I played ESO a lot this year. There's a lot to love about this game. I just could NOT get into the action combat. I tried for like 6 months, leveled up two different classes, but the action combat is just not fun for me. Maybe because I'm 41 now and play just for fun? Give me WASD and a mouse clickable buttons and I'd go to this game permanently like yesterday...
So you've been playing with a game pad controller? If so You know you don't have to use a a game pad right? ESO has WASD + Mouse. Thats the only way to play imo.
So agree an MMO on pad.... wtf....
The player always win when companies grow some balls and offer both options (m+kb, and gamepad) in their games.
I played Final Fantasy XIV, Tera, Blade and Soul, Black Desert, ESO, and even WoW with the action camera enabled and the addon that rearranges the UI for a controller, all of them with a gamepad and i can safely say i would never go back to mouse. It felt very natural and smooth.
It's funny how in 2017 some people still pretend that the only right way to play is the way they play.
The only way to play is the way you enjoy the game. Nobody else should care about how anybody else plays the game.
It's all about giving more options to the player. You pick what you like.
ESO is the perfect example of standard full keyboard/mouse input being crippled to compensate for console input.
Highlighted by the utterly abysmal potion wheel - For completely ignoring the full functionality of a pc keyboard/mouse, this mechanic takes some beating.
The limited spells/skills just shout out that the pc was an afterthought, a lesser vehicle, subservient to the limits of console controllers.
If the likes of FFXIV can accommodate both pc and controllers with full action bar layouts then what went wrong here?
Then we have the 'must have' addons to make the game look anything like an mmo. Standard mmo features should have been in there from the start, with the option to turn them off. Not addon features that are sporadically supported by the individual who wrote them - or more often than not, passed to someone else to try and keep them going as the original person has left.
I hear that they did have full keyboard functionality when the game was in beta, but then decided for some unimaginable reason to take it out - If that's accurate, then it's one of the most idiotic decisions in mmo pc support I've come across.
The solution isn't that hard - put the standard mmo ui elements in there. Have a proper mouse/keyboard movement and skills system. Realize that pc players do not want to be constantly reminded they are playing a game where they are handicapped due to another limited input device.
I really enjoyed the leveling, the atmosphere, environment, & story lines, of my 1st character in ESO. I began playing approximately 2-3 months prior to that Warden class being released. After earning the top level though ESO quickly declined with my attention & I stopped subscribing. It is just too much of a grindfest for those Champion Points (CP). I earned up to 173 or something & then thought about whether it would be fun to earn the 600+ & decided no to that hamster wheel. I'll admit though I rarely take the most efficient route to leveling since I spend more than half my time soloing, but there is little to no sense of accomplishment when grinding those CPs. I didn't like ESO's economic set-up, it would be perfect for a Role-Playing (RP) server though, but I adapted to it. The higher level you go the less decent soloable options there are for adequate gear too, but that is nothing new with massive multiplayer online (MMO) games. In the end, for me, there wasn't enough incentive to remain subscribed since I wasn't progressing at a pace I enjoyed nor did I think beginning another character would revive enough interest to regain the fun. I played for another month routinely without a subscription till, like now, I just log in to do my mount skill ups a few times a week. I think ESO is a good game & I think it handles the microtransactions better than some other MMOs. For myself, I just wish there was more storylines & soloable options after top level along with all the PvP & raiding focus.
The answer is "don't bother" - which is obviously the answer you have arrived at. However .......
Presumably you made a character and played (mostly) through the quest line for that character and maybe some other stuff? I say mostly because there is a lot of content and multiple ways you could have progressed.
And this matters why you ask.
Well what you can do is create a brand new character. In a different alliance say. And play through the story for that alliance.
With the exception of the main "prophet" story each arc is totally different. You don't need to re-subscribe either. As a minimum you have full access to the content for all 3 "core" alliances. If you bought the gold edition you will have the core + the first 4 (paid) DLCs; Morrowind edition - core + Morrowind.
And?
Play your new character FROM SCRATCH. Enjoy the immersion and the sense of achievement / progression - and suffer the annoyances!
Now you might look at this and think why? After another 173 or whatever champion points I am going to be in the same position ..... except it doesn't work that way.
Your new character will be new - with no skills etc. - but it will start at CP173. (So 1-50 could be very easy if you allocate all the CP points.) And if it does as much it will "finish" at c. 346CP. And if you then log back onto your first character ..... it to will be CP346.
