They never lied. You have two types of content additions in ESO:
1) DLC. Those are included in ESO +.
2) Expansions. Those have to be purchased like for every other game. Expansions usually add new skill lines and/or new classes and/or crafting skills too in addition of massive amounts of landmass and quests.
Old expansions may eventually be included in the base subscription aka ESO+. Like WoW, actually... same system.
Actually, it's not terribly similar to WoW. Let's have a look at WoW's marketing. If you go to their site, there's a "Buy Now" button that takes you here:
That says in four places that it includes up to level 110, after coming from a page where Battle for Azeroth says it lets you go to 120. It also explicitly says, "Get access to World of Warcraft® and every expansion through Legion", after coming from a page that advertises Battle for Azeroth as the latest. It also includes a link to here:
That offers a free trial of WoW up to level 20, but explicitly says that you'll have to subscribe to go beyond that.
So that's pretty clear that if you just buy the subscription, you don't get Battle for Azeroth. If ESO had said "Full access to all DLC game packs through Morrowind", I wouldn't be here to complain about false advertising, and I wouldn't have requested a refund.
And that's just the marketing. Let's also consider the business model itself. With ESO, if you buy a box and a subscription (which is what I did), you still don't get Summerset. With WoW, if you buy a box and a subscription, you get everything. WoW also has a free trial, which ESO does not.
While I agree the wording is a bit weird, and I'm glad you got your refund, you are being a bit absurd with your stance on this.
It is confusing, I'm sure it's a marketing tactic, but I don't think it's actively trying to deceive anyone. DLC packs in game are very different from Expansions, DLC packs being small 1 dungeon and a few quests addons, and Expansions being full zones. They have never given expansions with ESO + until recently with Morrowind when Summerset came out.
That's like getting upset that Blizzard announced you don't have to buy expansions anymore if you pay the monthly fee, but the newest expansion isn't included so you blacklist them.
With the payment model of ESO you are not paying for anything if you don't want to, you get whatever DLC you want. ESO + is just there if you want to plow through all of the DLC without owning them, and you buy expansions if you want the expansion content. A tiny tiny tiny bit of research would have brought you to this conclusion, even a simple typing of Do I get ESO expansions with ESO Plus in google, the first result literally says the answer in giant text.
With ESO it's actually better to wait for a sale in which they lump a few DLC and expansions together for a nice discount if you don't sub.
"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
Zenimax has agreed to refund my money. That means that I won't need to consider a chargeback, and that makes it a lot cleaner.
Ultimately, the general principle involved is that I do not wish to do business with a company that actively tries to deceive me. I don't want to have to read and decipher 20 pages of legalese to figure out what I'm getting. If a company is going to strongly imply a factual claim, then it had better be true, not accompanied by fine print that says it's not at all similar to what they were trying to make you think it was. If I let this go and kept playing the game, it probably wouldn't be the last time that they tried to trick me into buying the wrong thing. I don't want to deal with that.
So congratulations, Zenimax: you get to join Electronic Arts on my boycott list. That doesn't quite mean that I'll absolutely never buy anything from them ever again. But it would have to look awfully good for me to give it a try, which is a threshold that EA hasn't managed to meet in the last 25 years or so. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt the way I would for ArenaNet, Cryptic, Blizzard, Trion, En Masse, Daybreak, IMC, KOG, or any other studio for which what I've gotten for my money has been what I expected, at least apart from perhaps not enjoying a game as much as I had hoped.
Glad to hear they gave you a refund. I find their business model insulting.
Zenimax being the parent company to Bethesda leaves me with little faith in future releases from either company.
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
It's confusing with the names they use but that's not entirely accurate. Zenimax Media Inc. is the parent company to all of the different studios that includes Zenimax Online, Bethesda, Arkane, ID, etc.
If anything these days when something Important is to be announced they bring in Pete Hines, Bethesda's VP of Marketing and Communications to handle the spin as they did with the Morrowind reveal. Lately also they have changed the name of the ESO launcher to the Bethesda Launcher - not a big deal but a move I assume is the precursor to their upcoming game stable launcher.
So not only is ZOS not Bethesda's parent company, in some ways Bethesda acts as ZOS' parent company.
"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
Zenimax has agreed to refund my money. That means that I won't need to consider a chargeback, and that makes it a lot cleaner.
