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New To ESO - This Game Is Doomed
Sequitur
Member Posts: 4
So I'm new to ESO, and this is my first time playing ESO Online. Having played it this weekend, there is no way people are going to be paying $15 a month for this. It is going to be a very small player base that is shelling out $180 a year for this frustrating experience.
And this game is exactly that: frustrating. From terrible menus and UI, to clunky combat, to the awful phasing, to terrible targeting mechanics, there isn't much to like.
Right from the start I disliked the first person versus "cursor" UI. It's totally unintuitive, and every time you want to do something with the menus or with groups, etc., it takes extra frustrating steps to go to cursor, access your menus, start a group, even access the chat window via mouse, or access toon and item screens. Hated it, hated it, hated it. Just trying to invite someone to group is a pain in the arse, you can't simply right click them and add them to group, or even see what their name is via a portrait that you can select and keep on the screen.
UI and menus, just awful. Totally unintuitive, seems like only five slots for abilities, and then that utter garbage quickslot wheel which, I guess, is just for potions and food. Why are players forced into this awful UI, with almost no customization?
Questing and grouping -- not happening, ever. This plainly is a solo "mmo." I tried to start many groups, I don't think people even knew they were invited. Many, many invites, ignored. And why bother? Every single time I did manage to get a few people together, people are phased. So we would enter the same cave or location, and boom, people disappear, due to some particular quest subpart that none of us could figure out. Phasing in this game just sucks terribly, ruining any chance of cooperative play. And the bad thing is, phasing is everywhere in this game. From a group play perspective, it's gamebreaking.
Portraits. Where are the character portraits -- or anything -- concerning my character and other characters. Do I have buffs? Do I have a debuff? What is happening to me? What happened to someone else? Zero easy-to-see or use visual cues concerning player status. Heck, it was a pain in the arse just to see what someone's name was. It sucks. It just plain sucks.
Map and lack of minimap. After the first day of beta play, man did I (and two of my friends) get sick and damn tired of hitting "m." In a city, hit m. Leaving a city, hit m. Shrine, m. Wilderness, m. Need a way around this lava, m. Looking for road, m. Travling anywhere? Get ready for m m m m m m m m. This game seriously needs a minimap or overlay. It needs something, because hitting m all day long makes me want to hit another button called "quit."
Combat, clunky as hell, not sharp and crisp. You often can't tell if a particular spell or ability did, or was going to, land, and again, the lack of any real information about monster status and debuffs via a portrait made it awful boring, awfully fast. Hitbox and ranges, difficult to judge with this fourth-rate combat system.
Professions and crafting, oh man. What in the hell is going on? The whole system is a massive feeback loop of misery and boredom. First, there's no intuitive way to see where you are or where you should be progressing with any profession. Out in the field or away from tables, you can't do jack. Just terrible making players run around looking for a particular crafting table, or a cooking fire. I can understand having some location requirements, but seriously, not being able to do any profession levelling while questing or in a dungeon? Inability to make anything on the fly if a player needs it while grouped or questing? Sucks.
Chat window -- needs way more information. For example, if you put the game on auto-loot, and then you loot, "stuff" goes in your bag. You don't know what or how much, you just here the coin sound effect. How exciting. Developers, how about telling the players, via the chat window, what it is they looted? How about group invites and declines -- why is this not in the chat window? (Perhaps in the chat toggles there is a way to make this happen, but by this time I was so annoyed at the game, didn't even bother.)
Wanted to like this game, but I don't see people paying for this annoying player experience.
Comments
The only thing that's "doomed" is your future relationship with ESO !
You clearly prefer other types of MMO designs and play styles. What puzzles me though is that you seem to be angry because ESO was not made the way you like your games to be ?
+1 <Nice!>
Oh also to the OP: Welcome to the site!
It's not your cup of tea I take it. I saw shades of my own opinion in a lot of those comments you wrote BUT I'm a big Elder Scrolls fan so those sticking points are things I can get around.
I like Dragon Quest, Diablo, Warhammer, the Elder Scrolls Universes so I'd play any and all of those games in online form if the game stuck to its universe and lore roots.
That! There is nothing more to say about TESO. Unfortunately. :-/
So you mean to tell me that you actually bought Diablo 3 ._. ?
This
Clearly this game wasnt made you in mind then, just because you dont like it doesnt make it doomed.
Clunky combat, no minimap, lack of info in combat. Welcome to Elder Scrolls games. Those "features" are in pretty much every ES game. Skyrim was a step up but far from being perfect.
Bad UI issues, well in current way the games are designed, PC gamers are pretty much victims, if they game is going to be on consoles too, we are the ones who will suffer from it in a form of bad UI, it sucks, I dont really like the UI either.
Biggest issue I had is the friggin FOV in first person, I get sick if I play in 1st person really quick, and after researching in internet a bit, apparently they have no plans what so ever fixing it. I always play in 1st person when im alone so it gets me mad for treated as a second class, Im going to hold my subs before they fix it.
But in overall I personally enjoy this as fresh touch in mmo field, I feel no pressure to lvl up and just roam around doing "stuff". During this weekend I got to lvl 4 and managed to stick my nose in places devs didnt want players to go and nice crafting gear.
Mayby you should go for Wildstar, thats more traditional and helds your hand all the way.
mmorpg.com, the 4chan of mmo forums.
I try to see the good things... hoping ZOS sees the flaws and works on them. But then... we haven't seen a deeply flawed MMO ever been turned around so far.
*sigh*
I truly wish ESO succeeds and turns around... but I too fear ESO is indeed doomed.
The OP is clearly highlighting the glaring issues EVERY MMO player will see right away. Only some Skyrim fans will not see that. So the OP's critique is what a lot of typical MMO gamers will see as well.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
What happened to hating the 10-rats quests? Now when we get voiced storylines instead of click accept and kill 10 x at location the whining commences still?
Anyway, I agree with poor combat really messing with a game since that's what you do most of the time in MMO's, though I havent played the game yet and I here more "decent" than "bad", if they'd just fix the animations and added better sound feedback I dont think we have much to whine about (maybe make it a little bit faster?).
To answer the OP's question about "why it has to be this way", the answer is: consoles. Same as the last two elder scrolls games, the interface is limited by console controls, then adapted to PC. Hence the many annoyances of PC players in Skyrim, and the baffling UI in ESO.
But bizzarely, instead of using tried and true console control mechanics, that "quickwheel" is a disaster. Even though it is designed that way for consoles, they made it much worse than your average console game. Don't make me press down the quickwheel bind twice: once to bring up the wheel, then press down AGAIN to select from it...just press, select and release! Now, since it's both a quickwheel toggle and a selector after the toggle, the wheel blinks away before it activates the consumable, and if you don't press it again fast enough it just brings up the wheel again. Why? There is no good reason to do it like this, as hundreds of decent console UIs can attest. Just press, select and release to activate...simple. Why make it so counterintuitive? If this was a well designed xbox/ps game, you would hold a button down, an 8-direction menu would pop up mapped to the D-pad or analog stick (populated with consumables, moves, whatever) and then you release the button to activate whatever is mapped to that direction. But no, like so many aspects of this game, they have to reinvent the wheel...by making it square. it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
I wanted to love this game, and from levels 2 to 6 I was very hopeful. The character creation, graphics, voice acting and skills took me in immediately. Then I ran into the brick wall of inadequately explained, frustrating and overcooked crafting mechanisms. Huge swaths of land completely unpopulated with mobs, interspersed with areas that are the opposite, too dense with identical, cookie-cutter mobs. Long, boring questlines that involve talking to NPCs back and forth like a treadmill, and then when you hit level 7 or so a sudden, exponential spike in linear quest difficulty so frustraing that every 2 minutes someone is asking for help with a solo, low level quest, only to realize it's a solo-only quest instance with a boss so difficult you will break half your gear and spend the remainder of your cash repairing it. You then must scour the entire zone with a fine toothed comb for nodes to build ever so slightly better gear in the hope of completing quests your own level, or grind mobs for hours to level past them. Both inventory and bank are full of so many useless mats that you must spend hours figuring out what is useful and what is not (hint: 90% of it is garbage), etc. The consumables are useless, as they add such a small amount of health/magika/stam that you are better off not sacrificing the moment of attention to consume it, and focus on the FPS twitchfest that is ESO combat. No target lock, so better hope you got those crosshairs on the right mob!
The upside of this game, and it is a big upside, is that IMO the skill system (combat skills that is, crafting is another story) is good. You can craft some unique skillsets and there are many to choose from. Although the selection of skills is mostly the same for all players, there are a lot of trees: 3 trees for each of the 4 classes, one unique tree per race, and one tree per weapon type (sword and board, dual weild, staff, etc), and a few misc trees that are identical for all races/classes. However, being limited to only 5 (6 counting your "ultimate" skill) hotbar slots puts a damper on this too. Using them is another story, as unless you are an FPS fan don't bother. Dodge, block, interrupt and sprint comprises the combat mechanics, and from the numerous times I asked throughout the beta, nobody seemed to know what the indicators were for each of these specific actions, so it's trial and error right now. Get out of the way best you can, and block a lot. Then you die from the insanely overpowered lowbie quest bosses. Not in a fun way, as in complex mechanics...in a bad way, as cheap as a badly done Sega Genesis platformer.
My prediction for this game is big purchase and sub numbers up front, followed by a rapid decline a' la SWTOR.
Not all games are made for you OP, move on find another game.
sad .. but i have to agree almost on everything OP said.
Many of you could say thats just not my taste,, but lets guys be honest. This is far far away to be a game that worth subscription. Its only on month until release and it feels so bad at gameplay. I didnt even think about to pvp while i got so frustrated on combat even killing a simple pack of mobs.
And no, im definately not another wow funboy. I m gonna stick to Neverwinter, Firefall and TSW that is free until something better that (at least) working comes out.
This game is totaly broken for me and the only fun i had was while uninstall it.
OP, people like you are very interesting to me. You obviously do not like the game, and automatically assume no one else does. I have never understood this kind of attitude about gaming. You simply play, or you don't play. I fully intend to pay $15 a month for this game, FYI.
Also it seems to me that you had some expectations and caused you to write this post. Maybe heed some advice, expectations are the seeds or resentment. Nothing is worse in the world then resentment, it keeps people sick.
This is where I stopped reading. Anything after this is completely pointless and a waste of time. It is very simple....either you are gonna LIKE the game or you are NOT. I don't know why people continue to be compelled to come here and whine about a game like SOMETHING is owed to them. If you think you can do it better, go get investors and design one yourself. Sure, I can post my concerns about the game as well and why I am not going to purchase it......but frankly, who cares? Just more proof the self entitlement generation is worse as ever and your opinion is so important you must start another thread about the same thing that has been started 50950985 times before. /rant off
-Rig
I assume the OP just doesn't want a MMO which revolves the wheel of progress back 10 years, like ignoring every single progress made in MMOs. A lot of MMo habits of UO and EQ era simply were not fun ever. Like 10 hours boss camping. Nobody wanted that, WOW did away with it, and thank goodness.
This.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
second this ^^
There's nothing wrong with referencing good inclusions form other games that have become staples and can be built on. e.g if someone tried to build a new car without a seat belt people would be like wtf? and that is the problem - some new MMO's come out without a seat belt and people are just dumbfounded.
Another "TESO is Doomed" Thread....*yawn*
Seen that already a thousand times. Your'e not tired of making these Threads?
.....
Aerowyn's Video Compilation of ALL things Guild Wars 2
We see these sorts of threads for most new MMOs that come out and they are right every time.
ESO will die a sad and lonely death as players abandon it after the first month or two and it deserves too as well. It brings nothing new to the genre, and manages to go backwards compared to recent games like GW2.
I usually play most new MMOs at launch, but the ESO will be the first major release I skip because it has absolutely nothing that interests me. It's a bland, boring, and above all ugly game with no redeeming qualities at all.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
I usually play most new MMOs at launch.....
You need to figure out what you like because its obvious you have no clue.
When you figure it out then come back and discuss..or better yet. Just play the game that does fit your newly discovered likes.
I know you put allot of effort into your post but seriously. This game is doomed because its way to different from all the other MMO's you've played and also because its solo friendly while leveling. Hmmm.
I guess the industry should go back to making games exactly like everything that's already been made. What you consider mandatory features allot of people consider "dumbing down".
Don't be scared of something different.
I suppose you might be right if a metric crap ton of people didn't think GW2 was a step in the wrong direction. So it may be hard for you to believe but there are people in this world that are not exactly like you.