Basically what ZoS did when they designed the game is they put a huge - huge - amount of effort in creating solid quest based story lines for 3 alliances which only came together in the main prophet storyline.
And then they thought about what they had done and how they could get everyboy to play through all the content they had made. So they came up with something called veteran levels and to get to the maximum VR you were "forced" to do your starting alliance and then the other two. Subsequently they converted Veteran Ranks to Champion Points and - essentially - each allaince storyline has 160 champion points. The cap is higher these days because each content drop has moved the bar.
One Tamriel changed it so that you can do content in any order but the alliance storylines are well done and collectively do form part of a greater story. Same deal for the Wrothgar story etc.
As I say you don't need to resub to give this approach a try. And maybe you find the magic is no longer there but maybe it is. In which case you can enjoy some more of what ESO offers.
Final comment: as far as gear goes any CP160 purple gear will do - improved over time by adding set bonuses.
ESO's lame combat and even lamer level scaling make it hard for me to tolerate the game much past lvl 15. By that time I feel like I have done or could do everything in the game, all the zones are the same difficulty wise, I cant take a buddy and go try some tougher open world area, and there is little sense of progression.
Just shows how little you know. There is level scaling, but it isn't nearly to the extent of your dramatic exaggeration.
Nah, it's pretty dramatic.
Yeah, cause you totally can't faceroll early level mobs when you're 160+ CP because of that pesky level scaling?
I played ESO a lot this year. There's a lot to love about this game. I just could NOT get into the action combat. I tried for like 6 months, leveled up two different classes, but the action combat is just not fun for me. Maybe because I'm 41 now and play just for fun? Give me WASD and a mouse clickable buttons and I'd go to this game permanently like yesterday...
So you've been playing with a game pad controller? If so You know you don't have to use a a game pad right? ESO has WASD + Mouse. Thats the only way to play imo.
Nah, I want to mouse click abilities, just like WoW or Rift or SWToR. I play with a keyboard and a mouse. I'm a middle aged person now...I'm not looking to play a complex game. I just want to have fun and relax. I asked around in game about being able to do it, but the responses I kept getting was the game developers want the game played their way only. Again, I can play the game the way it is set up, I just don't enjoy it, which is a shame because everything else about the game is awesome.
I do not think you can click with mouse (shame on them), but for sure you can at least use mouse to move around, just need to reprogram keybinds. Some games does not allow that with mouse buttons at least here is not problem.
He wants to have the OG tab targeting combat. To be honest, sometimes I'd like it too.
I played ESO a lot this year. There's a lot to love about this game. I just could NOT get into the action combat. I tried for like 6 months, leveled up two different classes, but the action combat is just not fun for me. Maybe because I'm 41 now and play just for fun? Give me WASD and a mouse clickable buttons and I'd go to this game permanently like yesterday...
So you've been playing with a game pad controller? If so You know you don't have to use a a game pad right? ESO has WASD + Mouse. Thats the only way to play imo.
So agree an MMO on pad.... wtf....
The player always win when companies grow some balls and offer both options (m+kb, and gamepad) in their games.
I played Final Fantasy XIV, Tera, Blade and Soul, Black Desert, ESO, and even WoW with the action camera enabled and the addon that rearranges the UI for a controller, all of them with a gamepad and i can safely say i would never go back to mouse. It felt very natural and smooth.
It's funny how in 2017 some people still pretend that the only right way to play is the way they play.
The only way to play is the way you enjoy the game. Nobody else should care about how anybody else plays the game.
It's all about giving more options to the player. You pick what you like.
That's because you use cheap mice and no gaming accessories. Spend some money. Controller won't feel so great anymore.
Controller works well enough for some people, particularly casuals and particularly in games like FFXIV which are basically handicapped for PC users because of Console/Controller gameplay.
But in a game like WoW, or any Action Combat Game, PC peripherals will blow a controller out of the water.
Controllers do not have enough buttons, and depend on shift states to access the amount of skills available in many MMORPG (or RPG) games.
Mouse Look is simply faster and more accurate than controller based movement. This is why games on Consoles tend to have slower camera speeds. Mice are also a lot more accurate, which is why a lot of games on console have aim assist, but this is absent from the PC versions (i.e. Overwatch).
The amount of buttons you can map to MMO Mice and gamepads like Tartarus also means you can move fluently, while turning the camera and using your skills at maximum efficiency.
There is a difference between "I'm used to controller, so I use it for everything." and "Controller is as good as Mouse and Keyboard."
