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The Pinnacle of MMO PvE
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kDeviL
Member UncommonPosts: 215
I will be comparing ESO strictly with other MMOs, Not skyrim or previous ES games.
Over the years I have come to the point to where I can tell right away if I'm going to like an MMO or not. After trying 2 beta's and playing the early access, experiencing many bugs, finding out WvW was the only PvP in the game, Getting a feeling of "incompleteness" I didn't think I was going to enjoy it very long. I gotta say though, this game is growing on me exceptionally quickly. I believe it was 2002 that I started MMOs with Conquer Online. Since then I have probably played over 50 titles and for the most part they have all left me with the same thoughts: "I Hate PvE"
Before someone hits me with "If you hate PvE, You should quit MMOs!" Please Shaddap. I love PVP, I love Politics involved in owpk games, I love market systems, I love the social aspect and many other things one can really only find in an MMO. And yes I understand PvE is a necessary part of any MMO but I've always thought it could be done better. I hate menial tasks, I hate soloing for those menial tasks yet hate grouping for dungeons because I hate the contents and structure of most dungeons, I HATE RNG, I hate grinding yet I love progression. I hate being forced to go where the game makes me go etc etc.
So What does ESO do differently?
Well it's hard to say because on a technical side it's the same thing, solve people's problems, level up, go into public/ grouped dungeons, collect things, kill hoards of monsters etc. Where I think it really stands out though is how all of these things are delivered and structured.
First of all, it is so damn relieving to be able to just pick a direction and run. Every single little icon on the map has it's own really well written story to it, not to mention tons of other areas and quests that don't even show up on the map. There are chests you have to lockpick everywhere, hidden skyshards to find (unless you cheat w/ addons xD) tons of random lore events that aren't DE's but just give a nice boost to immersion. The main story has brilliant writing with a really great cast of characters, Razum Dar is my bro for life. But don't forget sidequests, they really are everywhere but they aren't overbearing. I've played through auridon on3 characters and found new things each time. I also thought it was really cool how different players on different parts of the same quest see completely different things on their respective screens. I'm not even sure how they made that work so smoothly but it does.
The most important part is that I enjoy doing all of these things for honestly the first time ever in an MMO. It never feels like I'm grinding, It never feels like I'm doing pointless things, It never feels like I'm groing from point A to point B, back to A Only in order to get to Point C then do A and B again. It feels like I'm relieving towns from daedra control or stopping an assassination attempt or even taking down kingpen meth (skooma) dealers. (that quest was awesome xD) The way areas look throughout the different stages of quests make you feel like you really accomplished something. The progression keeps you addicted as hell, I f*cking love how every skill morphs. The combat is really fun, Who doesn't like to uppercut people across the room with a giant mace to the face? How bout being able to do that regardless of which class you pick? AND it's still a valid choice even on a sorcerer or rogue? Also when you finish or do certain things you hear villagers and other npcs talk about it all over the place. Overall it just makes you feel like a bawse, not someones bitch like most MMO quests.
Obviously I haven't reached endgame yet, I have no desire to rush to it (another first) But I do know that this is, imo, the most fun leveling experience one will ever have in an MMO. And so far this is certainly the PvE pinnacle of the MMO world in my book. PvP however is severely lacking, although WvW is massive and can be alot of fun, it is the ONLY PvP currently available in ESO. I expect more features will be added and if done correctly may make this game something truly great. But that's another topic entirely.
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
Comments
No. I'm sorry, but no.
If the levelling of a MMO is scaled to be soloable, is made so the player can easily do it without any allies, this levelling doesn't deserve the title of "Pinacle of MMO PvE". Tbh, I prefer the levelling of WoW vanilla than ESO's one, only because grouping in WoW vanilla was frequent.
It's not though, there are some parts that are quite difficult to solo. And since everyone gets their own loot, grouping for things basically happens automatically. And if it is too easy, go to higher level zones, Still not challenging somehow? Do quests in Cyrodil when you hit level 10, try it solo and tell me how many times you die. I suppose I should have titled it "pinnacle of early mmo PvE." Imo nothing comes close. But then again this post is for people on the fence about this game that hate the traditional leveling system that you enjoy. I personally find that more boring than counting rocks.
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
I'm glad you found a way to convince yourself that you're doing something new and different but that's all you've done. No matter how you dress it up its still a quest stacking theme park ride.
Why do we keep getting these big development companies taking big titles and boiling them down to very small, very simple, very boring games?
He's not convincing himself of anything. It is not a hub based PVE game. You have to explore to not only find quests, but to find dungeons, skull and cross bones, fissures, ect that are not on the map. If you don't explore you will not see those things but you can still level and never have to see them. No other PVE Themepark comes close to executing this to the degree of ESO...but keep using the generic nonsense arguments about how big companies do X, development companies do y, this is boring, etc.....most of us playing don't care.
There Is Always Hope!
Right. Because none of the single player TES games consisted of travelling around to different cities and stuff and picking up quests to go do things. It was so vastly different. No quests at all. Just randomly running around picking stuff to kill with no objectives to anything whatsoever. No story or anything. Just killing stuff for the hell of it the entire game. Why oh why did they have to ruin elder scrolls by adding quests and storylines...
I'm not an expert on mmos I have played just a few and I play only pve content here are my thoughts :
TSW : has better quests ,better characters ,better dungeons
SWTOR : has better quests ,better narrative
Neverwinter, Terra, DCUO have better combat
GW2 has better combat, better quest system
I don't see how how ESO is any good in pve the only thing I like more and does best from any mmo I have played is crafting and the skill system.
Because a good game is the sum of its parts, not individual features. IMO the sum of what ESO offers is greater than the sum of any one of those individual games and I have played all of them...but again, just my opinion...not to mention I don't agree with your individual assessments.
There Is Always Hope!
Having abilities locked to weapons so you pretty much auto attack, use 1-2 real attacks, switch weapon, use 1-2 real attacks, switch weap use 1-2 real attacks......oh and you can do somersaults while the random aggro jumps around.
But the questing.....the "questing" LOLOLOL kill centaurs and click on random objects until the Heart fills up.....brilliant.
You're right, it's exactly the same thing just delivered very well. I never tried to convince myself it's something new. I literally said in the OP that it's the same as any mmo on a technical level. Played a shitload of mmos, I've never enjoyed the leveling, ever. I REALLY enjoy it here, so something is different. At least for me.
And because big names are the only thing that sell anymore. No other company in any other form of entertainment has such a critcal, immature, close minded, and overall unhappy group of people to try to impress. When an mmo tries to copy something successful it gets written off as a wow-clone (rift, swtor, lotro, aion) When an MMO tries to bring in innovation it gets hated on even more or becomes the new cool mmo-to-hate (GW2, Darkfall, Warhammer, AoC) So what's the point? Don't blame companies when it's the cynical 80% of MMO gamers just like you that have brought the genre to this point.
Which is why MMOs were better when it was just games like DAoC, UO, Conquer and others before the genre exploded with WoW.
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
TSW has kill X quests. Yes, it has *some* interesting puzzle/thinking quests which are quite good. But as a whole, ESO is miles ahead in questing. Better characters is more subjective, but I can't say I found any of them interesting. And TSW dungeons are really sad, I mean really really simplistic. ESO at least has kept up with the times in boss design.
SWTOR has some of the worst quests. Unbelievable, if there's anything that people generally agreed on, was the pathetic quests. Narrative, yes it's quite good which along with TSW, puts SWTOR, TSW and ESO in the top three of all MMO's in terms of story. That's pretty good, even if you personally find one better than the other. Not only is ESO fully voiced, but none of those other games have the number of books (2,235) that ESO does. That's a lot of reading and lots of fun lore tidbits.
As far as combat, NWO? Wow, that's some low standards. Not even close. Tera, I'll say it has a cult following - I still think it's clunky and terrible. DCUO had good combat, but more arcadey than I personally like in RPG's.
GW2 has excellent combat, but loses points because of how flat it is without the customized builds that ESO offers. So I still tip my hat to ESO. GW2's quest system is kill / collect X until orange bar fills, is this a joke? It's a joke, I'm sure of it.
there's always gotta be at least one who spouts this nonsensical line. Yes it's primarily a questing game, that doesn't mean questing can't be handled differently (better). I hold no belief that any one game is a universal pinnacle of anything. However for me personally, I think they've taken the best approach to such a design I"ve seen yet in the themepark sub-genre.
Some might prefer TOR, Some might prefer TSW, more may prefer a different genre all together. YET most people simply talk from their own personal perspective. They're not convincing themselves, they're experiencing something that feels how it feels to them.
TESO as far as I've seen has good pacing, questing that leaves you with freedom to move around as you wish, very few tasks that felt like a grind, SP rpg style objectives rather than kill 10 of (insert). I found the overall storytelling to be better than TOR, while TOR has some great writing in the class quests, the world related writing dropped significantly in quality IMO, I haven't seen such a disparity in ESO, at least during the 30 or so hours I played during beta.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
*golf clap*
Congrats, I'm so proud you managed to get through that without mentioning SWG once!!!
Seriously, if you can't see this game as anything other than another WoW Clone, you're going to be in for a long and disappointing life of themepark games.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Finally a valid argument.
TSW: You're kind of right, the quests themselves were quite creative, But what happens before and after doesn't have the same accomplishment feeling that eso has. Disagree on characters but agree on grouped dungeons "so far" But you are forgetting the vast amount of cons tsw has to make it not as good of a "package" game.
Swtor: Everyone gives swtor a "pro" for story, but that was literally the only difference in that game from any other mmo up to 8 years older then it. The quests themselves were standard and the writing/voiceacting was decent to pretty good. Doesn't come close to eso in any category imo.
Neverwinter, tera, and dcuo only have better combat and that's debateable.
Dynamic Events were awesome and definitely a step in the right direction, However I found they all tended to be hit or miss, and leveling from launch was awesome but in the later months you just did have as many people around for the DEs. Although I can see that being an issue in ESO as well. Some quests will be much more difficult with no one around. Unless you mean the hearts in GW2 but if all you did was follow hearts around that musta been boring as shit.
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
Pinnacle my arse. Second time this week I have had a bug which stops play 100% until CS involment.
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yeah i have a sorcerer, i havent found anything yet where i needed other people to complete the content and thats including all of the Vet1 area i just completed... outside of 5 man dungeons, and thats including the public group dungeons.. soloed them, soloed basically all the world bosses unless others were already doing them.. but at no point did i need to look for other people... even on my nightblade did 90% of the content upto level 43 on him solo.
TSW: Awesome game however their ability to provide content(Tokyo...Is that even out yet btw?) kinda fell short.
SWTOR: Great story, awesome narrative, I was almost immersed until every ten minutes they were looking for me to open my wallet.
Neverwinter:PWI enough said, Tera:combat was good I'll give you that.DCUO:Good combat lot of content/replayability for skill points.
GW2: The quest system was a total let down. Combat felt very sluggish especially underwater. Lack of a purpose in wvwvw unsure if that was fixed.
If you are playing eso and constantly skipping the narrative for every quest then this game may not be for you. Not all of the quests should grab you to listen to the story, but as long as some of them do you'll enjoy the game more. I'm still waiting to see end game pve to make a real judgement on how good ESO's is in comparison.
those are the best parts of their pve content. Unfortunately, all the whining from people who cant solo them is making Zenimax dumb down all those difficult encounters..... Yeah, with next patch Doshia is geting another nerf to make her encounter easier, and that is low level content. I cant imagine how easy the high level pve stuff will be. Even dungeons are a lot easier now. Yesterday i did Banished cells without a healer and we face rolled cleared it. I remember wiping that dungeon with a dedicated healer in the party a few times. Im still enjoying the game but as soon as all my pve content feel soloable ill save the sub and solo Skyrim again.
Yes yes everything is obviously soloable if you're good enough and it's meant to be soloed, in what game in the world is that not true? But can you really say that at no point was it challenging? That you didn't die 2 or 3 times from certain bosses til you finally got him? That you didn't die somewhat often in general?
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
I still feel TSW and GW2 were better and more unique, but ESO is nice indeed. Can't comment on older mmo pve.
As far as pinncle, i didn't feel it in beta. Nothing about the pve made me go WOW, like TSW's setting, story and quests, or GW2's amazing world, exploration and events.
But aslong as you enjoy it, that's awesome OP. Have fun.
not on the sorc no, the sorc is a powerhouse... not many deaths at all and she's a vampire too, in auridon Vet1 i had literally 2 deaths the entire zone, the nightblade dies a lot more though.
Well Fuck.
I wanna play sorc now. xD
If WoW was released today even in its' entirety it would be f2p in 3 months.
Why is it still such a big deal?
Heh I did 100% of my character progression in any MMO I've played aside from open dungeons solo. I guild up for RP and PVP, not PVE content, it's always easy to complete 90% of content, has been since I started playing MMORPG's in 2002. They do this on purpose. They can't rely on everyone having a group at all times, if they could this might be different. AS it stands now, how dumb would it be to make most progression and content impossible without a solid group? People would only play during peak times, these games (the sub variety) would be ghost towns at all other hours. Most would probably quit in the first week.
I'd say if you can solo everything at your level (all bosses and group related content), your build is OP there's not much more to it than that. The glories of open skill systems
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For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson