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Lisa's positives and negatives of ESO
LisaFlexy22
Member UncommonPosts: 450
So I've been in the last 3 beta weekends and want to go over what I think are the pro's and con's of the game. I'm sure my opinions will be different than some, or that I put more importance on some things than others, but FOR ME, here is what I like and dislike about ESO from my experience. I'm sure I'll leave some things out and forget, but here is what I have so far.
Positives:
Crafting system: There is no mini-game like in Vanguard, EQ2, etc, but it is one of the more original and in depth systems I've seen in quite a while.
Graphics: Gorgeous game, but I wish the view distance would be able to be increased more.
Performance: This game runs incredibly well even with maxed graphic settings. On my mid-range laptop maxed I never drop below 30 fps or even close.
Immersion: The most immersive MMO world I've ever played in, easily. There is a nice weather system, tons of little critters running around, npc's talk to each other and have conversations, go about tasks, lots of ambient sounds, etc. It is not Skyrim, but it is better than any mmo I've played so far.
Music: Stunningly beautiful in game. Nothing more to be said here.
Questing: Every questing system is, at its core, a grind. But some games make it a lot more interesting and TRY to not just have endless amounts of kill x amount of this or that quests. I feel ESO is 2nd behind only TSW as far as mmo questing quality goes.
Exploration: This doesn't really heat up until you get done the starter islands, but it's there. Lots of random things to find and do in the world.
Clean UI - This will be a negative for some people, but for me it's a positive. I like having no mini-map or stuff all over my screen.
Character customization: Endless amounts of skills to find to customize yourself. You can wear any armor or equip any weapon, and you can also morph all your skills once to better individualize yourself.
Dungeons: LOTS of dungeons at launch: 36 dungeons at launch. 16 public, 16 instanced and 4 veteran dungeons.
Map size: HUGE world map. Don't be fooled by the confined starting areas, the world map is HUGE. Crazy huge.
Loot: Loot everywhere. Whether it's the endless amounts of crates, cupboards or dressers you can loot for things or the chest scattered all over the world, there is no shortage of things to stuff your bags full.
NPC interaction: This is not questing I'm referring to here, but in general pretty much any npc you see in the world you can talk to and they have things to say. It's really nice and adds to that immersion also. It's very much the opposite of SWTOR where unless it was a quest giver you couldn't even interact with the npc. And most npc's have a LOT to say if you go through all their chat options. Very cool.
Voice acting: Impressive so far. personally I don't care about the celebrities, I just want good voice acting. Every single thing in this game is voice acted and it's impressive. They do a good job with the Argonian voices also which is good lol. I am not happy with the Dunmer voices though.
Quest and world phasing: This is in my negatives too for a different reasons. It is REALLY cool to see the world change with the choices that you make in your quests. NPC's move around to new locations and follow you throughout the story, old areas get destroyed, lots of things change, etc.
Combat (magic user perspective): Very fun and doesn't suffer the same problems as melee. It's also fun as you learn to use dodge, block and counter which adds a new element to combat. Also once you get your second weapon choice you have more skills to work with.
PvE content: Just wanted to note I had a lot of fears, as a PvE based player, on how good this game would be for me with it's emphasis on PvP. There wasn't a reason to worry, there is an endless amount of PvE content.
Negatives:
Melee combat: I didn't enjoy melee combat for a few different reasons. It works terribly in first person mode (which is my favorite) and, while I think it's a bug, there are a lot of times you swing to hit an enemy and literally nothing. It registers a hit, but there is no sound effect and the enemy doesn't react at all. So it's like you just swung right through them.
Lack of options: There are a lot of things people want that seem to easily be fixed by including an option, but for some reason Zenimax seems very black or white with their decision making. Examples would be option to turn off quest markers, option for nameplates, option for chat bubbles, option for minimap, option for damage numbers, etc.
No underwater swimming: Some people won't care, but I do. For a game that touts exploration and immersion, why only have top water paddling? I find it to have been a really poor choice.
Achievement system: This is the definition of a bland and generic achievement system. It's, once again, just accrue points for completing achievements without even having any interesting cosmetic or fluff rewards. The only rewards are a few titles, that's it.
Starter zones: While I didn't find them awful, they really do a bad job of representing all there is to the game that makes it good. Tons of people, as we have seen already in the press reviews, don't even make it out of the starter areas before deciding they just aren't feeling the game.
Fishing: This was a disappointment. while it is cool that you get to choose your bait and so forth, there is nothing else interesting about it. There is no interesting fishing mechanic (it's just throw out your line, wait for it to be pulled under, then click your left mouse button - boom you have fish) and there is no use for fish you catch currently.
Too easy most of the time: This should be easily fixed, but a lot of the game doesn't offer enough challenge. Maybe that's because we are limited to level 17, but for the most part it's just steamroll everything without a second thought.
UI: The UI can be cumbersome at times. They mimicked Skyrim's UI but it's not the most PC user friendly UI.
Dunmer voice actors: Was hoping for some Morrowind style voices for the Dunmer but it is not to be. Disappointed by this.
Quest and world phasing: So while this feature is cool, it also has negatives. It can be very cumbersome to get your group on the same page with quests, so it's almost easier to just solo all the time.
Indifferent:
Animations: I don't think they are as bad as some people make them out to be, but they aren't the best. But for me it doesn't alter my game experience at all, so not really a deal to me. Some people seem to put a lot more importance on this than others. For me, indifferent
PvP: I'm not really a pvp player so not going to go over how good or bad this is as I'm not a good judge.
Comments
Combat is fun:) but only as melee. Bow animations and sounds are not ES quality.
bow always been my favor weapon in ES games. hope they make it better.
I had the same issues as the reviewer, melee combat in first person and the clipping issue was really dominant and not a good thing.
