Impressions of ESO

[tatortodd22]

Since the NDA is lifted, I thought I would share my thoughts on the game, and invite you to all do the same. Zenimax Online Studios bets that if you've posted about the game, they've seen it. So please keep the thread constructive, respectful for the years of work these gentlemen have invested, and keep it civil.

What I think they did right: I enjoyed the beta very much. The voice acting was rather decent, exploring all of the new areas and provinces was refreshing, and I was delighted to explore the world with my friend. The combat is very satisfying and action packed. I would say it trumps the fun of the Skyrim combat by a few notches. It takes the Oblivion approach of allowing you to cast spells with both hands full, and it brings a lot more flexibility and intensity to the table. The beginning areas were a bit too easy for my taste, but once I started getting into higher level areas, I was delighted to see tougher combat. I was screwed whenever I tried to take on several enemies at once without backup.

The number of NPCs in the world seems slightly higher than that of Skyrim, perhaps on par with Morrowind. I liked seeing more activity in the cities and worlds, and I was not disappointed with the wide variety of players. I saw all races and classes being represented as I ventured through Tamriel. I think they are making a rather successful MMO, it will be great fun, and I do not regret preordering the Imperial Edition after experiencing the game myself. The character customization was very thorough and I even miss it when I'm playing Skyrim again. I felt like I made a character for me.

What I think they could improve: I am no fanboy, mind you. I think they could definitely improve in some areas. When I was starting the game, I felt very little challenge. I was even bored, waiting to get to the part where the game gets fun. That should never be the case. There is a sweet spot between so-easy-it's-boring and so-hard-it's-frustrating, and I think they are still exploring that. I doubt I will ever be fully satisfied with this, because I think ZOS is trying to cater to too wide of an audience. I think they are considering a casual audience too heavily, and that we will see a drop in players after a couple months just due to their casual nature. Once this passes, however, hopefully the loyal fanbase can have more of a say in the way ESO progresses.

I think ZOS should trust players to choose their own fun. Make the world entirely open to them, and they will direct themselves to what they enjoy most. This is a philosophy I've heard expressed by the Bethesda studio and I think they implement it rather well into their games. In an MMO, however, there are many problems that you have to consider. I would almost prefer they just make it a great MMO, not a great TESMMO mega super hybrid ultrazoid.

There was definitely a sense of "Be who you want to be," a theme that is a cornerstone for the Elder Scrolls franchise. I made a character very unique to me, and your class and race played very little restrictions on how you fight and play due to the great diversity provided by each weapon and class. However, I felt a lack of "Do what you want to do." It wasn't exactly a linear progression, per se, it was more of a line of pods. You could move freely through the different areas, doing whatever you chose at your own pace and style, but you needed to complete things in that pod before unlocking the next pod. This will severely disappoint Elder Scrolls players, I think. You won't be able to plop yourself in the game and say "I'm going to walk to the capital of this province and hunt down werewolves!" Sorry mate, you'll need to level a while before that happens. I think ZOS could have taken a more creative approach to this and broken some MMO rules for the sake of the TES facet of the game, but I understand their decision. I can only hope it changes.

To play devil's advocate, I'd like to point out that levelling up means opening up the world. As your character progresses you will have more access. Unfortunately, levelled areas will mean that there is an extremely low chance of you wanting to backpedal to an old area, but it's possible. The creative director said "When you reach level 50, that's when the game really opens up." It reminds me of Oblivion character development: Everyone starts differently, but ends up the same. This, I am definitely not a fan of. This will mean that for a player like me, who likes to create lots of different characters, get straight into the meat of his story and have the whole world waiting outside his doorstep, I will need to level all of my characters to 50 to have the real fun. This will mean being a bit more forgiving to my characters, instead of restarting every three nights. I think I will be disappointed if I play this game like an Elder Scrolls game. As an MMO though? I think it's a few tweaks away from greatness.

I will buy the game. The lore and the ability to explore my favorite fictional universe is worth 100$+ to me. I think it is definitely worth the standard edition (60$) and a lower subscription fee (perhaps 5$). If you can afford it, I'd recommend it. It's fun in combat and fun with friends. Based on its comparison to Guild Wars 2, a game I enjoyed VERY much, I think this will be a great MMO. But if you're looking for the loremongering immersive hardcore Rambo-Nerevadragonchampion experience that we've all come to love in Bethesda's franchise? You'll have to wait a few more years.

[Haravikk]

I didn't realise the NDA was lifted, in that case I'll share a few thoughts as well, rather than making a separate thread:

Graphics:
Graphically I'd say the game does a good job of getting close to Skyrim's level of quality, though stylistically it's not quite the same. It runs surprisingly well on modest hardware; I'm on a Mac Pro with a GeForce 8800GT (512mb memory) and it ran above 20fps on medium+ (medium with a few extras turned on like high textures and ambient occlusion), typically running closer to 30-40, it mostly dipped when there were a lot of players around. It's definitely one of the prettier MMOs, and a very nice rendition of Tamriel and other areas, though it may still feel a little "cartoonish" like other MMOs for some, it never bothered me like other MMOs have though.

Combat:
The combat captures the style of Skyrim to a degree, but it's still very clearly based in more traditional RPG systems. Abilities do have a decent sense of power though, and it does a good job of making you pick a small set of focused skills to do what you want, rather than having you manage trays of 20-30 skills of varying levels.

To summarise it I'd say it's a WoW style system but with significant improvements and a bit of Elder Scrolls flavour, but from having hoped it would be more like Skyrim than it is I was a bit disappointed. I could understand opening abilities back out again (Skyrim is very limiting and requires too much pausing to manage powers and items), but it still feels too much like other MMOs which I think is unfortunate.

Story:
The story is very much Elder Scrolls, and is the main reason I'm tempted to continue past the beta. Everything is voice acted, and to a high standard with a lot of well known voice actors for more prominent characters which is great. The idea of Molag Bal's scheme being interwoven with the three faction war makes for a very compiling setting, far more so than the lacklustre civil war in Skyrim, and every faction feels well fleshed out, as of course they have to be. I mostly played as an Argonian in the Ebonheart Pact and I really enjoyed it, and it took me from a small corner of Skyrim to Morrowind, with both being very nicely realised.

General Gameplay:
Questing is fun, and I never felt at any point that I was stuck grinding before I could move on. There were a few fetch X quests, but they were usually fairly easy and never felt tedious; actually I find that Skyrim often has worse overall side-quests thanks to the Radiant system, so I was very surprised to find an MMO that did it better. I did find myself back-tracking a lot in some areas though, but with the ability to fast-travel to way shrines you never feel like you really to slog everywhere either, which some MMOs make you do.

I do agree that a lot of quests are fairly easy without much challenge, but at the same time some are harder than their level suggests; i.e - they're more a level 10 with group rather than level 10 solo, so there is some of the same consistency that Skyrim suffers where you suddenly hit something you can't beat. I'm hoping they can even things out a bit, then give us a difficulty control to gain greater difficulty, but also increase the quality of loot.

Interface/Other:
The towns are nice, and have plenty of NPCs. It can be a bit hard to distinguish players and NPCs when an area is busier, but since you don't interact with them with the same key it doesn't usually create much trouble. My main gripe was that the map doesn't adequately highlight shops such as armorers, and the in-world signs for shops aren't very distinct either. It really do with some kind of quick-find mechanic, e.g - by interacting with a sign-post and choosing what you want in order to get a quest-marker to it.

Overall the interface is very slick for an MMO, but a huge step back compared to Skyrim. I know Skyrim's interface had its own faults, but these could easily be refined, as it was over wise fairly elegant and simple, and I loved the constellations for skill selection and the 3d map. ESO's map is divided into areas and is a pain to move around, crafting, buying etc. is also a minefield of tabs; not unusual for an MMO, but it could clearly be done better. Crafting is one of the my bigger gripes, as it introduces a ton of materials that seem to serve no purpose other than to waste inventory space; for example, when crafting armour you need particular materials if you want to craft in an argonian style, which really just makes it more of a pain. I'd much rather they'd stuck with the tried and tested materials and just allowed us to learn armour styles with quests from particular armorers for example, so if you want to make steel armour you just need to get some steel, and know how to make the style you want. Crafting just felt like a lot of extra complexity that served no useful purpose to the mechanic; I want to make stuff, but it really put me off trying.

Online Elements:
The biggest gripe was the online part; okay so it's an MMO, that means players gathering in towns, maybe some areas and forming groups to PvP or run harder quests. But in ESO there were players everywhere, even for just the beta. I mean in the first quest you are escaping Molag Bal's prison, but there is a constant stream of other players rushing past you the entire time! I don't mind there being players in some areas, or even when that prison opened up a bit, but it kills the atmosphere a lot, especially when you have pass through crowds of players around the same NPCs, or boss battles are laughable because there's a small army of adventurers waiting to take them down in a few seconds.

The parts where I was able to solo properly were great, and I did group with some players to run the odd boss battle or random event, but ESO badly needs more instanced zones that are private to you or your group, as the online element encroaches badly into some quests. It can help towns feel alive, but it ruins wildernesses; instancing would also help with the other bane of MMOs which is enemies respawning right in front of you not like after you killed them.

It does solve some problems, and there's clearly some form of instancing going on when various important events occur that have permanent effects on areas you've passed through (but are only visible to you and other players that have done the same). Many NPCs also seem to be replicated for you, with you seeing your own personal copy only, but these tricks don't really go far enough.


I'm still not sure how much I'm willing to pay for it though; I'm mostly interested in solo, so I might drop in for a month, then do the same again later on and see where I get to with the story, and just slowly progress that way as more updates are added. But it really depends how it's done; for example, many things put me off WoW, but one thing that ensured I never returned to it was having to pay for each expansion; to me it seems that that should be included in the subscription fee as a necessary extra to keep me playing, otherwise why pay a subscription at all? I really do hope they switch to some other pricing schemes as well, as personally I'd rather just pay for a heap of "weekend passes" that I can use whenever I want.

[tatortodd22]

As a game design major, I would delight in nitpicking for various reasons and ways that ESO would be leagues better. The point is, though, that it is a game, and I had great fun playing it. If I don't run out of things to do? It may very well be worth the 15$ a month.

[Will Zurmacht]

With the caveat that I've played through level 15, casually questing and crafting.

The game obviously owes a debt to Guild Wars 2, with many of the systems seemingly carried over directly (from the small, console-friendly quickbar, to teleport-for-gold, to a similar style of massive world PvP, to a coherent personal questline that characters progress through, making a connection to the events of the gameworld). All of which is a good thing, in my opinion. GW2 is a very fun game with an engrossing levelling experience and a large, dedicated PvP scene. That augurs well for these aspects of TES:O; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Crafting is intuitive and streamlined, though the lack of a global (or at least factional) auction house puzzled me. The morph system, wherein the player can change each character's core class skills into versions tailored to the individual's playstyle, is an interesting feature which I hadn't encountered in another MMO.

What I didn't see was innovation. Things that really stood out as new and exciting additions to the MMO genre. Maybe something amazing happens after level 30 that elevates the experience. Maybe Zenimax has loads of endgame raid content lined up, featuring novel mechanics and nail-bitingly tuned hardmode encounters to challenge the most grizzled of veterans. Or, maybe Zenimax didn't intend to push the envelope at all; just copy some of the more successful MMO elements currently available, add on a generous dollop of familiar Skyrim-era TES aesthetics, and hope to retain subscribers on the strength of brand loyalty. Similar to how SW:ToR was peddled, substituting Star Wars for TES and WoW for GW2/Skyrim. We know how that turned out.

[Haravikk]

As a game design major, I would delight in nitpicking for various reasons and ways that ESO would be leagues better. The point is, though, that it is a game, and I had great fun playing it. If I don't run out of things to do? It may very well be worth the 15$ a month.

I didn't really intend for my own observations to sound so much like nit-picking, I just wanted to give my impressions as thoroughly as possible, and these are things that stood out with various aspects of the game.

So please don't get me wrong, I've really enjoyed the first beta I was able to participate in (the Mac version wasn't ready for the last beta), and I'm looking forward to the next one as I believe there's at least one more beta period coming up, in fact I'm delighted I got in! The problem for me is that monthly subscriptions have never been something I've liked for games, as I rarely commit to a single game in that kind of way (I bounce between new games and favoured older titles) so it's a bit of an inflexible way for to pay. Compared to other MMOs I've tried I'm definitely tempted to play beyond the beta, but I'll probably only be paying for a month at a time if I do, though hopefully that'll mean I actually stay behind the progress of the main quest, so I never actually reach the end-game contents, as that's often where I lose interest when it no longer feels like there's anything I have to do.

But like I say, some of the online elements really do get in the way of soloing properly, which is what is going to put off a lot of Elder Scrolls fans. To me ESO does feel like an Elder Scrolls title, and hordes of players can really help towns and battlefields to feel more alive, but when those hordes are all running to the same objectives and NPCs, or fighting the same higher level enemies, then it kind of gets in the way. It's an area that I really hope ESO improves in future, as it's part of the reason why there's not a lot of challenge, as some of the harder enemies are mobbed by players, then when you do come across one of the instanced boss-battles you suddenly find it's much too hard. So yeah, if they can separate that out some more it will greatly improve the game for both MMO and Elder Scrolls player I think. Again, not that it's a bad game, this is one of those factors that makes the experience inconsistent.

[skullclutter]

I've played through two betas, as a Dunmer in the Ebonheart pact and an altmer in the Aldmeri Dominion.

To me, it definitely feels like an Elder Scrolls game with some multiplayer considerations added on, as opposed to a WoW clone with a map of Tamriel slapped on top.

I was playing on an average laptop and was able to set the graphics to medium overall, with some tweaking (turned shadows off and turn the textures up to high) with no lag.

Crafting has been completely re-vamped compared to Skyrim and the crafting menu isn't always self-explanatory. They added how-to popups the first time you access crafting panels to the second beta - I'd suggest players read them!

I really enjoyed my experience with the beta, so I'll be preordering the $60 version.

[The Tom]

So I thought I may as well share my experience of the beta I participated in about a month ago.

What I will say is that I thought the game was impressive from a technical standpoint. I didn't experience any lag, or desync, or any other real indications that the game was still in beta. It felt smooth and perfectly playable even with dozens of people on the screen.

The game wasn't, however, fun. In fact I think the word I'd use to describe it is 'dull'. Now, I like to think I went into it with with a clear head. The tutorial level inside Coldharbour was actually pretty fun, and while I thought the combat felt VERY floaty, the one spell I had at my command felt satisfying to use. I was playing as an Altmer sorceror with a two-handed sword. Seemed to work quite well, so I guess they weren't lying when they said you could pick whatever playstyle you wanted.

Anyway I caught up with Michael Gambon and had some boss fight type thing, and then I was transported back to Tamriel. Now some of you know me, and therefore know what I love about the Elder Scrolls series, and I trust you'll believe me when I say I paid due attention to the dialogue and story. I still had no bloody idea what was going on. I wasn't sure whether the soldiers here thought I was a fellow shipwrecker, or whether they just didn't care who I was and needed an auxiliary. Truth be told, I didn't care much either by this point because the voice acting left a fair amount to be desired anyway.

I did like the little starting town because it felt a lot less static than I've come to expect from MMOs, and I was very excited when I went exploring and discovered there was a skyshard at the top of one of the towers. It was a very Elder Scrolls moment.

But the actual island outside the walls was as flat and lifeless an environment as I'd ever seen. The creatures waited patiently in packs for someone to come up and start hacking at them. The vegetation was near-enough non-existent. The other players felt like tiny toy soldiers gliding across the ground with no real presence. There didn't really seem to be any interesting use of terrain, just rolling plains as far as the eye could see.

I did some quest about fighting a wizard on a shipwrecked boat or something - I'd really lost interest by this point, because all the other players scampering around kept pulling me out of the game. One dude was just dancing right where I was fighting the evil wizard. There was another quest about an ancient wizard in a temple that was certainly more interesting than a quest to find 20 grasshopper tails, but it's very hard to get into the story when the dialogue you're trying to listen to is being drowned out by the noise of combat from the other 50 people sharing this desolate, lonely tomb with you.

I decided that was enough for one day.

The next day I felt refreshed and decided that I was going to meet up with someone and see if the game improved any by being played together. For a while it did, and I have to commend the developers for their expert implementation of phasing, because while my companion was seeing the dark storm clouds caused by the evil wizard I killed yesterday, for me it was a bright sunny day.

But it was while I was doing some quest to infiltrate the Maomer embassy (lore!) I finally realised I just wasn't enjoying myself. All I could think about was how much less fun this mission was than the equivalent Thalmor embassy mission from Skyrim. The one where you mingle with the party guests - a list of NPCs that changes depending on your progress in the game so far, I might add - and then sneak or kill your way through the rest of the place. This embassy was cramped, furnished with the same bookshelves and tables I'd found on one of the beached ships, and filled with silent, floaty players staring rigidly ahead of themselves at all times. I logged off, uninstalled the game, and didn't go back for the next beta test.


TL;DR: not interested, sorry.

I often say to people that the day I stop playing an Elder Scrolls game is the day when said ES game prevents me from breaking into every house in a town, stealing all their crockery, and hoarding it for my own nefarious purposes.

But Tom, you might say, an undercurrent of desperation feathering the edges of your tone, things like that aren't possible in an MMORPG. To which my answer is, if they had to rip the very soul of the game out to make it massively multiplayer, what was the point? I have to admit that there are certain things in Elder Scrolls games that I always wish I could share with people as I experience them. It was a similar line of reasoning that led me to make an account here to discuss the games, after all. But to me, ESO wasn't an Elder Scrolls game, and I found it difficult to share experiences with people when I didn't really feel I was having any truly personal experiences at all.

