I love ESO. I've played it as I have all MMO's over the years I've enjoyed. Pretty much as a single player till hitting level cap. Then I get involved with group/guild stuff. Love the story. Love how the game plays, looks. Combat is a blast. Maybe after I hit level cap (currently at lvl 40 on main) I will feel differently.
YMMV
I had right the opposite experience. I entered release with a guild of folks who all interacted outside the game. And it was just depressingly singleplayer leveling up. That's a damn shame.
We literally had scheduled group nights, but they all ended in just chatting over TS while everyone did their own thing because the game discouraged interacting and grouping the entire way. "oh wait, I'm not on that part, so I can't do that. Guess I'll just go do this instead while you finish that."
At best, we farmed open dungeon bosses and hunted skyshards. That's just piss-poor, and the guild soon floundered on enthusiasm for the game, as the guild wasn't built around the game, but around having fun playing with each other. Haven't had enough interest in playing a singleplayer MMO to go back and resub. Probably never will. There are much better RPGs to be played singleplayer than any MMO on the market, and I daresay there will always be better singleplayer RPGs suited for solo play than there are MMOs. It's inevitable when you take a genre inherently lending itself to multiplayer and try to provide a primarily singleplayer experience.
ESO deserves a 2nd chance......... when it goes B2P or f2p IN MY OPINION.
I played beta's, and for 3 mos. after it came out and bought the CE. I was disappointed. Not worth the subscription IN MY OPINION, yet! Getting better though...
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
I never left. However I did stop at Vet 1 because I didn't feel like doing the other factions with my Dragon Knight Mage, so I created an alt which is a Sorcerer Tank and I couldn't be happier, currently level 36. Once the character reaches Vet 1, I will either create one more alt or pause the game until they finish all phases of the vet area like the promised. Personally I think that ESO is the best themepark MMO available and I totally disagree with folks that hate the combat. I feel the exact opposite. I love it, much more thank Skyrim as there is no pausing to switch spells. I love the fact that you just can't stand there in all cases and there is actually some skill involved with their soft tab targeting system. I still have hopes that one day the world will feel even more alive with my dynamic stuff, meaningful anchors, more rpg activities, more impact on the world that everyone sees, but in general once they eliminated the spam and bots the game went from a 7.5 out of 10 to an 8.5 out of 10 and continuing to climb with each major release.
ESO is pretty high up on my list of games that I'll be buying on the steam xmas sale. I hope it gets at least a 66% discount but 50% is bearable too.. I played the beta and it was decent but at that point I didn't really feel like the game was worth dropping 60 dollars on.
The crafting felt a lot more simplistic than they had advertised pre-launch. You had a level 10 bow, a level 12 bow, a level 14 bow and then some basic modifications and that was it.
Bow combat felt sluggish. The bow animation in general was a bit odd. Soft lock also made it not fun to be an archer.
Snow/grass zones felt like they had very low detail and I didn't really feel immersed in them because they weren't very realistic looking in both graphics and object placement. Deserts on the other hand were awesome.
Dungeons felt awkward. You go and sneak and try to enjoy the dungeon and then some khajiit player with a mohawk runs by, kills all the shit and then you either continue sneaking through a empty dungeon or you just stand up and say fuck it.
But all in all, these are just 'progression' issues that I doubt would care too much about at endgame. PvP and to a degree group dungeons/content would be the deciding factor in whether i keep playing this game for a longer amount of time.
I'll echo everyone else, I'll keep the game installed and pick it up again after the F2P transition.
My slightly different take is the fact that the game is completely single player from the start through all the VR level zones. At Craglorn, it's a jarringly abrupt transition to group only questing. Only a very small portion of the population actually wants to do the quest instead of grinding the burials or anomalies. To make it more inane, some of the quests are one time only doors, meaning if you have already done it, you can’t help anyone else on it. It seems likes they took the feedback about the single player focus of the release game, and added additional content requiring a group, but left the single player ruleset to it.
Again the game is worth a try, but there be issues larger than just bugs.
It still hasn't solved it's biggest problem, and the reason that I and many others quit and want nothing to do with it.
It's still a single player game with lousy group incentives, and no community.