Ultimately, the general principle involved is that I do not wish to do business with a company that actively tries to deceive me. I don't want to have to read and decipher 20 pages of legalese to figure out what I'm getting. If a company is going to strongly imply a factual claim, then it had better be true, not accompanied by fine print that says it's not at all similar to what they were trying to make you think it was. If I let this go and kept playing the game, it probably wouldn't be the last time that they tried to trick me into buying the wrong thing. I don't want to deal with that.
So congratulations, Zenimax: you get to join Electronic Arts on my boycott list. That doesn't quite mean that I'll absolutely never buy anything from them ever again. But it would have to look awfully good for me to give it a try, which is a threshold that EA hasn't managed to meet in the last 25 years or so. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt the way I would for ArenaNet, Cryptic, Blizzard, Trion, En Masse, Daybreak, IMC, KOG, or any other studio for which what I've gotten for my money has been what I expected, at least apart from perhaps not enjoying a game as much as I had hoped.
I'm happy you got your refund this quickly since a lot of dealings with customer support do seem to drag on over there.
I've agreed in this thread with the source of your confusion trying to put myself in your noob shoes. I love and play the game daily but there are several things the company does that also rub me the wrong way. Playing silly games with terminology being one of those and RNG loot crates being the other biggie.
I know you focused on what the ESO+ store page said and didn't say for your complaint but IMO, the real problem is the confusion created by selling 3 different entry packages (4 if you count the collectors edition but I don't think that confuses anyone): One with Summerset included and no other included DLC other than Morrowind, one with Summerset and some, but not all, of the DLC and one with no Summerset and only Morrowind included.
This is a lot messier than it needs to be. If they are going to offer a package with DLC included, they should offer one with all DLC instead of leaving out Clockwork City, Wolfhunter, Shadow of the Hist and others. If ESO+ includes everything except Summerset - which is the case, it should be crystal clear that this is what it gives you.
The confusion created by their offered entry packages may be just poor marketing or something more devious. I'm not going to speculate which since several years of dealing with them has shown me that either is equally possible.
In hindsight you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by asking here though. We could have set you straight in a couple of minutes.
"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
While I agree the wording is a bit weird, and I'm glad you got your refund, you are being a bit absurd with your stance on this.
It is confusing, I'm sure it's a marketing tactic, but I don't think it's actively trying to deceive anyone. DLC packs in game are very different from Expansions, DLC packs being small 1 dungeon and a few quests addons, and Expansions being full zones. They have never given expansions with ESO + until recently with Morrowind when Summerset came out.
That's like getting upset that Blizzard announced you don't have to buy expansions anymore if you pay the monthly fee, but the newest expansion isn't included so you blacklist them.
With the payment model of ESO you are not paying for anything if you don't want to, you get whatever DLC you want. ESO + is just there if you want to plow through all of the DLC without owning them, and you buy expansions if you want the expansion content. A tiny tiny tiny bit of research would have brought you to this conclusion, even a simple typing of Do I get ESO expansions with ESO Plus in google, the first result literally says the answer in giant text.
If there's such a clear distinction between them, then why is it that Morrowind used to not be a DLC game pack and not included in ESO Plus, and now it is? If you read the whole thread, then even the people trying to defend Zenimax are confused about the business model in a variety of different ways.
For that matter, if you read the whole thread, you'll see that I spent several hours reading up on the game before making my purchase. Most of that wasn't specifically looking at the business model, but that's just one of many considerations before deciding to purchase a game. I read through literally dozens of pages on the official web site, and significant portions of the game's wiki. Surely that far exceeds any notion of due diligence.
If that's not sufficient to understand what I'll get for my purchase, then it's complicated enough that I don't particularly want to play that game. I've shied away from Entropia and Star Citizen for reasons related to this, as well as a whole host of pay to win games.
Maybe you know the nuances because you've played the game for years and seen changes as they came. I didn't because I hadn't. I understand that the shift from including everything in the subscription to everything but the latest expansion was a significant scandal in the game's history, but I wasn't there to see it, and wasn't aware of it until after making my purchase. Reading up on the official web site and the game's wiki is all what I had to go by.
We're now on the third page here, and there are plenty of people who have argued that I should have known, perhaps because they personally knew, but no one yet has offered an explanation of how I should have known.
If Blizzard said on their web site that paying a subscription gets you access to all expansions, and then I paid for the game and found out otherwise, and it wasn't some mistake on their part that they were willing to make good on, I absolutely would blacklist them for it. But they didn't, they haven't, and I'd be very surprised to see them do so because it would be so unethical.
It's not just hypothetical, either. I see nothing at all on the WoW subscription page that would lead one to believe that a subscription alone gives you all expansions. I count no fewer than five places on the page that indicates that it doesn't. That's very, very different from the ESO Plus page that strongly implies in three places that you get all of the content.
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
????? Never played any ES game before?
That is correct. I had never played any Elder Scrolls game before. One hopes that the target audience for a game is not merely some subset of people who played a previous game in the series. FFXIV was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played since playing the original for a fraction of a day, and they managed not to assume that I was familiar with the previous thirteen installments in the line.
Zenimax has agreed to refund my money. That means that I won't need to consider a chargeback, and that makes it a lot cleaner.
Ultimately, the general principle involved is that I do not wish to do business with a company that actively tries to deceive me. I don't want to have to read and decipher 20 pages of legalese to figure out what I'm getting. If a company is going to strongly imply a factual claim, then it had better be true, not accompanied by fine print that says it's not at all similar to what they were trying to make you think it was. If I let this go and kept playing the game, it probably wouldn't be the last time that they tried to trick me into buying the wrong thing. I don't want to deal with that.
So congratulations, Zenimax: you get to join Electronic Arts on my boycott list. That doesn't quite mean that I'll absolutely never buy anything from them ever again. But it would have to look awfully good for me to give it a try, which is a threshold that EA hasn't managed to meet in the last 25 years or so. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt the way I would for ArenaNet, Cryptic, Blizzard, Trion, En Masse, Daybreak, IMC, KOG, or any other studio for which what I've gotten for my money has been what I expected, at least apart from perhaps not enjoying a game as much as I had hoped.
I'm happy you got your refund this quickly since a lot of dealings with customer support do seem to drag on over there.
I've agreed in this thread with the source of your confusion trying to put myself in your noob shoes. I love and play the game daily but there are several things the company does that also rub me the wrong way. Playing silly games with terminology being one of those and RNG loot crates being the other biggie.
I know you focused on what the ESO+ store page said and didn't say for your complaint but IMO, the real problem is the confusion created by selling 3 different entry packages (4 if you count the collectors edition but I don't think that confuses anyone): One with Summerset included and no other included DLC other than Morrowind, one with Summerset and some, but not all, of the DLC and one with no Summerset and only Morrowind included.
This is a lot messier than it needs to be. If they are going to offer a package with DLC included, they should offer one with all DLC instead of leaving out Clockwork City, Wolfhunter, Shadow of the Hist and others. If ESO+ includes everything except Summerset - which is the case, it should be crystal clear that this is what it gives you.
The confusion created by their offered entry packages may be just poor marketing or something more devious. I'm not going to speculate which since several years of dealing with them has shown me that either is equally possible.
In hindsight you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by asking here though. We could have set you straight in a couple of minutes.
The problem is that it's easy to fix a mistake if you know exactly where it is. It's much harder if you think you know a hundred things about the game, two of them are wrong, and you don't know which two. If you're a computer programmer, think of the difference between knowing that there is a bug in your code versus knowing exactly which line of code is doing the wrong thing.
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
????? Never played any ES game before?
That is correct. I had never played any Elder Scrolls game before. One hopes that the target audience for a game is not merely some subset of people who played a previous game in the series. FFXIV was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played since playing the original for a fraction of a day, and they managed not to assume that I was familiar with the previous thirteen installments in the line.
I just think its amusing that you are a gold name on a gaming forum and 1) have never played any game in what is probably the most well known rpg franchise made in the West, and yet despite that 2) think you know what constitutes "orthodox" in gaming.
Its also pretty funny that you think a stam/mag stat split is complicated. No wonder you had difficulty reading the information about what you purchased.
It's hard keeping track of games. With Steam package sales alone I own over 300 games. Of those games I've probably finished less then a hundred and couldn't even guess how many games I've started but not finished or have never touched that got very good ratings. Add to that games I've bought that are not sold on Steam and I have no idea the number of games I've bought and played over the years. That said, I can see missing or skipping games that were considered big deals at the time but never played because I was into another line of games at the time.
"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
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
????? Never played any ES game before?