When I mentioned this in chat while playing, somebody suggested that since I wasn't finding my playtime very Elder Scrolls-y, I should find and read a few in-game books to assuage my fears. "I already found a copy of Heavy Armour Forging," I replied. "It was automatically added to my character's internal wikipedia thing. I got a little message telling me. Didn't realise I was playing a robot."

[IgorVonDame]

I finally had and opportunity to check out ESO during the last Beta loading test. Since I was not part of the 'core' set of Beta Testers, there was very little opportunity for me to provide proper testing feedback to the developers. A survey came in the mail a few days later, but it offered no location for comments about the game that didn't fit into the survey creator's scope of interest. So, I welcome this thread at UESP as an outlet for my thoughts.

I will start by saying that I have played very little of the TES series of games. I bought Skyrim months after it was released, played an hour or so then went back and bought/downloaded all the rest of the series and began with Arena. I spent a few months a year ago doing some research while playing Arena, but that is about as far as my sense of TES 'Lore' goes. I enjoy playing games in an analytical manner with lots of characters trying as many races/classes of play as the game will permit. It is with that style of approach that I participated in the Beta one weekend.

I created 3 characters, one 'native' of each of the three factions. This was done so I could explore three different starter village areas and get a feel for the artistic differences each of the regions would have. I knew that the spell mechanics and crafting would be quite involved, so I spent little time with them (although based on the previous poster's comments I welcome a complicated crafting system that requires exploration of diverse areas of the world to accomplish a task).

First the starter dungeon: As this was a load test, and the idea was to have as many players active at once, it was little surprise that I found almost all vessels looted when I searched with my first character. My second character fared a bit better until they reached the main room with the teleporter. There most of the jars were empty from players having just been through the area. I thought that the ESO designers should do a better job of dynamically changing the spawn rates of the containers based on the player population in the area. Most of the NPC interaction was customized to my character (I believe the term was phasing) but the lootable containers were not. Otherwise I thought the Tutorial story line was well done and got the new player up to speed fairly quickly without totally boring those that wanted to create more characters.

The Redguard character had what I believe was referred to as the haunted shipwreck quest to do. It required exploring a room on the ship that required a key to enter. I found the key easily enough, entered the room and tried looking for the item I needed to find. I thought I looked everywhere, but I guess I didn't 'discover' the trick and started trying doors as if maybe it was in a closet. Well, the doors do not indicate where they lead until you click on them and change instances. So I suddenly found myself on the deck, facing a locked door and no longer having the key. Why wouldn't a) I still have the red key, automatically removing it from the lock after unlocking the door or b) I be able to go back to the hiding place of the key and find a new one had re-spawned c) The game designers provide an alert/warning message that 'You are about to leave a room that you will no longer be able to access. Do you want to do this?" before allowing me to go back on the deck?

The second character (Argonian Axeman was on the seacoast killing X creatures for an antidote for a disease. That one was not so bad from a game-mechanic basis, but I grew tired of 'go to X ask for a quest to go on a wild chase' and many of the 'enemies' seemed several levels above my abilities.

The third character (a High Elf archer) fared a little better. I got a quest to put on a disguise and try to get into a mine to a particular prize at the end of a long shaft of working miners. Of course there was a patroller with a torch at the end who always saw me and alerted 10 other NPCs to kill me. I tried this 4 or 5 times and then gave up on the task and game completely.

I would add that I'm more of an explorer and sniper than an energetic hack and slash player. So sometime I need hint-sites to help direct me to the right approach to an enemy to be successful. Since this was still super-secret Beta, such resources did not yet exist. As time was short, I did not try spamming local chat to ask for help either.

I would only participate in an MMO that provided a yearly subscription rate. I did not find the interaction/storyline more compelling than WoW or the variety of directional choices/styles of play greater than EVEOnline. I will not be spending my money on the MMO. I was not given enough time in the Beta to experience the social 'joy' of guild-level group questing so I cannot comment on the mechanics.

I did use the /feedback three or four times as the game kept locking up after completing a quest, while talking with the quest giver. Everything froze and I had to kill the game window to exit the game each time. That I reported using /feedback but they required another form to be filed to receive a status on it.

Heck, with TES 1-5 virtually untouched, it could be years before I revisit the MMO version.

[OblivionDuruza]

I'll preface this post with the comment that I've played through each of the three factions, with characters from each of the four classes. I've also levelled several characters to the point of being able to participate in PvP (level 10), but I focused my time in-game on PvE. My experience with MMOs is relatively limited, while my experience with TES Games is fairly expansive (Arena through Skyrim, although not in that order), but I feel that I understand what MMOs are and that I've approached the game as an MMO first, and a TES game second.

I've quite enjoyed my experiences with ES:O, after having taken part in several Beta events, but I've also begun to see a considerable number of fairly ill-informed first impressions of the game across the web (both as written articles and as videos). I really think that consumers are going to have to play a fair way into the game before they make their minds up, or at least refer to reviews and impressions that have been posted only after the author has taken the time to actually experience the game for more than the first few hours.

Some things that worked for me (and, more accurately, stood out - I've been quite busy of late, so this is not going to be an exhaustive list/impressions piece):
The game captures the feel of the Elder Scrolls Universe. While you might not be able to 'roleplay' in the sense that the term means pretending you're in the world of the game, I felt that you could definitely roleplay insofar as the term means placing yourself in the shoes of a character within the world. Many have claimed that ES:O is not a true TES game, but rather has only the hint of a TES flavour, but I have to say that my experience differed significantly from this position. I foudn that the lore writing was both consistent with feeling of TES-lore pre-dating Skyrim, and relatively strong when considered on its own. I particularly njoyed the several expansions upon each of the Great Houses of Morrowind, and on the Clans of Skyrim (something I felt was somewhat missing in Skyrim). I further felt that every landscape in the game was generally as I would have envisioned (the 'fall forest' vibe of parts of High Rock, namely Betnikh, was a little uncanny, but I loved the more dark feel of Glenumbra). All in all, I felt like the game captured the world of Tamriel in a way that appealed to me, and it even felt reminiscent of MGSO's art direction and style (less the Skyrim-stylised UI).
The game does choice, (in a way I feel can be caegorised as) well. The game, despite what some have been claiming, felt to me that it offered a fairly strong level of choice in terms of player options within non-main story sidequests. I felt that this was most noticeable for the Dominion side of things, and least so for the Pact, but I felt that it was something that was present from the starting regions of each alliance (bearing in mind that they are going to change the starting location to open it up even further). I'll discuss one of the most memorable below, so keep in mind that while there aren't any story spoilers involved, it might 'spoil' your own experience with the quest to read on.

