Top 5 Ways The Elder Scrolls Online Could Vasty Improve Its Gameplay

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Top 5 Ways The Elder Scrolls Online Could Vasty Improve Its Gameplay

The Elder Scrolls Online has been a mainstay in the MMORPG world for six year now, but there comes a point where it can feel a bit too stagnant. Here are five ways we think that ZeniMax could spruce up the gameplay in ESO.

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Slapshot1188

Thank you for an ACTUAL MMORPG discussion! I'll chime in after I digest the proposals.

Abimor

I agree with the original story needing to change the way it works. I have a lot of guys who have been though the story, and I wish I could just skip to the end and get the points that you get from the story. Having to do it so many times just to be able to get to coldharbor is really tedious. I like the idea of guilds for the different classes they could add new skills that unlock or cosmetics as you lvl through the guild. I wouldn't want them putting any skills that exist now behind a gate though.

Slapshot1188

Give Character Classes Dedicated Guilds and Questlines: Absolutely agree! I suppose the challenge is that each questline would only be experienced by a portion of the player population so would they consider it a good use of their development time...

Revamp (or at least Rebalance) the Champion Point System: Again I agree. I thought this was the weakest portion of the leveling system. It lets you customize the characters but just didn't appeal to me the same way.


Add More Variety in Item and Enemy Types: Probably due to the same "value" proposition as the character quest idea. Heck, wouldn't it be great to tie in some skills to those items? So you could focus on weapons from a specific area?

Restructure the Original Quests, Including the Main Quest: I kind of enjoyed the main questline, but again... new content is always a good thing in my book

Introduce a Better Dedicated Player Hub: Now this one I don't know about. I understand the desire, but sometimes that just makes the zone feel like a graphic overlay on a chat lobby. I'd have to see how it was implemented.

Aeander

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

ysquare21

I like this discussion but my 5 are a bit different:

1) Original Quest/ Main Quest
I agree that it feels disjointed but I would prefer a return to faction based storyline and a strong main questline. While I understand One Tamriel changed everything, there must be a better way to tie in the PVP/ Cyrodil conflict with the continuing story. I loved how the base game combined region quests, the main questline and the war in Cyrodil. It has lost all meaning at this point to be part of the Daggerfall Covenant, making me playing a Breton irrelevant.
All we are getting now are new regions with a (largely) self contained regional storyline. I no longer feel connected to the world without any main story and every region feeling samey.

2) PVE combat has become way to easy. Questing and exploring is only fun if there is a sense of danger. I understand that true challenge lies in dungeons and trials but since One Tamriel you can basically spam one attack and kill everything. Open world dungeons used to be so hard but are now a breeze. The big bad guy at the end of a questline usually dies after two hits before he can even finish speaking his lines. I wish they would return a bit of difficulty for a sense of danger, adn that you can actually try and test new builds while exploring. No other MMO has such easy PVE.

3) Housing needs to enhance item slots considerably and make no difference between playerbase. I understand subscribers need an incentive to pay a monthly fee but limiting the items you can place in a house for non-subscribers does not help anyone. If I pay real money to buy a house than it should offer the same slots. It makes me want to craft more , buy more ingame furniture and cosmetics in the store. The need a different reward for subscribers.

4) Cyrodil and Imerial City need a revamp. It has been the same map since launch. How about an invasion from Oblivion that changes the landscape? Imperial City needs to be twice as big and focus more on non-zerg PVE. Include more PVE as well so people can have random PvP encounters. Everyone has explored all the caves at this point.

5) Expansion. I know that it won't happen but the game needs a bit of a revamp at this stage, PVE, PVP, RVR and the Coldharbour anchors need to be dynamic events (if Rift could do it, so can ESO). Only a true expansion can achieve this, tie everything together, refresh an d position ESO for the future.

Aeander

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

No.
No.
No.

Animation cancelling is what adds depth, and skill - without it combat is lame

Depth? That word does not mean what you think it means. Depth is an intellectual aspect, not a mechanical one and animation canceling has nothing to do with depth.

Theocritus

Make it Skyrim online and I might be interested......ESO is just a joke of a game. Embarrassing to even list it with the other Elder Scrolls games.