Controllers aren't as good as mouse and keyboard. This didn't become an obsession until PC hardware got a bit better, to the point that casuals could play decent PC games on their bargain bin hardware... At that point, they got the PC games, and wanted to bring their controllers over with them...
But if you get actual PC gaming accessories, spent an hour setting them up (you can do several games in an hour, as long as you have the key binds available to you (PDF, Web Page, Wiki, etc.)), and spent a week getting accustomed to it... There is simply no comparison.
And that's before we bring in the way these peripherals can be customized through software (Sticky Keys, Repeat, Macros, etc.).
At which point the controller will literally cease to be an option.
Controller is a nice crutch when moving over from console, but if you want to be serious about playing any game that isn't single player are quite casual in nature, you're eventually going to have to upgrade to something less limiting.
Darksworm - firstly I agree in regard to this technical comparison of quality pc gaming devices compared to the console/controller.
The issue I see is that we are seeing game mechanics/skills dictated by the limited functionality of the console/controller. In this sense these games are going backwards, rather than moving things forward in recognition of pc/peripheral advancements.
As such pc mmo players are faced with cumbersome mechanics, poorly adapted to their input devices. Content interfaces, skill sets and mechanics often reduced to spamming a couple of buttons while hopping around. Anything beyond a limited number of buttons results in having to press A to get to B to get to C, mirroring the lesser capability of the controller.
ESO is a prime example of a game's pc interface negatively affected to accommodate something less.
I really enjoyed the leveling, the atmosphere, environment, & story lines, of my 1st character in ESO. I began playing approximately 2-3 months prior to that Warden class being released. After earning the top level though ESO quickly declined with my attention & I stopped subscribing. It is just too much of a grindfest for those Champion Points (CP). I earned up to 173 or something & then thought about whether it would be fun to earn the 600+ & decided no to that hamster wheel. I'll admit though I rarely take the most efficient route to leveling since I spend more than half my time soloing, but there is little to no sense of accomplishment when grinding those CPs. I didn't like ESO's economic set-up, it would be perfect for a Role-Playing (RP) server though, but I adapted to it. The higher level you go the less decent soloable options there are for adequate gear too, but that is nothing new with massive multiplayer online (MMO) games. In the end, for me, there wasn't enough incentive to remain subscribed since I wasn't progressing at a pace I enjoyed nor did I think beginning another character would revive enough interest to regain the fun. I played for another month routinely without a subscription till, like now, I just log in to do my mount skill ups a few times a week. I think ESO is a good game & I think it handles the microtransactions better than some other MMOs. For myself, I just wish there was more storylines & soloable options after top level along with all the PvP & raiding focus.
I can't think of anything more boring than focused CP grinding. If I felt that I had to do that, I'd quit.
That is indeed one of the main reasons I quit in the past, but they changed the game so that once you get to CP160 (which is fairly easy now) CP becomes much less of an issue unless you want to do CP pvp, or I guess some of the very hardest pve content.
CP160 is the magic number because you can wear the best gear of the game at that point.
I really enjoyed the leveling, the atmosphere, environment, & story lines, of my 1st character in ESO. I began playing approximately 2-3 months prior to that Warden class being released. After earning the top level though ESO quickly declined with my attention & I stopped subscribing. It is just too much of a grindfest for those Champion Points (CP). I earned up to 173 or something & then thought about whether it would be fun to earn the 600+ & decided no to that hamster wheel. I'll admit though I rarely take the most efficient route to leveling since I spend more than half my time soloing, but there is little to no sense of accomplishment when grinding those CPs. I didn't like ESO's economic set-up, it would be perfect for a Role-Playing (RP) server though, but I adapted to it. The higher level you go the less decent soloable options there are for adequate gear too, but that is nothing new with massive multiplayer online (MMO) games. In the end, for me, there wasn't enough incentive to remain subscribed since I wasn't progressing at a pace I enjoyed nor did I think beginning another character would revive enough interest to regain the fun. I played for another month routinely without a subscription till, like now, I just log in to do my mount skill ups a few times a week. I think ESO is a good game & I think it handles the microtransactions better than some other MMOs. For myself, I just wish there was more storylines & soloable options after top level along with all the PvP & raiding focus.
I can't think of anything more boring than focused CP grinding. If I felt that I had to do that, I'd quit.
That is indeed one of the main reasons I quit in the past, but they changed the game so that once you get to CP160 (which is fairly easy now) CP becomes much less of an issue unless you want to do CP pvp, or I guess some of the very hardest pve content.
CP160 is the magic number because you can wear the best gear of the game at that point.
It's such a long term advancement system (I mean there are 3600 freaking CP points possible lol) that it actually makes very little sense to treat it like a "must get to max level quickly" kind of thing.
CP160 for gear and CP300 for the passive extra increases to your health, magicka and stamina pool are the only goals you might want to try for quickly.
But then I suppose it's easy for me to say since I'm sitting at around CP730 now. I might feel different if I was just starting to play the game.
I got to my current CP level by just playing the game. The CP just came when they came without me sweating it. I wasn't even at max usable CP a year ago. It wasn't until they started having regular double XP events starting with the Witch's festival in 2016 that I even hit the max.
Once you do, getting 30CP every 3 months to remain at the cap is pretty trivial if you play at all.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I got half way through the article. I was too annoyed with the sentence structure and punctuation. There's an over-reliance on using commata. When in many sentences, there's multiple-but equal, points that necessitate a semicolon. As well as many places where a period should be used instead of an additional comma.
Only just spotted this, back to school for Mr Hay. To think I have been called a grammar Nazi before.
I tried to like this game on PC but couldn't then tried to like it again on PS4 and couldn't. I have been playing a lot of GW2 Path of Fire and love that. Just wish I could solo more in ESO instead of waiting for others to log in or hoping to find some random to play with.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
The number of quests available is huge. Even more quests available since they opened the faction questing areas. If you like Skyrim you will like this game. Become a supernatural creature, become a master thief, become a master assassin. Good times.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I enjoy the game. Reading the comments, makes me see that ZOS hasn't done a great job of showing new players all it has to offer. I think my greatest memories are just meeting people, and doing some of the harder dungeons and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Now to the complaints I have seen:
"I feel like I could do anything at level 15". OK, jump in PvP and let me know how that works. Do some of the new DLC dungeons, then hard mode then the trials. Let me know how easy those are. Go fight a world boss and get one/two shot or miss a mechanic and die. Ya' know they aren't throwing you to the wolves at level 15. No MMO does that... why do you think at 15 you've seen it all? Just because you can run around the world and not get molested by trash mobs?
"Controller" complaints. Yes, this game is made for the controller. In fact, I quit it when it first came out, because playing it on a keyboard and mouse is awful and they didn't even support a controller back then! I think it took them years to add that to PC if I am not mistaken. If you play this on a keyboard and mouse I feel sorry for your wrist.
"CP complaints" Really? They can't win. If 50 was cap we would all complain there was nothing to do. They give extra rewards, and people complain. Past 400CP you really start to see diminishing returns. I still think of a 400CP player as a beginner(me) - I have been playing for 2 months and I am at 400CP. Your first 160 CP come in at an accelerated rate(I believe I got 24 CP after a daily dungeon run and 100% XP buff). This is just a part of any MMORPG nowadays. Except in ESO you can hang out with the max toons and continue to level up.
I think Tamriel One could have been done better. I believe it chases people off. Its too easy to out level your gear, and leveling up becomes a chore. They should have just made no level on the gear. That way you're not outscaling it. Why stop at an arbitrary 160CP, anyways? Just make it all level 1. A level 10 weapon wielded by a level 10 is the exact same damage as a 160CP weapon wielded by a lvl 50 CP 160 character. Players are being punished for no reason other than "that other game does it".
I think a lot of people don't like it, because gear is not a crutch in ESO. You actually need to be a good player, because everyone can get the same gear.
I think Tamriel One could have been done better. I believe it chases people off. Its too easy to out level your gear, and leveling up becomes a chore. They should have just made no level on the gear. That way you're not outscaling it. Why stop at an arbitrary 160CP, anyways? Just make it all level 1. A level 10 weapon wielded by a level 10 is the exact same damage as a 160CP weapon wielded by a lvl 50 CP 160 character. Players are being punished for no reason other than "that other game does it".
I agree. It's not like they don't have the tech to have things level with you - they already do it with a lot of the food and drinks you can craft in the game as well as crown store food and potions. They also got rid of Soul Gem tiers.
Finding and collecting gear sets that provide interesting 5-piece bonuses is the meta game after CP160. They should let you start doing that right from the start by having gear level with you instead of needing to replace it every 5 levels to get full benefit from it prior to CP160.