Spoiler:

One quest involved helping a Bosmer apprentice rescue her master, a fairly prominent figure in the Dominion, from possession at the hands of a long-dead Moamer. Eventually, you're faced with the choice helping master or apprentice defeat the spirit 'once and for all', resulting in the death, or indefinite imprisonment of whomever you choose.

What I loved about this choice was that it contained exactly zero trace of good v. evil, nor did it contain any significant utilitarian or deontological purchase. One choice over the other would not help or hinder the player, nor the Dominion, any more or less than the other, and neither character was intrinsicly more or less worthy of saving. They both wanted to sacrifice themselves, and both's motives were pure and admirable. It was a choice that I struggled to make. It was a choice that felt more meaningful to me as a player than any in a game like The Witcher.

Honourable Mention: Characters and Companions. This is a fairly minor point, and indeed one that I didn't experience consistently throughout the game, but it is something that is relatively pertinent in terms of the TES experience. The TES franchise has never really been able to hold NPC companions as one of its strong suits, but my experience with the early Covenant questline, and the early Pact story to a lesser extent, stood out as something that I immediately felt that I wouldn't mind seeing in future TES titles. What I'm referring to is somewhat linked to the way that the game handles choice, the idea that companions can act as optional quest objectives for the player to pursue, and can provide insight, help and even 'short-cuts' when it comes to quests further down the line. The Covenant does this really well, with the player given the opportunity to amass a small, yet motley, crew (or not do so) of characters who follow the player for a not insignificant string of quests. While they might not compare to Alistair and Morrigan, or Bastila and Atton as characters, I really did appreciate what it felt like they added as an extension of gameplay.

[baratron]

I joined the most recent beta, literally at the last minute. A friend of mine had been tempting me with her spare beta code for a few days, and I went "ah, sod it, let's give it a go". I then died of shock at how large the download was. Started it at 10 pm GMT, and it finished around 6 am. And I have a really fast internet connection! The trouble was at the server end.

Anyway, I'm not going to bother repeating things that other people have said. Take it for granted that I agree with what tatortodd22 and Haravikk and OblivionDuruza have said above, and mostly don't agree with The Tom.

The controls:
My first issue was the controls. I've played over 1000 hours of Skyrim and a few hundred hours of Oblivion on Xbox 360, but never before touched a computer version of them. The keyboard and mouse combination? OMG WTF? Apparently the controls with WASD to walk and the mouse to look around are standard for PC action games, to which I say "How on earth do none of you PC players have crippling RSI?". The wrist position was so incredibly uncomfortable and unnatural, and I had to stop for a minimum of 15 minutes every 60-90 minutes because of pain. And that was with regular stretching and wrist shaking and so on.

Yeah. Um. Why is gamepad support not included, again? For me, it's basic accessibility for disabled players. Gamepads allow you to play anywhere - sitting back on an ergonomic chair with proper back support, on the sofa, in bed - and they are just so much more practical for people with RSI, arthritis, and other joint problems. I borrowed a PS3 gamepad from a friend and managed to get it working via a combination of a third-party program and reprogramming half the keys via a tutorial from a random web forum that I found on Google, but it felt daft that I had to do that.

Arriving for the first time:
My first run through Coldharbour was horrible. Boring and actively distressing. I kept trying to click on items that were lying around the place, to pick them up - but absolutely everything was scenery and non-interactable until the one point where the game tells you to pick an object up. (No spoilers). That bothered me - I'm used to "the dungeon" area having lots of low-grade weapons and armour and potions and potion ingredients, and it was all scenery! I eventually realised that the only way you could get items was if you were lucky enough to get to one of the crates/chests/barrels/baskets just as they'd respawned. I didn't like that at all. I don't expect to be able to "steal all the crockery" like The Tom said, but I do expect the difference between scenery and interactable objects to be obvious .

Anyway, once I'd spent, I dunno, 2 hours blundering around and made it into the "real" world, I was suddenly a lot happier. There were objects on tables and in bookcases and in cupboards etc, and it was all much more like the Elder Scrolls games that I'm used to.

The Trouble with MMOs:
I played almost entirely single-player, at one point grouping with Alarra. First of all, there was a small but irritating bug - grouping up gave us each an arrow to show where the other's character was - but our actual character were invisible to the other player! It took both of us doing the, uh, /resetui? command before we could see each other. That was bizarre. But minor.

We went into a quest area, and I have to say this was the least enjoyable thing I did in the whole of my time in TES:O. It was so artificial that each of us was helping a separate instance of the same NPC. Normally, my motivation to do a quest in an RPG is the idea that if I don't help the NPC in question, no one else will - but this is ruined by grouping . I know this is also a general MMO problem, the fact that everyone's a hero, not just you - but it was definitely a much bigger immersion problem in the context of normally single-player quests.

I think I will save grouping for dungeons or bosses, or perhaps any quests which require multiple players at once, and otherwise simply use it as a convenient way to chat to all my friends at once. Or as a way to find my friends to exchange objects.

Crafting:
I did a huge amount of crafting. Actually, my characters tried Alchemy, Enchanting, Woodworking, Clothing, and Blacksmithing. We didn't really do any Provisioning since that requires that you find recipes around the world - you can't just experiment like you do in Alchemy and Enchanting. I did not like that. In the real world, you can take ingredients that you think might work into the kitchen and have a go at making something. If it works, you have tasty cake! If it doesn't, you have a horrible mess of eggs and flour to clean up! I don't know why Provisioning has been artificially restricted by recipes.

Sure, sell recipes for interesting and complex meals or drinks. Or leave them around the world, e.g. in quest areas or hidden somewhere. But why do you need a recipe to make something simple? Seems daft to me.

Classes:
I didn't notice this while playing a level 5 character, but I've just started to research the classes in detail. None of them are ideal for the characters I want to make, and the level cap means you only have 50 perk points. Oh. So it's not actually possible for me to make a jack-of-all-trades crafter who simply explores the area for materials and makes items to sell. I could just about manage to create an expert in three professions by putting no points at all into fighting skills, but that would leave my character rather disadvantaged when exploring. Argh! I'm too used to Oblivion and Skyrim which let you increase every skill if you want to. Even before patch 1.9, you had 81 perk points in Skyrim - which is a lot better than 50.

So I'm already feeling very constrained by the class system. I feel like it punishes people who prefer crafting to fighting.

Other problems:
The other issue I found was the lack of subtitles. Proper conversations were subtitled, but background sounds, such as when The Prophet is encouraging you to find his cell, are not. This is appalling! Players who are deaf, hard-of-hearing or have auditory processing disorder are missing out on vital information. Skyrim is reasonably well-subtitled: even conversations that you are eavesdropping on are subtitled if you are close enough to the NPCs concerned, and I would expect at least that level.

If you've played the beta and haven't already filled in the survey that they sent you afterwards, please mention the lack of gamepad support and the need for subtitles on background sounds. There's no reason for disabled gamers to get a worse experience other than a lack of forethought on the part of the developer, and subtitles, at least, are easy enough to add. They must already have all of the scripts for what's said.

[Enteum]

Classes:

I didn't notice this while playing a level 5 character, but I've just started to research the classes in detail. None of them are ideal for the characters I want to make, and the level cap means you only have 50 perk points. Oh. So it's not actually possible for me to make a jack-of-all-trades crafter who simply explores the area for materials and makes items to sell. I could just about manage to create an expert in three professions by putting no points at all into fighting skills, but that would leave my character rather disadvantaged when exploring. Argh! I'm too used to Oblivion and Skyrim which let you increase every skill if you want to. Even before patch 1.9, you had 81 perk points in Skyrim - which is a lot better than 50.

So I'm already feeling very constrained by the class system. I feel like it punishes people who prefer crafting to fighting.

I agree so much with this. The class system does feel restrictive in comparison to a single player ES game. But I think in a way this may get people socially involved. Hopefully anyway. I mean, If you wanted to go out to collect materials with no fighting skills. I would sure as hell be up for venturing along with you to cover you while you collect. I think that this game would be so much fun if people helped others out like that. I am remaining very hopeful for a good, fun community.

But, it is online...so...we'll see.

[Yaije]

Classes:
I didn't notice this while playing a level 5 character, but I've just started to research the classes in detail. None of them are ideal for the characters I want to make, and the level cap means you only have 50 perk points. Oh. So it's not actually possible for me to make a jack-of-all-trades crafter who simply explores the area for materials and makes items to sell. I could just about manage to create an expert in three professions by putting no points at all into fighting skills, but that would leave my character rather disadvantaged when exploring. Argh! I'm too used to Oblivion and Skyrim which let you increase every skill if you want to. Even before patch 1.9, you had 81 perk points in Skyrim - which is a lot better than 50.

So I'm already feeling very constrained by the class system. I feel like it punishes people who prefer crafting to fighting.

First off... if it's 1 per level then you'd only get 49 (you only level up 49 times to reach 50)

And skill points aren't needed to 'level' the various skills (at least not from what I've seen), but having more activated abilities from a skill tree appeared to level it faster.


I had more than 23 skill points by 15ish so it's not a mere 1 point per lvl and that's it. Allegedly, we'll be able easily get 100+ and supposed up to 300ish skill points if we really were trying to. The skill points are earned from leveling, ranking up in pvp (50 available ranks), various quests (if you complete some of the more important ones you can get a skill point as reward), and from the skyshard hunting... Just trying to point out that it isn't at all limited to 50 skill points.... we will likely see 50 before reaching lvl 25 in some cases.

[baratron]

And skill points aren't needed to 'level' the various skills (at least not from what I've seen), but having more activated abilities from a skill tree appeared to level it faster.

My point about it being unfair to crafters is that in order to be able to make the highest quality equipment, you need to invest a lot of perk points into the crafting skills. If the perk point calculators that I've seen are correct, there are something like 6 ranks for Alchemy and 8 ranks for Woodworking which are simply about being able to use better quality materials. Each of those ranks takes a perk point, except I think the first one. That's in addition to any other perks in the skill that you might want.

The skill points are earned from leveling, ranking up in pvp (50 available ranks), various quests (if you complete some of the more important ones you can get a skill point as reward), and from the skyshard hunting... Just trying to point out that it isn't at all limited to 50 skill points.... we will likely see 50 before reaching lvl 25 in some cases.

I forgot about the Skyshards, true. Although it's three Skyshards to one perk point, which isn't a brilliant return. Unless you can activate the same Skyshards over and over again once they respawn... PvP? Ugh! I don't like player-killing on principle and it kinda sucks that in order to have the build I want, my gentle crafting characters might have to go into Cyrodiil .

[Yaije]

Cyrodiil still has it's own skyshards to hunt down and a few ranks of pvp won't really require much. Some people claimed to rank up from simply following groups into keeps as they fell and repaired them for ranks as they were trying to find various locations that may or may not house skyshards.

After hearing that we will likely be able push 300.. my more 'advanced' builds started to tack on more than 40~ points to fill out and had spare options for various situations. Thankfully we'll be able to reset points spent so we could possibly train certain skill trees fast to unlock passives and then swap to get just the ones we really want. But Yeah... not as much freedom as oblivion with some stuff.