I switched to first person because i couldn't bear watching my hunchback male norn run.
The only real issue I have had with ESO, is I would like to play 1st person.. but the FoV is so small it gives me motion sickness
and yes I know it has 3rd person.. but I think it would of been cool to play a mmo in 1st..
Single mobs for the most part I agree with you. Head into a public dungeon though or try to fight two or three mobs together outside and the difficulty ramps up.
i planned play game in first person but hand animations just dint feeled skyrim.
If anything, this game is surprisingly difficult. Questbosses, public dungeon bosses, some random non-elite mobs in the world - some of those can be soloed, but it is quite hard to do so. If you dont pay attention to their mechanics (for example floating orbs flying towards a particular questboss that heal it - you have to destroy them or the boss is unkillable) or dodge their attacks you pretty much have no chance to solo them.
This is not to be confused with mobs who flatout kill you because their normal, unavoidable attacks hit too hard. Thats unfair and the wrong kind of "difficult" - however, there are some of those is ESO too, sadly.
had only hard time with 3 12 lvl mob same time as 10 lvl khajit NB. dint had any points in health, only stam...
recomend spend half points to health and others point magic or stam, helps a lot.
you got the GOOD spot on.
to the BAD i would add:
no collision control. i hate running through people.
unlimited arrows/projectiles.
instant super HP regen out of combat. horrible, horrible, horrible.
horrible aiming system at least with bow. you can aim 3 feet outside the target, and as long as the target it's red you get a hit.
jumping+ basic attacks dont cost any stamina....basically asking everyone to bunny hop/basic attack spam.
can't fight in water. really, why is water so useless in this game?
horses dispawn when you dismount (WoW mounts). also no mounted combat. this is NOT like TES!
Good list, thanks for posting.
I was looking for anything that makes ESO worth $225 in the first year to play, but didn't see it. Sounds like yet another fantasy world MMO, perhaps with some features nicely done, but nothing exceptional.
I will wait for F2P.
well to be fair most TES games you cant fight in water or on horse back, has always annoyed me.
also the aiming system is one of those trade off you got when turning a single player game into a MMO, unless you want to let the targeting and hit tracking be done player side your ooking at lots and i mean lots of lag issue and the such, of course if you do this you bassicly open the doors for hackers, and with the focus on PvP that would be a very bad thing. anyone else rembe rthe issues planetside 2 had with hackers and still dose although not as much these days.
P.S. also horse need to despawn otherise we would have tons of horse just standing aroundall ove rthe place, its another trade off for going MMO from a single player game
F2P may be the way of the future, but ya know they dont make them like they used to
Proper Grammer & spelling are extra, corrections will be LOL at.
If you are a PVE completionist it's going to be a long damn game. To do everything (not including crafting) in your faction from level 1-15 takesroughly 90 hours.
Also I should mention that the 90 hours of PVE was in about a 1/5 portion of the faction map. This is going to be a long game, AND I LOVE IT! Also PVP was an absolute blast but I will let others go into that.
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Hhmmmm no, I wouldn't add those to my list as I either don't think they are negatives or are a non issues to me. But feel free to post your own list of positives and negatives here on the forums
There Is Always Hope!
I won't bother commenting on your positives because I agree with them all. Putting the whole package together to me the game feels polished, deep and most of all, immersive. We often describe MMOS as being worlds or games...most definitely a world here.
Melee: it doesn't bother me as much as it seems to bother some but I agree. I have given them feedback in every beta about blow reactions... tiny staggers to differentiate them from the bigger staggers.... slight screen shakes... very slight knockbacks that are not as severe as the knockback abilities... something
Lack of options: Some of those options are there but grayed-out for beta. Others will come through mods. As you know, there is a group of players fluent in LUA that have been doing an add-on beta on the side...some should be ready for release.
No underwater swiming:... and battles..and chests..etc. yeah, I miss this too.
Achievement system: I would put this under "indifferent." Not something that motivates me in games unless I'm otherwise totally bored and looking for something to do...as when I got my "Explorer" achievement in WOW
Starter Zones: I have to disagree and I've already posted why in many other threads. I took my time, found shards, geared up from chests and even cooked and made beer
I normally hate cooking in MMOs but once I realized that a) I had the recipes from drops, b) I had tons of ingredients from drops and containers and, most importantly, c) it only takes a second (literally) to make 30 minute buffs that give you huge health, magika or stamina boosts, I was sold.
Fishing: I refuse to fish in MMOs...period. I know many like it and to each their own... i hate it with a passion
Too easy most of the time: I would say unbalanced or not fully tuned. The game surprised me may times just when I was feeling full of myself for being a bad-ass and then a seemingly normal mob of the same level I've gotten used to slaughtering, destroys me... I found this to be especially true in some quest dungeons...especially the one at the end of the Heritance infiltration island in the AD zone... adjustments are still needed and are being done every beta.
UI: I love it. I have nothing but praise for the minimalist style and even though I thought I would hate the look (wasn't a fan of Skyrim's inventory) it's miles ahead of Skyrim.
Dunner Voice actors: no comment. I didn't notice anything especial one way or the other. I have to say, I was disappointed that Kate Beckingsdale as the Queen didn't remind me in the least of her Underworld character...too bad
Quest and World phasing: Not a fan. Especially when I saw the same bugs that plagued TSW during its early days: missing NPC required for a quest. In TSW you could transfer to a different instance to find one where it wasn't broken as a work around. Here, you can't pick an instance so all you could do is log-out and hope that you re-logged into a working instance. I found this very annoying in both of the last 2 betas,
Thanks for the great comprehensive list
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
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Let's all be honest here, SWTOR is quite easy.
You are definitely the first person I've ever seen that's said SWTOR was difficult save for their Nightmare mode OPs.