Edit: oh and about those control schemes. I've played it every way possible and nothing beats a good gaming mouse + KB... far superior to controllers if you have a good one with 12+ distinct and easy to differentiate buttons.
I use the KB for just WASD, space bar and E. Everything else is on my mouse.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Comments
I played Final Fantasy XIV, Tera, Blade and Soul, Black Desert, ESO, and even WoW with the action camera enabled and the addon that rearranges the UI for a controller, all of them with a gamepad and i can safely say i would never go back to mouse. It felt very natural and smooth.
It's funny how in 2017 some people still pretend that the only right way to play is the way they play.
The only way to play is the way you enjoy the game. Nobody else should care about how anybody else plays the game.
It's all about giving more options to the player. You pick what you like.
Highlighted by the utterly abysmal potion wheel - For completely ignoring the full functionality of a pc keyboard/mouse, this mechanic takes some beating.
The limited spells/skills just shout out that the pc was an afterthought, a lesser vehicle, subservient to the limits of console controllers.
If the likes of FFXIV can accommodate both pc and controllers with full action bar layouts then what went wrong here?
Then we have the 'must have' addons to make the game look anything like an mmo. Standard mmo features should have been in there from the start, with the option to turn them off. Not addon features that are sporadically supported by the individual who wrote them - or more often than not, passed to someone else to try and keep them going as the original person has left.
I hear that they did have full keyboard functionality when the game was in beta, but then decided for some unimaginable reason to take it out - If that's accurate, then it's one of the most idiotic decisions in mmo pc support I've come across.
The solution isn't that hard - put the standard mmo ui elements in there. Have a proper mouse/keyboard movement and skills system. Realize that pc players do not want to be constantly reminded they are playing a game where they are handicapped due to another limited input device.
Presumably you made a character and played (mostly) through the quest line for that character and maybe some other stuff? I say mostly because there is a lot of content and multiple ways you could have progressed.
And this matters why you ask.
Well what you can do is create a brand new character. In a different alliance say. And play through the story for that alliance.
With the exception of the main "prophet" story each arc is totally different. You don't need to re-subscribe either. As a minimum you have full access to the content for all 3 "core" alliances. If you bought the gold edition you will have the core + the first 4 (paid) DLCs; Morrowind edition - core + Morrowind.
And?
Play your new character FROM SCRATCH. Enjoy the immersion and the sense of achievement / progression - and suffer the annoyances!
Now you might look at this and think why? After another 173 or whatever champion points I am going to be in the same position ..... except it doesn't work that way.
Your new character will be new - with no skills etc. - but it will start at CP173. (So 1-50 could be very easy if you allocate all the CP points.) And if it does as much it will "finish" at c. 346CP. And if you then log back onto your first character ..... it to will be CP346.
Basically what ZoS did when they designed the game is they put a huge - huge - amount of effort in creating solid quest based story lines for 3 alliances which only came together in the main prophet storyline.
And then they thought about what they had done and how they could get everyboy to play through all the content they had made. So they came up with something called veteran levels and to get to the maximum VR you were "forced" to do your starting alliance and then the other two. Subsequently they converted Veteran Ranks to Champion Points and - essentially - each allaince storyline has 160 champion points. The cap is higher these days because each content drop has moved the bar.
One Tamriel changed it so that you can do content in any order but the alliance storylines are well done and collectively do form part of a greater story. Same deal for the Wrothgar story etc.
As I say you don't need to resub to give this approach a try. And maybe you find the magic is no longer there but maybe it is. In which case you can enjoy some more of what ESO offers.
Final comment: as far as gear goes any CP160 purple gear will do - improved over time by adding set bonuses.
Yeah...drama queens.
He wants to have the OG tab targeting combat. To be honest, sometimes I'd like it too.
That's because you use cheap mice and no gaming accessories. Spend some money. Controller won't feel so great anymore.
Controller works well enough for some people, particularly casuals and particularly in games like FFXIV which are basically handicapped for PC users because of Console/Controller gameplay.
But in a game like WoW, or any Action Combat Game, PC peripherals will blow a controller out of the water.
Controllers do not have enough buttons, and depend on shift states to access the amount of skills available in many MMORPG (or RPG) games.
Mouse Look is simply faster and more accurate than controller based movement. This is why games on Consoles tend to have slower camera speeds. Mice are also a lot more accurate, which is why a lot of games on console have aim assist, but this is absent from the PC versions (i.e. Overwatch).