Pretty much this. Group questing in this game is atrocious. Its so old school on how tagging and completing quests work. I only play mmos with friends so we would wanna level together. ESO makes it a chore to do so.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
When i think of 'second chances' i invariably remember FFXIV, a game that launched in an unacceptable state, so much so that they even went so far as to apologise, but then they redid their game, fixed the things that needed fixing, and almost totally addressed those issues that had dogged its first release, and now we have FFXIV;ARR a 'second chance' and it was worth it. Unfortunately for ESO, is that there has been no 'fixing' really taking place, adding a few things and 'glossing over the cracks' is not a fix, i don't think anyone is really going to consider giving the game a 'second chance' until the real issues with the game are finally addressed, Square Enix had the guts to do what had to be done, but i am not sure Zenimax do, i think first they'd have to accept some of the games concepts are not fit for purpose, and that will probably be their own biggest hurdle. But the game, like FFXIV;ARR has great graphics, it would be shame for them to just settle for 'bodging it' instead of truly 'fixing it'
I think that the biggest issue for ESO was simply how the story was implemented. It's just so difficult to execute that "Last Hope" style story in an MMO Universe. That is, unless you ignore everything else around you (ie, you see 10 people doing the same quest as you, but you're somehow the only one who can do it). It sucks, too, because it's like they set it up so well! You're like some prisoner, escaping, and need to GTF outta there! Soooooo, why can't these "prisoners" all be people who are "gifted" in some way. This is what I was psyched about, it was like they were setting up the story for us to be dropped into an MMO universe, and then they shut it down as soon as you get to the started island and we revert back to the single-player "You're our only hope" story. I think this is another reason that it's so solo oriented.
I say this in jest, mostly, but maybe they (the NPCs) know full well you're not their only hope. However, they can't count on everyone pulling through for them (people stop playing, take breaks, or get sidetracked after all ), so they do the "You're our only hope!" routine to both boost your ego, and to guilt-trip you into doing what they want done.
I mean, if nothing is done, and the world falls into ruin, it's because you failed to act... and you wouldn't want that on your shoulders, now would you?
Someone's gotta do it, and Mike Roe's not available. Might as well be you!
Comments
I had right the opposite experience. I entered release with a guild of folks who all interacted outside the game. And it was just depressingly singleplayer leveling up. That's a damn shame.
We literally had scheduled group nights, but they all ended in just chatting over TS while everyone did their own thing because the game discouraged interacting and grouping the entire way. "oh wait, I'm not on that part, so I can't do that. Guess I'll just go do this instead while you finish that."
At best, we farmed open dungeon bosses and hunted skyshards. That's just piss-poor, and the guild soon floundered on enthusiasm for the game, as the guild wasn't built around the game, but around having fun playing with each other. Haven't had enough interest in playing a singleplayer MMO to go back and resub. Probably never will. There are much better RPGs to be played singleplayer than any MMO on the market, and I daresay there will always be better singleplayer RPGs suited for solo play than there are MMOs. It's inevitable when you take a genre inherently lending itself to multiplayer and try to provide a primarily singleplayer experience.
ESO deserves a 2nd chance......... when it goes B2P or f2p IN MY OPINION.
I played beta's, and for 3 mos. after it came out and bought the CE. I was disappointed. Not worth the subscription IN MY OPINION, yet! Getting better though...
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
There Is Always Hope!
ESO is pretty high up on my list of games that I'll be buying on the steam xmas sale. I hope it gets at least a 66% discount but 50% is bearable too.. I played the beta and it was decent but at that point I didn't really feel like the game was worth dropping 60 dollars on.
The crafting felt a lot more simplistic than they had advertised pre-launch. You had a level 10 bow, a level 12 bow, a level 14 bow and then some basic modifications and that was it.
Bow combat felt sluggish. The bow animation in general was a bit odd. Soft lock also made it not fun to be an archer.
Snow/grass zones felt like they had very low detail and I didn't really feel immersed in them because they weren't very realistic looking in both graphics and object placement. Deserts on the other hand were awesome.
Dungeons felt awkward. You go and sneak and try to enjoy the dungeon and then some khajiit player with a mohawk runs by, kills all the shit and then you either continue sneaking through a empty dungeon or you just stand up and say fuck it.
But all in all, these are just 'progression' issues that I doubt would care too much about at endgame. PvP and to a degree group dungeons/content would be the deciding factor in whether i keep playing this game for a longer amount of time.
I'll echo everyone else, I'll keep the game installed and pick it up again after the F2P transition.
My slightly different take is the fact that the game is completely single player from the start through all the VR level zones. At Craglorn, it's a jarringly abrupt transition to group only questing. Only a very small portion of the population actually wants to do the quest instead of grinding the burials or anomalies. To make it more inane, some of the quests are one time only doors, meaning if you have already done it, you can’t help anyone else on it. It seems likes they took the feedback about the single player focus of the release game, and added additional content requiring a group, but left the single player ruleset to it.
Again the game is worth a try, but there be issues larger than just bugs.
Pretty much this. Group questing in this game is atrocious. Its so old school on how tagging and completing quests work. I only play mmos with friends so we would wanna level together. ESO makes it a chore to do so.
Playing: FFXIV, DnL, and World of Warships
Waiting on: Ashes of Creation
I say this in jest, mostly, but maybe they (the NPCs) know full well you're not their only hope. However, they can't count on everyone pulling through for them (people stop playing, take breaks, or get sidetracked after all
), so they do the "You're our only hope!" routine to both boost your ego, and to guilt-trip you into doing what they want done.
I mean, if nothing is done, and the world falls into ruin, it's because you failed to act... and you wouldn't want that on your shoulders, now would you?
Someone's gotta do it, and Mike Roe's not available. Might as well be you!
So, go get 'em, Hero!