[baratron]

Right now, I'm seriously wondering if the perk point calculators are correct. It seems that Active Abilities level up by themselves without needing extra perk points - at least 'til your character is at the point where you can choose one of two advanced variants on the perk. (Morphing the ability, which requires an additional perk point). However, if the perk point calculators are correct, Passive Abilities require one perk point to be spent every time you want to increase your level. As crafting abilities are entirely Passive, this means you can waste an extremely large and disproportionate number of perk points just getting yourself a reasonable level in the crafting skills.

Damn it! I need to get back into the beta now so I can check whether this is correct!

[Yaije]

Passive Abilities require one perk point to be spent every time you want to increase your level. As crafting abilities are entirely Passive, this means you can waste an extremely large and disproportionate number of perk points just getting yourself a reasonable level in the crafting skills.

I have no idea what you mean with the italics.

How much is a disproportionate amount of skill points? cause I'm only counting 24 for a single crafting skill... unless you mean tkaing them all and spending 144 to max everything on a single character.

[baratron]

Passive Abilities require one perk point to be spent every time you want to increase your level. As crafting abilities are entirely Passive, this means you can waste an extremely large and disproportionate number of perk points just getting yourself a reasonable level in the crafting skills.

I have no idea what you mean with the italics.

Okay. This is going to be my last comment on this topic here - not because I don't wish to discuss it further, but because I feel that we're derailing the original thread somewhat. I mean, sure, these are still Impressions of ESO - but they're far more specific than that, Impressions of the Levelling System or something, and I'm not sure how many other posters are interested. If there was a way to split the thread retaining the original context, I'd ask the mods to do that - but I don't think there is.

What I mean by the italics is that if you take a Class ability like Sorceror --> Storm Calling --> Mages' Fury, you spend one perk point to unlock rank 1 of Mages' Fury. Levelling up further to rank 2, 3, and 4 all happens automatically as you use the abilities. You don't need to spend further perk points until you get to the point of Morphing the ability. The same is also true for Weapon abilities like One Hand and Shield --> Puncture. This is because these are Active Abilities.

However, if you take a Crafting ability like Alchemy --> Solvent Proficiency, you spend one perk point to unlock rank 1. And then have to spend another perk point every time you want to rank it up, to rank 2, 3, 4... This is because it's a Passive Ability.

Class skills, Weapon skills, Armor skills, Guild skills and Alliance War skills are a nice mix of Active and Passive Abilities. It takes 21 perk points to max out a Class skill, 20 perk points to max out a Weapon skill, 13 perk points to max out an Armor skill, 15 perk points to max out a Guild skill, and 12 perk points to max out an Alliance War skill.

Crafting skills are entirely Passive Abilities. And the number of perk points required for them doesn't seem to be the same. It takes 18 perk points to max out Alchemy, 22 to max out Enchanting, and 24 to max out Blacksmithing, Clothing, Provisioning, and Woodworking.

Okay. And at this point you say:

How much is a disproportionate amount of skill points? cause I'm only counting 24 for a single crafting skill... unless you mean tkaing them all and spending 144 to max everything on a single character.

Maybe this is my bias as a predominantly crafting person, but I've looked through the Class and Weapon skills and known that my characters wouldn't max them out. I would spend typically 12-15 points on a Class skill and 10-12 points on a Weapon skill - because I don't see the point of spending perk points on Abilities I won't be using. For example, with my Templar, I tried having both Puncturing Strikes and Piercing Javelin, but rapidly found I was using one of the attacks exclusively over the other. It was a waste of a perk point having the other one because I didn't like it.

Whereas in order to have a good crafting character, I'd need to spend a minimum of 15 points for Alchemy, and 18 points on the others - basically everything apart from Keen Eye, if it really does only highlight what you can already see by searching hard. To me, that means that the crafting skills are costing 1.5 x as much.

However, I was talking to Alarra about this last night, and realised that it probably doesn't matter that it's not possible to have a jack-of-all-trades crafter because you can store items in the Bank to be shared among all of your characters. So my blacksmith can collect jute and store it in the bank for my clothing maker to pick up, and my woodworker can collect alchemy ingredients for my alchemist to pick up. That saves me being upset about having to sell perfectly good jute for half a gold coin because I was playing the character who didn't know how to make Clothing .

[OblivionDuruza]

I think what you've identified is something ZeniMax Online actually intended to be as feature, in that they want crafting to be a significant investment. The fact that every item you craft is branded with your mark allows for any given player to dedicate themselves to becoming a master craftsman rather than a combatant within their alliance, and then trade their goods to players throughout their guilds and factions, simulating a real socio-economic structure.

[Haravikk]

I forgot about the Skyshards, true. Although it's three Skyshards to one perk point, which isn't a brilliant return. Unless you can activate the same Skyshards over and over again once they respawn... PvP? Ugh! I don't like player-killing on principle and it kinda sucks that in order to have the build I want, my gentle crafting characters might have to go into Cyrodiil .

Most area include quite a lot of sky shards, in fact the bigger areas have around 12-16 I think (you need to check under achievements to see which areas contain Skyshards), so exploration is very much rewarded. Several quests also give extra skill points, mainly those for the main story and whichever faction you join at the start.

The way the skills seem to work is that your active abilities level automatically by four levels (I think) before they can be morphed into a new version of the ability, usually increasing damage and/or adding a new effect). It's quite a nice system actually.


After playing some more and now going back to Skyrim, my biggest issue with combat is that it brings back the old problems from Oblivion where enemies can duck behind you far too easily, but turning is slow and cumbersome. It also loses a lot of the dynamic combat feel of Skyrim, while I find I repeat much the same tactics in Skyrim in most fights, there's a greater sense of different enemy types challenging you in different ways, and you still have to react at the right moment to make a fight go your way. In ESO you have access to more skill slots, but it just started to feel really bland.