That is correct. I had never played any Elder Scrolls game before. One hopes that the target audience for a game is not merely some subset of people who played a previous game in the series. FFXIV was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played since playing the original for a fraction of a day, and they managed not to assume that I was familiar with the previous thirteen installments in the line.
I just think its amusing that you are a gold name on a gaming forum and 1) have never played any game in what is probably the most well known rpg franchise made in the West, and yet despite that 2) think you know what constitutes "orthodox" in gaming.
Its also pretty funny that you think a stam/mag stat split is complicated. No wonder you had difficulty reading the information about what you purchased.
If it's so common in MMORPGs, then list another one that does it. A lot of games have a mana pool, or something to that effect by a different name. Having two separate mana-like pools and expecting characters to largely specialize in one or the other is not something I had seen before in an MMORPG.
Similarly, a lot of MMORPGs have skill points of some sort, but most commonly they're allocated within skill trees for your class, or within some universal set of skills. I hadn't previously seen an MMORPG where skill points are shared with armor skills or weapon skills. Sharing them with crafting skills is also unusual, though Anarchy Online did that, too.
I'm not saying those things are bad. I didn't get far enough into the game to have an informed opinion. But I am saying that it would be nice if the game offered a bit of explanation. It's one thing to read on a web site that some mechanic exists, but it's quite another to see it play out in the game. The total amount of tutorial explanation that I saw in the few hours that I played likely wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card, and that's pathetic.
If it's so common in MMORPGs, then list another one that does it. A lot of games have a mana pool, or something to that effect by a different name. Having two separate mana-like pools and expecting characters to largely specialize in one or the other is not something I had seen before in an MMORPG.
Similarly, a lot of MMORPGs have skill points of some sort, but most commonly they're allocated within skill trees for your class, or within some universal set of skills. I hadn't previously seen an MMORPG where skill points are shared with armor skills or weapon skills. Sharing them with crafting skills is also unusual, though Anarchy Online did that, too.
I'm not saying those things are bad. I didn't get far enough into the game to have an informed opinion. But I am saying that it would be nice if the game offered a bit of explanation. It's one thing to read on a web site that some mechanic exists, but it's quite another to see it play out in the game. The total amount of tutorial explanation that I saw in the few hours that I played likely wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card, and that's pathetic.
Please don't take the question condescendingly, it's genuinely not meant that way, although in text, I'm afraid it'll come off that way. It's an honest question, that I'm curious about.
Considering the vast amount of people who do play the game, how do you suppose they figured it out and got comfortable? Do you feel they just had a larger threshold for frustration? How did they overcome the "pathetic" tutorial experience that you had?
To explain what I'm driving at, is that I've found games that I felt required me to spend hours watching video's, doing a ton of reading outside the game in order to enjoy. Even on top of tutorials, it required a lot of time spent learning the nuances of the game. There are games where I was able to dive in an play, and figure out all the basics, and learn the nuances as I went. However some of the things you are describing don't seem to be "nuances" rather, fundamental parts of the game, that frankly, you are one of the first people I'm seeing say they were unable to understand.
(And for the record...yeah...they should be infinitely clearer about what each package encompasses. When I came back to the game in the Spring for the first time post launch, I had to read very closely what each option really had. So I don't totally disagree with your premise.)
If it's so common in MMORPGs, then list another one that does it. A lot of games have a mana pool, or something to that effect by a different name. Having two separate mana-like pools and expecting characters to largely specialize in one or the other is not something I had seen before in an MMORPG.
Similarly, a lot of MMORPGs have skill points of some sort, but most commonly they're allocated within skill trees for your class, or within some universal set of skills. I hadn't previously seen an MMORPG where skill points are shared with armor skills or weapon skills. Sharing them with crafting skills is also unusual, though Anarchy Online did that, too.
I'm not saying those things are bad. I didn't get far enough into the game to have an informed opinion. But I am saying that it would be nice if the game offered a bit of explanation. It's one thing to read on a web site that some mechanic exists, but it's quite another to see it play out in the game. The total amount of tutorial explanation that I saw in the few hours that I played likely wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card, and that's pathetic.
Please don't take the question condescendingly, it's genuinely not meant that way, although in text, I'm afraid it'll come off that way. It's an honest question, that I'm curious about.
Considering the vast amount of people who do play the game, how do you suppose they figured it out and got comfortable? Do you feel they just had a larger threshold for frustration? How did they overcome the "pathetic" tutorial experience that you had?
To explain what I'm driving at, is that I've found games that I felt required me to spend hours watching video's, doing a ton of reading outside the game in order to enjoy. Even on top of tutorials, it required a lot of time spent learning the nuances of the game. There are games where I was able to dive in an play, and figure out all the basics, and learn the nuances as I went. However some of the things you are describing don't seem to be "nuances" rather, fundamental parts of the game, that frankly, you are one of the first people I'm seeing say they were unable to understand.
(And for the record...yeah...they should be infinitely clearer about what each package encompasses. When I came back to the game in the Spring for the first time post launch, I had to read very closely what each option really had. So I don't totally disagree with your premise.)
I'm not saying, I couldn't figure out how to play. I figured out a lot before even playing the game by reading about it, and more once I started it. I'm sure that I could have figured out the rest of the things that were important had I been inclined to stay with the game.
But I am saying that I think they made a pretty severe blunder by not having a tutorial. Repeatedly having to spend a few minutes trying to find the right button to click for functionality that I know is there somewhere is annoying. It's part of learning a game, yes, but a good tutorial can greatly reduce it. Most game developers get that and offer a tutorial, even for cheap, simple games. I find it baffling that Bethesda couldn't be bothered to do so.
things like typing H to mount a Horse are incredibly intimidating... I almost quit mmorpgs because of that.
Sz
If you know off hand which key you're supposed to press, or which button in the interface, or whatever, then yeah, it's easy. But if you don't know, some things like that can take a little bit of time to find out.
I didn't make it far enough into the game to buy a horse. But if you use H to mount a horse, then when you buy your first horse, the game should tell you that you press H to mount it. It shouldn't just leave you to guess whether there is a hotkey (and if so, which one), whether you're supposed to find it in your inventory and click, whether you have to track down the right menu, whether you need to move it to a hotbar, or whatever. Sure, you can figure it out, but having to figure it out rather than just being told is stupid.
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
????? Never played any ES game before?
That is correct. I had never played any Elder Scrolls game before. One hopes that the target audience for a game is not merely some subset of people who played a previous game in the series. FFXIV was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played since playing the original for a fraction of a day, and they managed not to assume that I was familiar with the previous thirteen installments in the line.
Even if you played other elder scrolls games imo this is very little like them. It feels like a cheap boring knockoff and almost might as well be single player also.
If it's so common in MMORPGs, then list another one that does it. A lot of games have a mana pool, or something to that effect by a different name. Having two separate mana-like pools and expecting characters to largely specialize in one or the other is not something I had seen before in an MMORPG.
Similarly, a lot of MMORPGs have skill points of some sort, but most commonly they're allocated within skill trees for your class, or within some universal set of skills. I hadn't previously seen an MMORPG where skill points are shared with armor skills or weapon skills. Sharing them with crafting skills is also unusual, though Anarchy Online did that, too.
I'm not saying those things are bad. I didn't get far enough into the game to have an informed opinion. But I am saying that it would be nice if the game offered a bit of explanation. It's one thing to read on a web site that some mechanic exists, but it's quite another to see it play out in the game. The total amount of tutorial explanation that I saw in the few hours that I played likely wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card, and that's pathetic.
Please don't take the question condescendingly, it's genuinely not meant that way, although in text, I'm afraid it'll come off that way. It's an honest question, that I'm curious about.
Considering the vast amount of people who do play the game, how do you suppose they figured it out and got comfortable? Do you feel they just had a larger threshold for frustration? How did they overcome the "pathetic" tutorial experience that you had?
To explain what I'm driving at, is that I've found games that I felt required me to spend hours watching video's, doing a ton of reading outside the game in order to enjoy. Even on top of tutorials, it required a lot of time spent learning the nuances of the game. There are games where I was able to dive in an play, and figure out all the basics, and learn the nuances as I went. However some of the things you are describing don't seem to be "nuances" rather, fundamental parts of the game, that frankly, you are one of the first people I'm seeing say they were unable to understand.
(And for the record...yeah...they should be infinitely clearer about what each package encompasses. When I came back to the game in the Spring for the first time post launch, I had to read very closely what each option really had. So I don't totally disagree with your premise.)
But I am saying that I think they made a pretty severe blunder by not having a tutorial.
But there's a learning curve, as the game does some unorthodox things. I'd never seen anything like the game's stamina/magicka split, and their skill point system is certainly unusual. Having a learning curve isn't necessarily bad, as innovative game mechanics will usually cause one. The problem is that Zenimax doesn't seem to care to do anything to smooth that learning curve. That can't possibly be good for player retention. Most players won't spend several hours reading up on a game before trying it; if I hadn't done so, I'd probably have quit in frustration by now. Now that the game has been out for more than four years, maybe they should find time to make the new player experience a little friendlier.
????? Never played any ES game before?
That is correct. I had never played any Elder Scrolls game before. One hopes that the target audience for a game is not merely some subset of people who played a previous game in the series. FFXIV was the first Final Fantasy game that I had played since playing the original for a fraction of a day, and they managed not to assume that I was familiar with the previous thirteen installments in the line.
Is ESO considered an elder scrolls game? If it is it's the worst of the lot except for Arena.
Comments
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-battle-for-azeroth
It explicitly says in three places, "Requires subscription or game time". Two of them are links that take you here:
https://us.shop.battle.net/en-us/product/world-of-warcraft-subscription
That says in four places that it includes up to level 110, after coming from a page where Battle for Azeroth says it lets you go to 120. It also explicitly says, "Get access to World of Warcraft® and every expansion through Legion", after coming from a page that advertises Battle for Azeroth as the latest. It also includes a link to here:
https://us.battle.net/account/download/?show=wow
That offers a free trial of WoW up to level 20, but explicitly says that you'll have to subscribe to go beyond that.
So that's pretty clear that if you just buy the subscription, you don't get Battle for Azeroth. If ESO had said "Full access to all DLC game packs through Morrowind", I wouldn't be here to complain about false advertising, and I wouldn't have requested a refund.
And that's just the marketing. Let's also consider the business model itself. With ESO, if you buy a box and a subscription (which is what I did), you still don't get Summerset. With WoW, if you buy a box and a subscription, you get everything. WoW also has a free trial, which ESO does not.
It is confusing, I'm sure it's a marketing tactic, but I don't think it's actively trying to deceive anyone. DLC packs in game are very different from Expansions, DLC packs being small 1 dungeon and a few quests addons, and Expansions being full zones. They have never given expansions with ESO + until recently with Morrowind when Summerset came out.
That's like getting upset that Blizzard announced you don't have to buy expansions anymore if you pay the monthly fee, but the newest expansion isn't included so you blacklist them.
With the payment model of ESO you are not paying for anything if you don't want to, you get whatever DLC you want. ESO + is just there if you want to plow through all of the DLC without owning them, and you buy expansions if you want the expansion content. A tiny tiny tiny bit of research would have brought you to this conclusion, even a simple typing of Do I get ESO expansions with ESO Plus in google, the first result literally says the answer in giant text.
"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
Zenimax being the parent company to Bethesda leaves me with little faith in future releases from either company.
Hopefully they'll prove me wrong.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
If anything these days when something Important is to be announced they bring in Pete Hines, Bethesda's VP of Marketing and Communications to handle the spin as they did with the Morrowind reveal. Lately also they have changed the name of the ESO launcher to the Bethesda Launcher - not a big deal but a move I assume is the precursor to their upcoming game stable launcher.
So not only is ZOS not Bethesda's parent company, in some ways Bethesda acts as ZOS' parent company.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'll just leave that one out here, apply where needed.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I've agreed in this thread with the source of your confusion trying to put myself in your noob shoes. I love and play the game daily but there are several things the company does that also rub me the wrong way. Playing silly games with terminology being one of those and RNG loot crates being the other biggie.
I know you focused on what the ESO+ store page said and didn't say for your complaint but IMO, the real problem is the confusion created by selling 3 different entry packages (4 if you count the collectors edition but I don't think that confuses anyone): One with Summerset included and no other included DLC other than Morrowind, one with Summerset and some, but not all, of the DLC and one with no Summerset and only Morrowind included.
This is a lot messier than it needs to be. If they are going to offer a package with DLC included, they should offer one with all DLC instead of leaving out Clockwork City, Wolfhunter, Shadow of the Hist and others. If ESO+ includes everything except Summerset - which is the case, it should be crystal clear that this is what it gives you.
The confusion created by their offered entry packages may be just poor marketing or something more devious. I'm not going to speculate which since several years of dealing with them has shown me that either is equally possible.
In hindsight you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by asking here though. We could have set you straight in a couple of minutes.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
For that matter, if you read the whole thread, you'll see that I spent several hours reading up on the game before making my purchase. Most of that wasn't specifically looking at the business model, but that's just one of many considerations before deciding to purchase a game. I read through literally dozens of pages on the official web site, and significant portions of the game's wiki. Surely that far exceeds any notion of due diligence.
If that's not sufficient to understand what I'll get for my purchase, then it's complicated enough that I don't particularly want to play that game. I've shied away from Entropia and Star Citizen for reasons related to this, as well as a whole host of pay to win games.
Maybe you know the nuances because you've played the game for years and seen changes as they came. I didn't because I hadn't. I understand that the shift from including everything in the subscription to everything but the latest expansion was a significant scandal in the game's history, but I wasn't there to see it, and wasn't aware of it until after making my purchase. Reading up on the official web site and the game's wiki is all what I had to go by.
We're now on the third page here, and there are plenty of people who have argued that I should have known, perhaps because they personally knew, but no one yet has offered an explanation of how I should have known.
If Blizzard said on their web site that paying a subscription gets you access to all expansions, and then I paid for the game and found out otherwise, and it wasn't some mistake on their part that they were willing to make good on, I absolutely would blacklist them for it. But they didn't, they haven't, and I'd be very surprised to see them do so because it would be so unethical.
It's not just hypothetical, either. I see nothing at all on the WoW subscription page that would lead one to believe that a subscription alone gives you all expansions. I count no fewer than five places on the page that indicates that it doesn't. That's very, very different from the ESO Plus page that strongly implies in three places that you get all of the content.
Its also pretty funny that you think a stam/mag stat split is complicated. No wonder you had difficulty reading the information about what you purchased.
"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
This. I'm amazed OP can get dressed in the morning without a guide.
Similarly, a lot of MMORPGs have skill points of some sort, but most commonly they're allocated within skill trees for your class, or within some universal set of skills. I hadn't previously seen an MMORPG where skill points are shared with armor skills or weapon skills. Sharing them with crafting skills is also unusual, though Anarchy Online did that, too.
I'm not saying those things are bad. I didn't get far enough into the game to have an informed opinion. But I am saying that it would be nice if the game offered a bit of explanation. It's one thing to read on a web site that some mechanic exists, but it's quite another to see it play out in the game. The total amount of tutorial explanation that I saw in the few hours that I played likely wouldn't fill a 3x5 index card, and that's pathetic.
Please don't take the question condescendingly, it's genuinely not meant that way, although in text, I'm afraid it'll come off that way. It's an honest question, that I'm curious about.
Considering the vast amount of people who do play the game, how do you suppose they figured it out and got comfortable? Do you feel they just had a larger threshold for frustration? How did they overcome the "pathetic" tutorial experience that you had?
To explain what I'm driving at, is that I've found games that I felt required me to spend hours watching video's, doing a ton of reading outside the game in order to enjoy. Even on top of tutorials, it required a lot of time spent learning the nuances of the game. There are games where I was able to dive in an play, and figure out all the basics, and learn the nuances as I went. However some of the things you are describing don't seem to be "nuances" rather, fundamental parts of the game, that frankly, you are one of the first people I'm seeing say they were unable to understand.
(And for the record...yeah...they should be infinitely clearer about what each package encompasses. When I came back to the game in the Spring for the first time post launch, I had to read very closely what each option really had. So I don't totally disagree with your premise.)
But I am saying that I think they made a pretty severe blunder by not having a tutorial. Repeatedly having to spend a few minutes trying to find the right button to click for functionality that I know is there somewhere is annoying. It's part of learning a game, yes, but a good tutorial can greatly reduce it. Most game developers get that and offer a tutorial, even for cheap, simple games. I find it baffling that Bethesda couldn't be bothered to do so.
Sz
I didn't make it far enough into the game to buy a horse. But if you use H to mount a horse, then when you buy your first horse, the game should tell you that you press H to mount it. It shouldn't just leave you to guess whether there is a hotkey (and if so, which one), whether you're supposed to find it in your inventory and click, whether you have to track down the right menu, whether you need to move it to a hotbar, or whatever. Sure, you can figure it out, but having to figure it out rather than just being told is stupid.