Alomar

I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've heard people complain how utterly easy the overland pve, which is most of the pve, in ESO. I've gone around naked and without cp and still it plays like a 5 year old smashing keys could play it. I've given up on ESO getting better anymore though, it's become the Go-To Elder Scrolls cash cow whose only focus is on it's cash shop and lootcrates with minimal communication, bug fixing, server managing, performance improving, and content development in any other area.

Iselin

Aeander said:

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

No it doesn't.

What it needs is a revamp so that the thing you cancel does not count for full effect. Action combat needs cancelling for all the legit defensive or situational reasons to block, dodge, bash or just cancel out of an action for strategic reasons.

The alternative, which is animation lock, is an infinitely worse option if you want any kind of fluidity in action combat decision making.

It gets cheesed in ESO to up DPS only because the all important number crunching that determines the effect of the action is done at the beginning of the action, not at the end.

Greatsword

Fix the ugly animations.
But I know it's wishful thinking - it's pretty much limited by the Hero engine.

Elethon

I want better combat and some adjusting done to certain spell effects.
All the spells, aside from invisibility, that make your character transparent need tp be redone. Honestly couldn't get into the sorc because hurricane looks so bad.

bgzgamer

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

No.

No.

No.



Animation cancelling is what adds depth, and skill - without it combat is lame

Combat is already fucking lame...

its a spammy mobile-game-skills mess. There is no skill involved with it whatsoever.. spam the best damage youve got.. over and over again because its more efficient than anything else.. giant numbers that dont mean anyhting because "everything is the same level".. zero feel of progression. ESO is a mess.. and combat is the big part of it.

Scorchien

remsleep said:

bgzgamer said:

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

No.

No.

No.



Animation cancelling is what adds depth, and skill - without it combat is lame

Combat is already fucking lame...

its a spammy mobile-game-skills mess. There is no skill involved with it whatsoever.. spam the best damage youve got.. over and over again because its more efficient than anything else.. giant numbers that dont mean anyhting because "everything is the same level".. zero feel of progression. ESO is a mess.. and combat is the big part of it.

Agree with you there - the reason why I stopped playing ESO - combat is absolutely horrid.

huh .. go figure .. Same thing Kano said .... exactly

GregorMcgregor

They should never have opened up all the areas to any faction, along with the "...and now play as your enemy to see their side of the story" crap just to add content via "One Tammy".
Should have been kept to the 3 sides have their own areas like DAoC. Want to see Elfville? Roll one!
Agree with the OP that the CP system needs a revamp, like every other "build" it becomes nothing more than a cookie cutter with every stam build using the same points, every magic build using... yup! You get it. How to fix it is the hard part... can't remove it after players amassing hundreds of points.
Combat is ok, it's nothing special, but it also isn't crap. At least it's not cartoon combat like some other MMOs.
The AH needs a major revamp to be more like WoWs (Hey Blizzard, you did something right!!!).
I'd add a few other tweaks like: Less glitchy mounts that shoot forward and can be a pain to mount quickly if running or some other action is being used (Dunk! Dunk! Dunk!).
Vamps need to look like normal folk (like WWs) and not crazed red eyed freaks that the guards ignore, had Drak ran about looking like that in old Trans he'd have been staked faster than you can say "Glitter!".
Hell, I'd add a new faction in the next expac where you can sign up with old Molag himself and have a new underworld area with them also starting in the center of Cyrodiil just to attack all 3 fronts.
Oh, and add ships/water travel (that isn't instant), no underwater zone though, that crap was Hellish in WoW!

donzin08

Aeander said:

Animation. Canceling. Needs. To. Go. Away.


That is all.

Literally the worst part of eso is the absolute TRASH combat system. honestly i can deal with EVERYTHING else if they would just fix this horrid combat system and animations. why is animation cancelling EVER a thing??? its so terrible

Mardukk

I agree animation cancelling was an error and they just went with it to pretend it added something...Questing in the game is very dull, but I've not played many MMO's that had exciting questing.

I do enjoy the game much more now than I did at release, when I was forced to quest for a couple years. Much more to do now.

They need to stop balancing PVE with PVP...dear god. Why not separate the mechanics?