It's a shame, as the story missions are good, and the factions and guilds are woven into the main story extremely well; ESO would make an amazing regular Elder Scrolls title. It's still a decent MMO, I just don't think it breaks away enough from the stuff that causes me to lose interest with MMOs, mainly the hordes of players running around doing the same quests, leaving some boss fights extremely hard while others are trivial, or crowds of players struggling to get the same objectives as each other from a limited pool; since the previous beta many of these now respawn faster, but that only breaks immersion, which is a huge shame.

I'm not sure what I want to do; as I really would like to play out the rest of the Ebonheart faction (the one I got furthest with) and the main story quest-lines, but I'm already losing interest to be honest.

[baratron]

In last weekend's beta, I played a Sorceror with a Restoration staff. This turned out to be the most natural class for my personal playstyle that I've tried.

I got dumped onto the "European" server even though I'm sure I said I wanted to stay on the "North American" one, which meant I couldn't group with any friends. In actual fact, both servers were located in the US somewhere, and I experienced considerable lag at times - worse than I did in the previous beta. There were also a few really obnoxious players stirring up trouble on /zone about the current situation in Ukraine. I took great pleasure in reporting the biggest troublemaker - although it turns out that the email that is auto-sent when you report a player doesn't include that player's username!

After playing some more and now going back to Skyrim, my biggest issue with combat is that it brings back the old problems from Oblivion where enemies can duck behind you far too easily, but turning is slow and cumbersome.

Ah, yes! My Sorceror had the Unstable Familiar summon, but even then I still found battle against two enemies at once hard - while three enemies at once guaranteed I'd be slaughtered. Even once I'd figured out the Quickselect to rapidly quaff a potion, and got Grand Healing and Regeneration working, I still couldn't cope because of enemies jumping behind me. In some cases, lag was an issue - not only lag to the server, but also lag as my poor computer tried to cope with the game (it turns out that I have literally the minimum spec graphics card supported, and I can't easily change that because it's a laptop). But I wasn't sure whether it was entirely lag to blame.

I suspect that TES:O is ideally designed to be played in third-person mode, but I loathe that as a concept - I hate having my character's big body in the way when I'm trying to look around and explore.

It also loses a lot of the dynamic combat feel of Skyrim, while I find I repeat much the same tactics in Skyrim in most fights, there's a greater sense of different enemy types challenging you in different ways, and you still have to react at the right moment to make a fight go your way. In ESO you have access to more skill slots, but it just started to feel really bland.

I can't really comment on that, because every fight against enemies close to my level (in particular, humanoids) involved me hitting the left mouse button as many times as I could while simultaneously spamming the 1 and 2 buttons on my keyboard. I only really got to use tactics when sniping mudcrabs on the beach. There isn't a difficulty control, is there? I'm generally not good at combat,

It's a shame, as the story missions are good, and the factions and guilds are woven into the main story extremely well; ESO would make an amazing regular Elder Scrolls title.

In general, I thought that the writing is excellent. None of the quests I did were boring. Even the simple fetch quests had small twists in the plot.

I avoided the swarming problem by playing at odd times of day. I imagine the servers were much more packed at 3 pm on Saturday than they were at 4 am on Sunday. Though if I set up my characters on the North American server, this won't help me in the slightest. Ah well.

[skullclutter]

I got dumped onto the "European" server even though I'm sure I said I wanted to stay on the "North American" one, which meant I couldn't group with any friends.

That's odd - in previous betas I had no problems grouping with friends of mine from europe who were on the EU server. I had her username added to my friends list ahead of time. Maybe that's the difference?

[baratron]

I got dumped onto the "European" server even though I'm sure I said I wanted to stay on the "North American" one, which meant I couldn't group with any friends.

That's odd - in previous betas I had no problems grouping with friends of mine from europe who were on the EU server. I had her username added to my friends list ahead of time. Maybe that's the difference?

No. This beta was the first one which actually had a separate server for people from Europe - although since they didn't have time to set it up in Europe, it wasn't really a fair test of responsiveness/lag. Those of us with European country codes (and certain others, like my friend in Malaysia) all had to download a brand new copy of the client. Now my Applications/Zenimax Online folder contains both a 32.38 GB folder called The Elder Scrolls Online downloaded on 1st March and another 32.38 GB folder called The Elder Scrolls Online EU downloaded on 14th March!

[skullclutter]

I got dumped onto the "European" server even though I'm sure I said I wanted to stay on the "North American" one, which meant I couldn't group with any friends.

That's odd - in previous betas I had no problems grouping with friends of mine from europe who were on the EU server. I had her username added to my friends list ahead of time. Maybe that's the difference?

No. This beta was the first one which actually had a separate server for people from Europe - although since they didn't have time to set it up in Europe, it wasn't really a fair test of responsiveness/lag. Those of us with European country codes (and certain others, like my friend in Malaysia) all had to download a brand new copy of the client. Now my Applications/Zenimax Online folder contains both a 32.38 GB folder called The Elder Scrolls Online downloaded on 1st March and another 32.38 GB folder called The Elder Scrolls Online EU downloaded on 14th March!

Ah, that's probably it then. I was under the impression that the NA and EU servers talked with each other but I guess that's not the case. That sucks!

[StingingVelvet]

My summary would be that they did a good job of getting an MMO to feel like a TES game but it's "MMO-ness" still really turns me off.

The cities are large and full of people but none of it means much, it's all lacking any detail or meaning, just run the quests from marker to marker to level up enough to move to the next area. There's an abundance of dialog but for some reason I find it less interesting than the solo games'. The combat tries to mimic a real action system like Skyrim's but you can't hide the clunky system beneath the surface.

I'm going to try and get a character to the end before my trial time runs out for the story, but I don't see myself ever coming back to the game or counting it within the main series. I started a different class in each faction and decided to keep going with my Thalmor mage.

[Alarra]

I finally got around to writing my thoughts on the game.
http://blog.uesp.net/index.php/2015/02/ ... ion-of-eso

So, most of these impressions on this thread are from beta - how about you guys who are still playing now? Have your opinions in this thread changedl?