of time to spend on it.
The environment has an Elder Scrolls feel. The game play mechanics, not so much.
My feeling of the game is that the payment system is the core value of the game, as opposed to any particular experience from the game play. They want to attract as many of the 20 million Skyrim customers as possible, but the gameplay is too influenced by generic MMO tropes and problems for me to believe that people who enjoyed the single player Elder Scrolls titles will feel at home in the online version.
ES fans will be put off by MMO frustrations, MMO fans will rightly feel that they were not the main target.
IMO ESO should be way more Elder Scrolls and way less generic MMO. But if it were, I can't see many being willing to pay $200 annually to play Skyrim in a bigger world, and I guess that is why the game is as it is now - which, I predict, will not see many subscribers either come autumn. To be fair, free form single player RPGing clashes hard with the MMO tropes, so the task may have been doomed from the outset. Even so, I wish they had made another set of compromises.
Personally I'd prefer a multiplayer cooperative version of Skyrim, which you can play at your own pace while playing with friends. However, how to make a world which is compatible between multiple players is a serious problem.
If designed well, it's possible that ESO can fill in for this niche. But as I said for single player games, it's hard to justify a monthly fee for such playing style, and you still can't avoid other players.
I think it'd be very important for them to put the right number of players in a "world." It'll make or break the game.
If designed well, it's possible that ESO can fill in for this niche. But as I said for single player games, it's hard to justify a monthly fee for such playing style, and you still can't avoid other players.
I think it'd be very important for them to put the right number of players in a "world." It'll make or break the game.
The number of players is indeed very important, it is one of the major issues with MMOs in general when it comes to group play.
As many others, I had the experience in the beta of getting a quest that was too difficult for me alone, but where I found that I could typically just walk along a string of corpses in the wake of a band of heroes slaughtering their way to the boss. And if I kicked some sand on the boss, when they killed him, well then I had solved the quest! Not very satisfying in terms of "heroic fantasy" though. On the other hand, when I wanted to group, even when we were standing on top of each other, I had to wait until a group was assembled, and two times out of three the differences in load times totally wrecked the opportunity, and the one time we did go in close enough to work out, we still had to do the same quest requirements one after the other, which was ... weird.
I work full time, and have a family - MMOs that assume that you are going to belong to a guild simply doesn't work for me. The idea of doing certain things, at a given time, and then being tied up for a fairly long stretch of time on top of that is just impossible. Never mind that the power-levelling and then instance grind bores me.
But when I don't belong to a guild, I find that once an MMO has settled, most players are busy with their end-game pastimes, or chatting with their guild friends. Actually finding people to group with to do mid level quests is nigh on impossible if you're not in a guild, particularly if you can't wait around forever. The game is then basically broken and difficult to enjoy. The ad hoc grouping of GW2 or Rift could be improved further perhaps, and the instance difficulty scaling after group strength that is used in D&D Online could probably also be tweaked to work out OK. I don't know. But my feeling of the group play of ESO was that it isn't really up to the standards of its contemporaries even, much less breaking new ground suitable to the setting. I don't want to be to harsh here, as the problem is not trivial, but it's a serious problem. And completely alien to Elder Scrolls fans, who are, after all, the target market. It particularly bothered me when I got an individual quest line, which as I followed it, took me to situations where I had no chance without a group. This is simply questionable game design. "Our hero follows a lead, goes places, sneaks up on a baddie, defeats him, and finds an incri...(* long quest line *)....where our hero slowly, carefully walks down the ancient staircase, moisture glistening on the carved gargoyles to where the evil magician tortures his victim. The hero draws his blade, and - gets totally creamed. He is miraculously reborn, and withdraws to the nearby town, where he sharpens his blades, and stocks up on healing potions and invigorating food. He returns to the ancient ruin, sneaks down the damp stairs again, carefully takes stock of the surroundings, plans his attack and - charge! He lasts three seconds longer this time, before he is utterly defeated, not even close to being a danger to the evil magician. What the hell, he thinks, I just spent hours following this line of inquiry, clearly I'm supposed to gather help! Which I wish I had a hint about that before getting my gear and myself smashed up. Repeatedly. So our now grumpy hero puts up signs that says that he is looking for a group to help him with his noble task. Nobody signs up though, so he is getting bored, and goes into the forest looking for some wolves to fight, you know, just to stay in shape? After an hour collecting wolf pelts, he finds that only a single citizen had shown any interest, but subsequently disappeared. Feck. Our hero goes to bed. The next day he once again takes up his task of rescuing his tortured friend, puts up his notices, and goes straight out to pick some flowers in order to make healing potions. Carrying home a giant bouquet, he finds that he still doesn't have a group, so he despairs and starts crying out to passers by in a corner. "Want to group, sir? Save my friend? Please sir, could you please help me? Please? Asshole!""
Which apart from being really shitty heroic fantasy, isn't a particularly fun or rewarding way to spend your time.
Oh and I have one more gripe I have to get off my chest. For whatever reason, when you zoom in to first person perspective, your eye point ends up just over your navel! So you walk around like a friggin midget, looking into the midriff of NPCs and players alike, sometimes not even able to look over a fence, and having all your conversations with beautiful ladies not looking down their décolletage, but up towards their chests.
WTF?
Is this some American modesty thing?
WTF?
Is this some American modesty thing?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
My only response. Everquest 1 (American developed) basically had all the female characters in armored lingerie (teddies, body stockings, etc.).
Regards,
SB
My only response. Everquest 1 (American developed) basically had all the female characters in armored lingerie (teddies, body stockings, etc.).
Regards,
SB
Hmm. Ok.
On a more serious note though, it's a bizarre design decision. The main point of using the first persion perspective is to help reinforce immersion by giving the impression that you're looking out the eyes of your character. So why am I looking straight at door handles, and just above the navel of everyone I'm talking with? It becomes an immersion breaker.
Actually, it occurs in shooters as well, Cutscenes show you as a huge, badass, bald hunk, but when you play the game you realize that you actually were 1.40. This disparity in self-image vs. reality may be what actually causes the ensuing violence.perhaps, your playing a dwarf
In ESO, since you zoom in when you change perspective from 3rd person to 1st person, you can actually follow the camera as it zooms - into your belly!
???