Valdheim

I was surprised the combat system wasn't in the list as I'm sure that this is the most disliked aspect of ESO, at least that's what you read in almost every discussion and what all my friends also think.

From the weapon swapping to use more then 5 skills to the underwelming spell/animations with lack of impact and animation canceling to be competitive. I know that animation lock would be even worse so they'd need a system where you can only cancel an animation to block/parry or dodge but not to weave in additional/faster attacks. At least that's what I think might help, correct me if I'm wrong here! Anyways I think most of us agree that a combat revamp is long overdue.

Wedlen

Combat sucks.
Needs a bigger skill bar.
Needs more skills and variety.
Needs a centralized auction house not some silly 3rd party addons just to be able to sell your goods.
Would like fishing and gathering to gain points
Better ways to get dye's

Just off the top of my head

lahnmir

1. Combat system similar to PSO2. Weapon based action combat but with tons of slots and bars. Also cooldowns, yes please.
2. Adding more systems with each expansion, not just more of the same.
3. An auction house
4. A revamp of the riding skill time sink.
5. Decent hybrid options to mix stam and mag in a build allowing more flexibility.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Tehhi

remsleep said:

Aeander said:

Depth? That word does not mean what you think it means. Depth is an intellectual aspect, not a mechanical one and animation canceling has nothing to do with depth.

Depth as in more options.

Without animation cancelling - everyone's attack is exactly the same

With animation cancelling - you can weave in extra attacks and create custom combos that you cannot do without.


So clearly animation cancelling provides higher skill ceiling and more options in combat - hence it's more depth, even if it is mechanical in nature.

Jesus Christ man, did you actually played ANY action game before? Animation canceling in ESO adds only one thing: epileptic buttons pressing. It's not a skill, it's a muscle memory. It's not hard, and it's ruining any chance of strategic thinking whatsoever, you just do you rotation endlessly like you would in tab targeting game. It's not action, it's lame.

BigBragg

Before any wishful thinking and changes, Zenimax Online needs to get performance and stability under control. Game content doesn't matter if it cannot be played.

paul43

I would change the crafting system. The problem with the current one is that you have to wait weeks/months just to do basic crafting, and there's nothing you can do about it playwise.

Wait 3-12 months so you can craft the exact same stuff as everyone else. Stuff sells at bare minimum.

The only way this system works is that the game asks for crafted goods through writs/master crafting.

I would change it to a recipe system. Not abandon complety what is there today, but build upon it.

Recipes could also be researched, but for 3 days not 30 lol.

The benefit of the recipe system is that you'll have more loot in the game and not everyone can craft the same items.

Also too much of the economy is based on doing stupid !"#¤% most of the time, like writs, or logging in different chars... It's ridicilus.. The economy should be based on doing adventures, killing big bosses etc.

Sovrath

paul43 said:

I would change the crafting system. The problem with the current one is that you have to wait weeks/months just to do basic crafting, and there's nothing you can do about it playwise.

Wait 3-12 months so you can craft the exact same stuff as everyone else. Stuff sells at bare minimum.

The only way this system works is that the game asks for crafted goods through writs/master crafting.

I would change it to a recipe system. Not abandon complety what is there today, but build upon it.

Recipes could also be researched, but for 3 days not 30 lol.

The benefit of the recipe system is that you'll have more loot in the game and not everyone can craft the same items.

Also too much of the economy is based on doing stupid !"#¤% most of the time, like writs, or logging in different chars... It's ridicilus.. The economy should be based on doing adventures, killing big bosses etc.

I don't think that's true?

I usually hate crafting in these games and this is one of the few games where you can craft usable stuff out of the gate. When I do play I craft my own gear and it's fine.

saker

I only recently discovered the other Elder Scrolls games simply because I'd found the online game to be so under-whelming. The stand-alone games I've been playing (recent steam sale) are great!, a real pity the online game lacks the "soul" of those.

chakooz

Add collectable mounts. Enough people pay for eso plus im tired of hearing that its because the game isnt sub based. It would make all content across the game more meaningful as they could be rewards for all kinds of things. As a collector farming for housing items or skins isnt as cool as mount farming in other mmos.