The amount of buttons you can map to MMO Mice and gamepads like Tartarus also means you can move fluently, while turning the camera and using your skills at maximum efficiency.
There is a difference between "I'm used to controller, so I use it for everything." and "Controller is as good as Mouse and Keyboard."
Controllers aren't as good as mouse and keyboard. This didn't become an obsession until PC hardware got a bit better, to the point that casuals could play decent PC games on their bargain bin hardware... At that point, they got the PC games, and wanted to bring their controllers over with them...
But if you get actual PC gaming accessories, spent an hour setting them up (you can do several games in an hour, as long as you have the key binds available to you (PDF, Web Page, Wiki, etc.)), and spent a week getting accustomed to it... There is simply no comparison.
And that's before we bring in the way these peripherals can be customized through software (Sticky Keys, Repeat, Macros, etc.).
At which point the controller will literally cease to be an option.
Controller is a nice crutch when moving over from console, but if you want to be serious about playing any game that isn't single player are quite casual in nature, you're eventually going to have to upgrade to something less limiting.
The issue I see is that we are seeing game mechanics/skills dictated by the limited functionality of the console/controller. In this sense these games are going backwards, rather than moving things forward in recognition of pc/peripheral advancements.
As such pc mmo players are faced with cumbersome mechanics, poorly adapted to their input devices. Content interfaces, skill sets and mechanics often reduced to spamming a couple of buttons while hopping around. Anything beyond a limited number of buttons results in having to press A to get to B to get to C, mirroring the lesser capability of the controller.
ESO is a prime example of a game's pc interface negatively affected to accommodate something less.
CP160 is the magic number because you can wear the best gear of the game at that point.
CP160 for gear and CP300 for the passive extra increases to your health, magicka and stamina pool are the only goals you might want to try for quickly.
But then I suppose it's easy for me to say since I'm sitting at around CP730 now. I might feel different if I was just starting to play the game.
I got to my current CP level by just playing the game. The CP just came when they came without me sweating it. I wasn't even at max usable CP a year ago. It wasn't until they started having regular double XP events starting with the Witch's festival in 2016 that I even hit the max.
Once you do, getting 30CP every 3 months to remain at the cap is pretty trivial if you play at all.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Only just spotted this, back to school for Mr Hay. To think I have been called a grammar Nazi before.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"I feel like I could do anything at level 15". OK, jump in PvP and let me know how that works. Do some of the new DLC dungeons, then hard mode then the trials. Let me know how easy those are. Go fight a world boss and get one/two shot or miss a mechanic and die. Ya' know they aren't throwing you to the wolves at level 15. No MMO does that... why do you think at 15 you've seen it all? Just because you can run around the world and not get molested by trash mobs?
"Controller" complaints. Yes, this game is made for the controller. In fact, I quit it when it first came out, because playing it on a keyboard and mouse is awful and they didn't even support a controller back then! I think it took them years to add that to PC if I am not mistaken. If you play this on a keyboard and mouse I feel sorry for your wrist.
"CP complaints" Really? They can't win. If 50 was cap we would all complain there was nothing to do. They give extra rewards, and people complain. Past 400CP you really start to see diminishing returns. I still think of a 400CP player as a beginner(me) - I have been playing for 2 months and I am at 400CP. Your first 160 CP come in at an accelerated rate(I believe I got 24 CP after a daily dungeon run and 100% XP buff). This is just a part of any MMORPG nowadays. Except in ESO you can hang out with the max toons and continue to level up.
I think Tamriel One could have been done better. I believe it chases people off. Its too easy to out level your gear, and leveling up becomes a chore. They should have just made no level on the gear. That way you're not outscaling it. Why stop at an arbitrary 160CP, anyways? Just make it all level 1. A level 10 weapon wielded by a level 10 is the exact same damage as a 160CP weapon wielded by a lvl 50 CP 160 character. Players are being punished for no reason other than "that other game does it".
I think a lot of people don't like it, because gear is not a crutch in ESO. You actually need to be a good player, because everyone can get the same gear.
Finding and collecting gear sets that provide interesting 5-piece bonuses is the meta game after CP160. They should let you start doing that right from the start by having gear level with you instead of needing to replace it every 5 levels to get full benefit from it prior to CP160.
Edit: oh and about those control schemes. I've played it every way possible and nothing beats a good gaming mouse + KB... far superior to controllers if you have a good one with 12+ distinct and easy to differentiate buttons.
I use the KB for just WASD, space bar and E. Everything else is on my mouse.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED