I had a hard time choosing between ESO/FFXIV/GW2 and WoW. GW2 for the combat and immersion, the beauty of the world, able to do anything you want (though ESO you can too). WoW for the fun factor. FFXIV for the community.
I love ESO for the story, the voice acting, the quests, also the immersion and (like GW2) able to do anything you want
However, what it came down to...the most annoying game breaking part of any game for me...inventory management. If a game has terrible inventory management, it ruins the game no matter how good it is.
And I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to re-install ESO, or GW2 Path of Fire or re-sub to WoW (which is still installed). Spent a lot of time deciding...and GW2 inventory management is just too much worse than ESO. WoW was my 2nd choice to decide between...but read further...
ESO I have my own guild that I took over from someone who gave me keys for leader. That is an insane amount of guild bank space to store all my stuff. I have tons of stuff in there as a non-member and never have to worry about space barely. On top of that, if I pay next month the subscription I get an infinite sized harvesting bag for more space.
Downside and a caveat...as a free player if you don't own a guild, inventory management is WORSE than in GW2 and the worst MMO I ever played to deal with that. I pick EVERYTHING up, because that is how Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are played...pick everything up. Before I owned a guild, I'd actually have gone with GW2.
However, look at GW2 inventory space. Limited bag slots, have to buy for one extra bag slot (which is only very very little extra space) and bank spaces are extremely limited and gotta buy a bunch of gems for more bank space. In GW2 I can't even put materials in my bank anymore because its filled up and I never throw anything away. That killed the game for me, because I had all this stuff in my inventory and the guild wars 2 bank is so limited...sure better than ESO as a free player without a guild, but still pretty bad.
Look at WoW. In WoW you can have 12 characters per server. 12 characters can have hexweave bags (4 of them for each character) that have 32 slots in each bag (hexweave bags are biggest bags in WoW). You can then have 8 (or is it 9?) bag slots in each character's personal bank with hexweave bags. 11 of those characters can have their own guild (well all 12 can, but I like to have my main character in an actual guild) and each guild they own can have tons of space. On top of that there are special "vaults" (forgot what they are called, nethervaults or something) that you can put even more stuff in. WoW you can literally have thousands and thousands of items and materials, probably 10s of thousands with how much materials (like ore/cloth etc) stack.
GW2 doesn't even come close to how much inventory you get in WoW, even if you pay a bunch of money to unlock banks and bag slots
ESO however has a neat feature you get when you pay monthly. Lets ignore WoW's 11 guild banks, lets ignore WoW's 12 character personal bank, lets ignore 12 character x4 bag space.
Nothing beats what I am about to reveal to you all.
An infinite sized harvesting bag.
Which means you can actually have MORE items than you can in WoW. You can loot as much craftable items as possible and put them in a neverending bag space. You can have one million ore and still put harvestable items into it. You can have 10 million pieces of cloth and still have more room. An infinite sized harvesting bag.
And that is why I went with ESO...plus hey the story/voice acting/immersion is great too
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Comments
Sure you can throw down some crafting stations but you can't get these in the cash shop so what's the point?
The thing I like about GW2 is the auction house is always with you for selling items and it's very easy to price based on already listed items being listed for you without have to do extra searches. So a few mins. and my inventory is cleared, plus it's very easy to tell junk from something that should be auctioned. Crafting items get a lot of space which makes that easy for me to manage. I agree that HoT and PoF are a pain and usually just delete what I can.
ESO has good inventory and bank space is a little expensive but it's easy to buy after awhile. Guild auction houses are not intuitive for me but overall, inventory is manageable.
No inventory problems is D2 as it's easy to deconstruct stuff and keep inventory clear.
The Division takes time as a lot of gear takes time to go through and decide what kinds of gear sets you will run or upgrade or might want to keep for future use. This can take some time.
In short GW2 has the best inventory system which is the easiest for me to manage in the shortest amount of time spent.
"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
ESO more reminds me of LOTRO housing from what I've partaked in it. Seems kinda similar. LOTRO housing isn't that great either, can't really customize your home except on pre-placed hooks in LOTRO.
That is one thing so many MMOs do though is forget about the housing element. There are really only 4 MMOs I can think of that actually do really great housing. I guess Vanguard Saga of Heroes was really decent as well and at least in Vanguard it was out in the world...and it was like a huge quest just to get a house built lol.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Yeah GW2 auction house is a lot better. ESO guild traders feel kinda...well...meh...
I'd rather have a broker system, or a trade stall system like in some Asian MMOs (which in Skyrim there were "trade stalls" where merchants had their shop at, so it would have fit ESO really well) or just a flat out actual AH. There are addons that kinda fix it, but its a complicated workaround and still not that great.
Dunno why they didn't do at least trade stalls and come up with dumb guild traders. Skyrim has trade stalls like I said, so why didn't they do that lol. Guess maybe they wanted a more focus on guilds, but that is the worst part of ESO. The rest of the game is fine though for me, but I think the guild traders ruins it for a lot of people.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Just so... floaty?
And the character models... they've got no "style" or character like they do in WoW/GW2/FFXIV.
I'm not playing anything right now, outside of some random ESO on XB1 from time to time...
Man do I wish for FFXIV to come to Switch or XB1.
The only thing Skyrim does better is archery. Skyrim has awesome archery. I mean mount and blade warband has better archery, but it has better melee combat...it is a lot older too lol. Bethesda doesn't put much focus into combat sadly. I guess maybe they will in next Elder Scrolls? They put all the focus into fallout 4 with combat.
And character models are way better than Skyrim...I mean...modded Skyrim has beautiful characters and far better combat, but that is because its modded. Otherwise, to me ESO characters look better than Skyrim (ignoring mods) and combat is the same (but worse archery).
Maybe that is just opinion since people like how different things look...but vanilla Skyrim has the fugliest characters I've seen in a modern game. Better than oblivion, but anything is better than potato heads rofl
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
In ESO, you can literally go anywhere and do anything. Buy morrowind? Can go to morrowind right at level 1.
And even if you are max level in ESO, going to a "level 1" place still offers a challenge. The only thing different is better items, but there is still quite a challenge.
ESO is pretty much a sandpark, when it used to be a themepark.
Though only complaint I have...a lot of the DLCs are better to use at max level. If I do the dark brotherhood quest line, my brotherhood blade+armor doesn't scale as I level. Unless I missed that part. But I remember when I played before, I got a higher level and my blade didn't scale with me. Did they fix that? Or was mine bugged?
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Currently I'm not playing any MMORPG. Sometimes I consider to get back into WoW or ESO, but then I rather stick to other good games at hand.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
That was maybe my only real peeve was the game had too much quantity and not enough quality,but most games are like that and most are worse.
btw ,i quit TESO in the first 20 minutes,perhaps i did not see enough to justify but what i did see turned me off because i could see a developer who doesn't "get it".GW2 was the same,i did try and go much further to give that game imo way too good a chance and it just failed badly,it looked to be designed very cheaply "under the hood".
The entire genre to me has been spewing out games that look more like "let's just whip out a game to start making money" than anything serious.
NOTHING has looked like a game where the designer could honestly say "man this is a game i want to play"of course they would say that to the press but not truthfully.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
It has warts of course but its annoyances are tolerable.
Since I started playing it I gave both Archage and BDO a shot to draw me away but I didn't last more than a couple of months in either. Their annoyances annoyed me more.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Also, you can craft bags for specific types of items, and bags that automatically fill up with only trash items.
I find that inventory system one of the few easiest to handle.
As for ESO, i like it but i stopped at the end of Orcinium and haven't picked it up again.
Sticking with Fallout 4 for now.
I should probably look into Foxhole, still in early access however
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I agree that Mount and Blade has "better" combat than skyrim.
How the models look is up to interpretation. I mean, because it's an mmo you have armor that is texture and that moves as your character breathes. Skyrim doesn't have that but that's because it can get away with it as a single player games.
"Better looking"? Well, in some ways Elder Scrolls Online has prettier characters I suppose.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Which is a shame, really, because the game's crafting system and armor variety is actually quite astounding. However, I could just never come to grips with not being able to make my character look the way I wanted.
This, above all else, bothered me. Which is saying a lot, because its actually a fairly minor issue.
If you like the look of some of those and especially when you're using mix and match drops from various sources for your gear, you can wear those for a more unified look.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1) I got REALLY tired of bar-swapping. I hate that. Let me put skills for both my weapons on one bar - there is a noticeable lag for me (Though some say it doesn't exist, fine, but it does for me) when I try to swap them. For that matter, I don't really like weapon-swapping period. And animation cancelling.
2) Itemization - There is a new OP FOTM gear set every month, mostly in the form of Monster gear, which unless you have these instances on farm, you will get crushed in PvP via pure procs. I've seen way to many fights between good players (Not me, mind you, I'm average at best) come down to sheer random chance.
3) Class balance - You wouldn't think that having only 3 different skill lines would make that big a difference, but.. Damn.. Does it ever. They use the nerf hammer in ESO pretty liberally.
Granted, this is all opinion at the time of quitting (After Shadows of the Hist), and may have changed. But for me, that's why I left.
The Craft Bag though? That I agree.. Sheer joy.
Who play tested this thing anyway!
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The crafting was easily one of my favorite things while I leveled up in ESO.
Our inability to craft for the jewelry slots also serves to give the edge to drops over crafted since all of those dropped sets have jewelry.
You can still control the look of your character by crafting somewhat but I have always been a function first kind of player.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED