11. Learn to better communicate with your player base, currently your worse than MMO devs from 10+ years ago.
I am sure there are tons more, but those are important to me to really feel like i could come back to this game, this will be one of the first MMO's in a long time that i did not devote at least 3 months before i threw in the towel. Maybe it was sooner but that had to be Cryptic's hero MMO Champion's Online... when i compare a game to that game ... its not good. Course anything made by Cryptic was just terrible, even if STO is a bit better than on release.
1. Personally I would rather see them increase the size of guilds by a lot and make that keep ownership more meaningful than add a global AH. The process of capturing a keep needs to be reworked as well. I do however agree the currently system while a good idea isn't well implemented.
2. Easier said than done. If they want it to take 200 hours on average for instance to get from VR1 to VR10 than if they created the ability to PVP or Grind for 200 hours to get the same people would complain about how bad it was (really like they already are). People would shorten that by grouping up which would require nerfing group XP (heaven help the forums than) or capping XP gain which would also not go over well.
3. ESO runs way better than GW2 did at launch for me. It's not even a contest so I'm not sure why we are seeing different results.
4. Meh, I"m fine with them being add-ons and I don't see a reason for them to undermine the value of the mod community by stealing idea.
5. The sooner we get housing and guildhalls the better. If guildhalls could be tied to keep ownership even better.
6. Agreed
7. From what I can tell the overall cost of the horses is the same once you have upgraded it completely. It's just how many feedings headstart you want to get by spending more gold but if you buy the cheapest horse and keep at upgrading it everyday it will turn into as good as the best over time.
8. Yea I kind of wish bank space was a bit larger to. Personal bank space for no trade items would be nice as well as right now you have to carry those things around.
9. Agreed, Adventure zones should be for all VR ranks not just VR 10
10. Giving that kind of power to volunteers isn't a good idea. They should hire some CSR's to do that but not give out that power to fan boys.
11. I want to see results and patches with new content and fixes not dev posts on the forums. And no way are they the worse. I would actually say they are average for a game in the first 2-3 months which makes sense given how buried they are right now.
Zenimax would need to grow up and get some experience running a major online game first.
From the gameplay perspective - I'd like to see 1-VR10 content changed to support leveling via crafting/exploring/dungeons runs/PvP and NOT ONLY QUESTING.
I'd like to see some smaller scale PvP options for 4v4 and 8v8
Only your second points makes any sense. This is not a battleground arena style pvp game. Stop it!
Combat lag + freezes. Whatever the issue is it needs to be corrected. I run out of telegraphed stuff yet still get hit. This all the while maintaining 60-80ms ping and 60-100fps. When you start doing higher level content and get into VR zones you will rage if you experience this.
Certain parts of the game needs to be optimized. If I'm running 60-100fps and having the game drop to 20-30fps because of a waterfall or glowing portal effect that's not cool. Especially when the graphical options are horrendous and don't fix the problem (or give me the option to if it's on my end).
There needs to be live in game GMs monitoring areas and responding to certain complaints. Seriously the gold selling in starter areas are just as bad. Still getting mail spam from g----dah.com I regret when I have to go back. The bot trains really ruin already /faceroll delves and public dungeons
The Guild AH is abysmal. The concept is fine but it's usability sucks. No searching for items? Certain categories don't even pull up what they're supposed to. It constantly breaks requiring /reloadui.
Store NPCs are fucking annoying after a few times. Either give them variety or have them shut the fuck up after the first time you talk to them. A simple "hi how can I help you" would have been fine.
The quest blocking bugs and the time it takes to respond to them are silly. Zenimax needs to be proactive with stuff like this, not behaving like procrastinating stoners. "Dude... we'll get to it, chill". Nobody wants to hear that shit. Say what you want about other hated games, when there are quest blocking bugs the AAA titles hot fix fast.
I hate not being able to queue up for Dungeons because I out level it. It's not my fault Zenimax takes it's sweet time to fix Dungeon bugs. I still would either like to get my credit or quickly be able to form a squad and get it done.
Their Customer Service email situation is a fucking joke. They're is a conflict between the help desk inbox and the Oracle software they're using to relay customer service emails. It's marked as spam. Good job.
That's not a lot of stuff, but Zenimaxes response time or acknowledgement of these items is why I've cancelled any re-billing. I like the game conceptually but I don't have to tolerate sub par quality and the "we'll fix it when we fix it" schedule they're on. This is not Xbox Live or PSN.
"As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*"
Hmm, well I guess the following are the major things they'd have to change/fix in order for me to return:
1. Add more skill slots on the hotbar or refine the current skills available so that you can make a complete build from them. My issue here was that no matter what 5 skills I picked, I always felt like half a character. Even with the second hotbar, I still felt like an extremely limited character. In almost every MMORPG, you are given enough skills to fully flesh out your character. So you're able to carry your weight in solo pve, group pve, raid pve, and PvP. In ESO, you have to pick 1 or 2 very narrow roles to fill and that's all you get. No thank you Zenimax. I'd rather not play an MMO at all then play with those restrictions.
2. Bots and Gold Spammers. Never in my life have I dealt with the amount and variety of gold spamming in a MMO as I have in ESO. Upon logging in, the chat box would be scrolling at a good pace with just gold spam. It'd take 3-5 minutes to ignore all of them, a bit longer to ignore and report them. AND THEN you'd still have to ignore and report the gold sellers spamming your email and spamming you with guild invites. The latter two weren't nearly as prevelant as the former, but damn. Bots are a big issue as well. Angry Joe said it best, you start a quest line and so far it's amazing. Then you get to the dungeon portion of it and find 5-10 bots farming the boss, while another 5 actual players are farming it too. "How immersive."
3. Bugs and Dupes. Much of this I know was reported more than a month prior to it's release, yet Zenimax still released the game! You don't release a game, period, if there is broken content or dupes still in the game. That means the game isn't ready for release. Some bugs are to be expected, but there's a difference between obscure bugs that weren't reported or caught by beta testers and prevalent bugs reported and talked about on forums during the beta over the course of months.
All in all, Zenimax made the mistake a few other MMO companies have made and lived to regret....they released an unfinished game. In this day and age, with all the past releases to learn from, and the experience of the MMO community, that's almost like signing your games own death warrant. That's not to say that ESO isn't a fun game, they and future companies need to learn to narrow the scope of their game to the point where they are sure they can release a decently polished game by the release date.
Also, because of all the downtime that directly affected the limited time I had for gaming anyways, and due to the unfinished nature of the game, and because I already spent ~$80 on the game, the only way I will return is if Zenimax gives me a weekend to a week of free game time to test the game out again. I refuse to pay another cent to them. They need to show us some goodwill.
For myself, Elder Scrolls Online is fundamentally broken. I agree with very little of the design decisions that went into this project and feel the end result of said decisions results in yet another MMO that offers nothing of importance.
There are multiple different aspects of the game that would need to be overhauled in order for me to come back, which is obviously never going to happen but I will go through a few points just to illustrate what I mean.
-Questing-
Elder Scrolls Online focuses too much on giving this experience to the player. Sure the player can 'pick a direction and run' as the developers would have you do; however, the player has to stay within the level range of enemies. This means that players must follow the string of quests around the map if they hope to be competitive against enemies in areas further on. It ends up feeling like a generic themepark experience and never pulls off the sense of discovery and freedom the franchise is based on.
There are also too many quests in the game which adds to the feeling of the player being drowned with this type of content. Most of the quests the player finds will also be finished in the same general area the quest giver was located. This leads to the world feeling fragmented as what is taking place in one town, cave, dungeon, or ruin has no affect beyond its own general area. I wish the development team had focused on much fewer, yet more involved, quests that lead the player around different zones and areas. Having fewer, more involved quests would have kept 'quest fatigue' at a lower level and also would have helped world-building while giving the player more time to become invested in the NPC's they interact with. As it stands now, you will hardly remember any of the hundreds of quest givers as there is no time to flesh out their personality or their place in the world itself.
-Exploration-
I was excited about the idea of getting lost into an actual world and being rewarded for it in a small way. Finding chests out in the world is great and is one of the best things about the game. However, I can't help but feel disappointed in how Lorebooks and Skyshards were handled. I have the feeling that the developers were afraid people would feel little incentive in finding books and shards, so they decided to make them important for character development (3 Shards = more skill points, Lorebooks level Mages Guild). This made finding them too important, which lead to the developers having to place them in obvious locations so the majority of players would have little trouble in locating them. Every Skyshard and Lorebook I discovered was located directly beside an area that contained a quest or were just sitting beside a road. Such a decision undermined the entire point of including these items into the game.
-Group and Public Dungeons-
These things are too linear. Every public dungeon will follow the same circular layout, have a boss near the end, and a skyshard to collect. Such a boring design decision as the player will lose that sense of wonder after completing just a few of these things. Public dungeons will have too many people wandering around in them so there is no sense of danger for the player, which ruins any incentive to explore. Group dungeons are incredibly easy and make grouping feel unrewarding at best (which this game excels at destroying the concept of grouping at every turn).
There are plenty of other issues I had with the game. Namely: the lack of Open World PvP, crafting is useful yet offers no challenge, grouping is broken due to phasing, Anchors are a cruel joke, leveling horses is a huge time sink, crafting research is a huge time sink, veteran ranks are a huge time sink.
This post is already long enough and does not cover all of my issues with the game. So no, nothing they do at this point will ever bring me back short of designing a new game from the ground up.
1. Personally I would rather see them increase the size of guilds by a lot and make that keep ownership more meaningful than add a global AH. The process of capturing a keep needs to be reworked as well. I do however agree the currently system while a good idea isn't well implemented.
2. Easier said than done. If they want it to take 200 hours on average for instance to get from VR1 to VR10 than if they created the ability to PVP or Grind for 200 hours to get the same people would complain about how bad it was (really like they already are). People would shorten that by grouping up which would require nerfing group XP (heaven help the forums than) or capping XP gain which would also not go over well. 3. ESO runs way better than GW2 did at launch for me. It's not even a contest so I'm not sure why we are seeing different results. 4. Meh, I"m fine with them being add-ons and I don't see a reason for them to undermine the value of the mod community by stealing idea. 5. The sooner we get housing and guildhalls the better. If guildhalls could be tied to keep ownership even better. 6. Agreed 7. From what I can tell the overall cost of the horses is the same once you have upgraded it completely. It's just how many feedings headstart you want to get by spending more gold but if you buy the cheapest horse and keep at upgrading it everyday it will turn into as good as the best over time. 8. Yea I kind of wish bank space was a bit larger to. Personal bank space for no trade items would be nice as well as right now you have to carry those things around. 9. Agreed, Adventure zones should be for all VR ranks not just VR 10 10. Giving that kind of power to volunteers isn't a good idea. They should hire some CSR's to do that but not give out that power to fan boys. 11. I want to see results and patches with new content and fixes not dev posts on the forums. And no way are they the worse. I would actually say they are average for a game in the first 2-3 months which makes sense given how buried they are right now.
Thanks for the constructive criticism, i actually appreciate it.
Zenimax would need to grow up and get some experience running a major online game first.
From the gameplay perspective - I'd like to see 1-VR10 content changed to support leveling via crafting/exploring/dungeons runs/PvP and NOT ONLY QUESTING.
I'd like to see some smaller scale PvP options for 4v4 and 8v8
Indeed we are seeing some growing pains of a new MMO by a company who never made one before. That said, I think they are adapting very well and putting some pretty huge development into making it a perfect MMO, I would not write them off just yet, this thing is going to be as polished as World of Warcraft when they are done, which is pretty fast at the speed they are at right now on this.
I, too, wish there was better automated trading via an Auction House. Here is a list of some things that would make me come back:
Automated pathing system. I should be able to click on a quest in my log and have my character automatically path to where I need to go; it is 2014 why is this not implemented?
Built in bot support. Again, this is 2014, why is this not included? People will bot anyways, and this would help solve that problem. There are many MMOs that use this feature, and I think that ESO could benefit from it. My character should be able to progress in the game even when I am not able to put in the time to play it.
There should not be any group content at all. As a solo player, I feel left behind in certain content just because I do not want to party with other players. It is not fair that other people who group can complete content easier than someone who soloes.
A robust cash shop. I do not have much time to play lately, and I really wish that I could buy max level characters and/or gear/VR/etc. for those characters so that I can keep up with people who play 24/7.
There are probably more things, but that is all I can think of at the moment. If ESO would get their act together, they could have a really good game on their hands. Until then I will not give them any more money.
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
I, too, wish there was better automated trading via an Auction House. Here is a list of some things that would make me come back:
Automated pathing system. I should be able to click on a quest in my log and have my character automatically path to where I need to go; it is 2014 why is this not implemented?
Built in bot support. Again, this is 2014, why is this not included? People will bot anyways, and this would help solve that problem. There are many MMOs that use this feature, and I think that ESO could benefit from it. My character should be able to progress in the game even when I am not able to put in the time to play it.
There should not be any group content at all. As a solo player, I feel left behind in certain content just because I do not want to party with other players. It is not fair that other people who group can complete content easier than someone who soloes.
A robust cash shop. I do not have much time to play lately, and I really wish that I could buy max level characters and/or gear/VR/etc. for those characters so that I can keep up with people who play 24/7.
There are probably more things, but that is all I can think of at the moment. If ESO would get their act together, they could have a really good game on their hands. Until then I will not give them any more money.
I agree there is so much that is good here but there is also so much that needs to be fixed before I would subscribe long term . I wouldn't rule out going back at some point to level alts . I think the sticking point for me would be them sorting out the overcrowded public dungeons because they ruin the immersion . They need to be made a little less public . If they remain as the are I wouldn't go back .
First let me say I think the most recent patch solved the public dungeon issue ( or maybe I have been lucky as of late). It is better for the bots to train farm either mobs in the world or quests now ( cold harbour had 100s just teleporting to quest objectives).
When I first started playing I hated the Trade Guild idea. While I do not think it is the solution for this game it is better then a full server auction house. Multiple reasons for this. 1) you can pretty much do everything and get everything yourself 2) combine the previous issue with a single AH for the server would destroy any value. I personally think that guilds should have territory, have their AH open to the public or maybe just an AH per city / zone to break things up.
Personally It is this vertical progression that is becoming this bane for me. I have not felt like I really gotten any stronger ( just more ways to dmg / survive ) which leaves me feeling this game would be perfect with a more horizontal progression system. This way the world could actually feel more open instead of this linear zone to zone path.
Dynamic events needed! This whole world feels static, just points on a map to visit and forget once you have done your business.
Faction lock has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I should have chosen a faction when I am about to join the war.
This whole veteran rank crap is beyond retarded. Just should have had max cap at 60 or simply stopped at 50 and just leave the rest open if players wanted those skill points. Besides after I beat the story why are there dark anchors in the world? I thought that was what I was stopping when I fought Molag Bal.
I would love for the NPCs to react to me when I am on a horse ( Just on of the many things I loved about Age of Wushu ). It is silly to have a person walking pushing me on my horse.
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Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I felt like I was playing a single player game, what with all the phasing. In addition, I'm not too keen on the limitations of number of skills you can use at a time, a la GW2 or Diablo 3. It just felt very dumbed down to me. I'm not so much interested in having to pick and choose between what skills I want to limit myself to in any given situation as a way to make the game seem more "challenging" or requiring more "tactical" thought before a fight...It seems these games that go to console, or are being made to play on console, are intentionally being limited to fit with a game pad.
- Complete class overhaul. They are way too similiar, play one of them and you've essentially played them all (There is absolutely no real unique features on the classes)
- Balance the damn game and make its mechanics make sense. A spell follows weapon critical strike chance? WHY?
- Remove the grind (VR1-10 is so utterly boring)
- More depth to character customization. I just allocated 49 points to health, cause well. Everything else I got from gear, and it was free health.
- How about developers would actually pay attention to their product, the broken skills have been exploited for weeks, and nothing has been done to them.
- PvP is lacking something, its currently just boring.
- Allow respecs to allocate levels as well. Tried to grind a new weapon class for few hours and just quit the game, and I don't want to go back. This is actually my first MMO I purchased after testing it (ex. in beta) and not sub even for the first month. 2 weeks and I am done with this game.
Although, I enjoyed the storylines as TES fan, so at least I got something out of my moneys worth.
Actually there are specific dungeons in the game that have a 15 second respawn timer. So a lot of people are abusing these locations.
As to my understanding boss may spawn but it will yield nothing if you just looted it ( a few minute til looting is enabled again ).
It needs to be a few hours not a few minuets or limit the loot a boss gives to maybe three times . Better still do away with the public dungeons and limit them to 5 -10 people at a time and still limit the boss loot .
Its still being abused I saw people doing it yesterday . Reported them all for exploiting ( not sure if it is exploiting or not because its a bit of a grey area ) . If it is considered such by the GMs hopefully they will get their accounts banned .
Everyone needs to back up a second and ask "WHY?" all the bugs and design issues exist. The answer is "people". If the people who caused the problems aren't replaced, then changes to the software and design of the game will only represent the same philosophies that created the problems to begin with.
Therefore, for me to come back Zenimax would have to:
(1) Fire all the marketers (with malice). Marketing should never have priority over good design; marketing should never set schedules.
(2) Fire the management team. Noting that ZOS was formed as a subsidiary to Zenimax just for this game, its whole management team is at fault for a whole lot of bad decisions. Good management (male or female) actually has to have a big set of balls to tell owners, investors, and marketers that a product isn't ready to be fielded -- even if it means losing their job and the fat paychecks and bonuses. Integrity is important, especially to customers buying the product.
(3) Fire the lead developers. Badly flawed designs are not the same thing as coding mistakes. Badly flawed designs are inevitably the result of runaway egos coupled to inadequate experience. You can bet a lot of the flawed designs got through testing because they got "pushed" through testing in spite of tester reports that the design was unacceptable, awkward, fun-diminishing, open to exploit, poorly thought through, etc.
(4) Hire a "real" (professional) test team with authority to force things to get fixed. Big gaming guilds are not professional testers. Beta testing as a marketing tool is not testing.
(5) Hire new lead developers who work as a team, critically reviewing each and every design decision so stupid ones can be discarded before they get into the game. If you've ever been a lead developer, than you're used to your design concepts (and your ego) being crushed by your peers, because inevitably one of them is going to see the hole in the doughnut.
(6) Hire a new management team whose bonuses aren't tied to fielding schedules, but are instead tied to product quality and player retention.
(7) DO NOT hire a new marketing team. Take the money that would have been spent on their salaries and spend it on good QA people.
(8) Get a "real" customer service team, not a bunch of folks using canned email messages who presume all players are sheeple, lemmings, and twelve-year old kids.
All of the above steps occur in "REAL" industry all the time. Been there; done that. There is no excuse for the gaming industry to operate any differently (although we continually see it because game companies are inherently unprofessional).
THEN:
(1) Fix the bugs. First and foremost, fix the bugs. Adding new stuff is going to add new bugs, so fix the existing bugs before anything new is added or any existing designs are changed.
(2) Do "something" with Cyrodil besides three-month long campaigns and keep sieges. Running five minutes and dying in three seconds is not fun; games -- shocking statement -- are supposed to be fun. There actually needs to be some worthwhile rewards, too. Maybe turn Cyrodil into (primarily) another questing zone, only with open world PvP; get rid of the sieges, turn the keeps into protected areas with uber-guards (quest hubs; merchant and crafting zones), or something, but keep sieges frankly suck. Right now IMHO Cyrodil is a large WASTED area in the game.
(3) Do a MAJOR balancing pass on all quests and especially PvE bosses. Self-healing ranged builds have a much easier time against quest bosses (solo and group) than non-healing and melee builds. Players shouldn't have to out-level a solo boss by five or more levels in order to beat it. Kiting should not be the only viable tactic against many bosses.
(4) Do a MAJOR pass over the terrain; falling through the world and screaming interminably isn't fun, and is hard on the ears, too. If a player's graphics are hitching or the network is lagging, the player is pretty much guaranteed to fall through the world (especially on steps) -- I can reproduce the problem without even trying hard. THEN do something with /stuck to make it actually work without killing the player and damaging his gear.
(4) Create focus groups on the private test server(s) to look at all of the major design flaws that have been identified with the game so far and to evaluate every proposed solution before anyone ever considers taking it live. Too much crap fell through the cracks the way they did the original design.
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Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
2. More viable ways to lvl up, than only questsing.
3. Better dungeon boss fights and better dungeons in general.
4. Grouping was more rewarding & more necessary.
5. PvP in many areas, not only Cyrodil. Some instanced smaller scale PvP.
6. Waited a bit to see how trading guilds going, but at the end i feel economy seriously lacks a lot without AH.
7. Phasing...
8. Better UI (not with addons) but by default. A bit minimal is ok but this is too much...
9. Make it less of a solo game in general.
Can say a few more but these are enough. Atm i cant convince myself ESO deserves a sub, while i can play Skyrim for free.
I'm finding myself asking this too . In Skyrim I can get a lot of what ESO offers apart from the group dungeons and pvp . While I support the subscription model in principle I cant help feel this should have been buy to play with DLC you can pay for at a later date when they are released . I think if it does do well it will be because of the its release on the consoles where there is less competition from other mmos . I suspect this is one of the reasons FF14 is doing so well . Having said that even though I find FF14 a little slow paced at times it is extremely well put together compared to TESO in its current state .
Originally posted by Cuppett5 Open world PvP, loot on death, no linear quests
To be fair the Elder Scrolls always has had some linear questing . Its just that theres a lot of choice with linear paths you want to take . If you join a guild there is linear quest lines . The central story is a linear quest line . So it would be unfair to expect them to offer no linear quest at all . There could be more side quests to make it feel less linear though .
I think confining pvp to Cyrodil is a mistake . A choice should have been given for people that like to play pvp to play on a pvp megaserver . I don't like looting on death myself because it can be abused and over all I don't think such a move would have been popular .
I can't speak about the actual PVP yet a I have not tried it .
Comments
1. Personally I would rather see them increase the size of guilds by a lot and make that keep ownership more meaningful than add a global AH. The process of capturing a keep needs to be reworked as well. I do however agree the currently system while a good idea isn't well implemented.
2. Easier said than done. If they want it to take 200 hours on average for instance to get from VR1 to VR10 than if they created the ability to PVP or Grind for 200 hours to get the same people would complain about how bad it was (really like they already are). People would shorten that by grouping up which would require nerfing group XP (heaven help the forums than) or capping XP gain which would also not go over well.
3. ESO runs way better than GW2 did at launch for me. It's not even a contest so I'm not sure why we are seeing different results.
4. Meh, I"m fine with them being add-ons and I don't see a reason for them to undermine the value of the mod community by stealing idea.
5. The sooner we get housing and guildhalls the better. If guildhalls could be tied to keep ownership even better.
6. Agreed
7. From what I can tell the overall cost of the horses is the same once you have upgraded it completely. It's just how many feedings headstart you want to get by spending more gold but if you buy the cheapest horse and keep at upgrading it everyday it will turn into as good as the best over time.
8. Yea I kind of wish bank space was a bit larger to. Personal bank space for no trade items would be nice as well as right now you have to carry those things around.
9. Agreed, Adventure zones should be for all VR ranks not just VR 10
10. Giving that kind of power to volunteers isn't a good idea. They should hire some CSR's to do that but not give out that power to fan boys.
11. I want to see results and patches with new content and fixes not dev posts on the forums. And no way are they the worse. I would actually say they are average for a game in the first 2-3 months which makes sense given how buried they are right now.
Only your second points makes any sense. This is not a battleground arena style pvp game. Stop it!
That's not a lot of stuff, but Zenimaxes response time or acknowledgement of these items is why I've cancelled any re-billing. I like the game conceptually but I don't have to tolerate sub par quality and the "we'll fix it when we fix it" schedule they're on. This is not Xbox Live or PSN.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Instanced PvP (battlegrounds/arenas)
That's the only thing that would keep me playing as it did in WoW, RIFT, and then SWTOR.
Hmm, well I guess the following are the major things they'd have to change/fix in order for me to return:
1. Add more skill slots on the hotbar or refine the current skills available so that you can make a complete build from them. My issue here was that no matter what 5 skills I picked, I always felt like half a character. Even with the second hotbar, I still felt like an extremely limited character. In almost every MMORPG, you are given enough skills to fully flesh out your character. So you're able to carry your weight in solo pve, group pve, raid pve, and PvP. In ESO, you have to pick 1 or 2 very narrow roles to fill and that's all you get. No thank you Zenimax. I'd rather not play an MMO at all then play with those restrictions.
2. Bots and Gold Spammers. Never in my life have I dealt with the amount and variety of gold spamming in a MMO as I have in ESO. Upon logging in, the chat box would be scrolling at a good pace with just gold spam. It'd take 3-5 minutes to ignore all of them, a bit longer to ignore and report them. AND THEN you'd still have to ignore and report the gold sellers spamming your email and spamming you with guild invites. The latter two weren't nearly as prevelant as the former, but damn. Bots are a big issue as well. Angry Joe said it best, you start a quest line and so far it's amazing. Then you get to the dungeon portion of it and find 5-10 bots farming the boss, while another 5 actual players are farming it too. "How immersive."
3. Bugs and Dupes. Much of this I know was reported more than a month prior to it's release, yet Zenimax still released the game! You don't release a game, period, if there is broken content or dupes still in the game. That means the game isn't ready for release. Some bugs are to be expected, but there's a difference between obscure bugs that weren't reported or caught by beta testers and prevalent bugs reported and talked about on forums during the beta over the course of months.
All in all, Zenimax made the mistake a few other MMO companies have made and lived to regret....they released an unfinished game. In this day and age, with all the past releases to learn from, and the experience of the MMO community, that's almost like signing your games own death warrant. That's not to say that ESO isn't a fun game, they and future companies need to learn to narrow the scope of their game to the point where they are sure they can release a decently polished game by the release date.
Also, because of all the downtime that directly affected the limited time I had for gaming anyways, and due to the unfinished nature of the game, and because I already spent ~$80 on the game, the only way I will return is if Zenimax gives me a weekend to a week of free game time to test the game out again. I refuse to pay another cent to them. They need to show us some goodwill.
For myself, Elder Scrolls Online is fundamentally broken. I agree with very little of the design decisions that went into this project and feel the end result of said decisions results in yet another MMO that offers nothing of importance.
There are multiple different aspects of the game that would need to be overhauled in order for me to come back, which is obviously never going to happen but I will go through a few points just to illustrate what I mean.
-Questing-
Elder Scrolls Online focuses too much on giving this experience to the player. Sure the player can 'pick a direction and run' as the developers would have you do; however, the player has to stay within the level range of enemies. This means that players must follow the string of quests around the map if they hope to be competitive against enemies in areas further on. It ends up feeling like a generic themepark experience and never pulls off the sense of discovery and freedom the franchise is based on.
There are also too many quests in the game which adds to the feeling of the player being drowned with this type of content. Most of the quests the player finds will also be finished in the same general area the quest giver was located. This leads to the world feeling fragmented as what is taking place in one town, cave, dungeon, or ruin has no affect beyond its own general area. I wish the development team had focused on much fewer, yet more involved, quests that lead the player around different zones and areas. Having fewer, more involved quests would have kept 'quest fatigue' at a lower level and also would have helped world-building while giving the player more time to become invested in the NPC's they interact with. As it stands now, you will hardly remember any of the hundreds of quest givers as there is no time to flesh out their personality or their place in the world itself.
-Exploration-
I was excited about the idea of getting lost into an actual world and being rewarded for it in a small way. Finding chests out in the world is great and is one of the best things about the game. However, I can't help but feel disappointed in how Lorebooks and Skyshards were handled. I have the feeling that the developers were afraid people would feel little incentive in finding books and shards, so they decided to make them important for character development (3 Shards = more skill points, Lorebooks level Mages Guild). This made finding them too important, which lead to the developers having to place them in obvious locations so the majority of players would have little trouble in locating them. Every Skyshard and Lorebook I discovered was located directly beside an area that contained a quest or were just sitting beside a road. Such a decision undermined the entire point of including these items into the game.
-Group and Public Dungeons-
These things are too linear. Every public dungeon will follow the same circular layout, have a boss near the end, and a skyshard to collect. Such a boring design decision as the player will lose that sense of wonder after completing just a few of these things. Public dungeons will have too many people wandering around in them so there is no sense of danger for the player, which ruins any incentive to explore. Group dungeons are incredibly easy and make grouping feel unrewarding at best (which this game excels at destroying the concept of grouping at every turn).
There are plenty of other issues I had with the game. Namely: the lack of Open World PvP, crafting is useful yet offers no challenge, grouping is broken due to phasing, Anchors are a cruel joke, leveling horses is a huge time sink, crafting research is a huge time sink, veteran ranks are a huge time sink.
This post is already long enough and does not cover all of my issues with the game. So no, nothing they do at this point will ever bring me back short of designing a new game from the ground up.
Thanks for the constructive criticism, i actually appreciate it.
Lolipops !
Indeed we are seeing some growing pains of a new MMO by a company who never made one before. That said, I think they are adapting very well and putting some pretty huge development into making it a perfect MMO, I would not write them off just yet, this thing is going to be as polished as World of Warcraft when they are done, which is pretty fast at the speed they are at right now on this.
I got your Deliverance!
Where's my banjo?!!
I, too, wish there was better automated trading via an Auction House. Here is a list of some things that would make me come back:
Little forum boys with their polished cyber toys: whine whine, boo-hoo, talk talk.
I agree there is so much that is good here but there is also so much that needs to be fixed before I would subscribe long term . I wouldn't rule out going back at some point to level alts . I think the sticking point for me would be them sorting out the overcrowded public dungeons because they ruin the immersion . They need to be made a little less public . If they remain as the are I wouldn't go back .
First let me say I think the most recent patch solved the public dungeon issue ( or maybe I have been lucky as of late). It is better for the bots to train farm either mobs in the world or quests now ( cold harbour had 100s just teleporting to quest objectives).
When I first started playing I hated the Trade Guild idea. While I do not think it is the solution for this game it is better then a full server auction house. Multiple reasons for this. 1) you can pretty much do everything and get everything yourself 2) combine the previous issue with a single AH for the server would destroy any value. I personally think that guilds should have territory, have their AH open to the public or maybe just an AH per city / zone to break things up.
Personally It is this vertical progression that is becoming this bane for me. I have not felt like I really gotten any stronger ( just more ways to dmg / survive ) which leaves me feeling this game would be perfect with a more horizontal progression system. This way the world could actually feel more open instead of this linear zone to zone path.
Dynamic events needed! This whole world feels static, just points on a map to visit and forget once you have done your business.
Faction lock has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I should have chosen a faction when I am about to join the war.
This whole veteran rank crap is beyond retarded. Just should have had max cap at 60 or simply stopped at 50 and just leave the rest open if players wanted those skill points. Besides after I beat the story why are there dark anchors in the world? I thought that was what I was stopping when I fought Molag Bal.
I would love for the NPCs to react to me when I am on a horse ( Just on of the many things I loved about Age of Wushu ). It is silly to have a person walking pushing me on my horse.
I wish this game had dyes and a wardrobe system.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Instanced PvP
Veteran XP/VP from quests/mobs/events increased greatly.
More PvE group content.
As to my understanding boss may spawn but it will yield nothing if you just looted it ( a few minute til looting is enabled again ).
- Complete class overhaul. They are way too similiar, play one of them and you've essentially played them all (There is absolutely no real unique features on the classes)
- Balance the damn game and make its mechanics make sense. A spell follows weapon critical strike chance? WHY?
- Remove the grind (VR1-10 is so utterly boring)
- More depth to character customization. I just allocated 49 points to health, cause well. Everything else I got from gear, and it was free health.
- How about developers would actually pay attention to their product, the broken skills have been exploited for weeks, and nothing has been done to them.
- PvP is lacking something, its currently just boring.
- Allow respecs to allocate levels as well. Tried to grind a new weapon class for few hours and just quit the game, and I don't want to go back. This is actually my first MMO I purchased after testing it (ex. in beta) and not sub even for the first month. 2 weeks and I am done with this game.
Although, I enjoyed the storylines as TES fan, so at least I got something out of my moneys worth.
It needs to be a few hours not a few minuets or limit the loot a boss gives to maybe three times . Better still do away with the public dungeons and limit them to 5 -10 people at a time and still limit the boss loot .
Its still being abused I saw people doing it yesterday . Reported them all for exploiting ( not sure if it is exploiting or not because its a bit of a grey area ) . If it is considered such by the GMs hopefully they will get their accounts banned .
Everyone needs to back up a second and ask "WHY?" all the bugs and design issues exist. The answer is "people". If the people who caused the problems aren't replaced, then changes to the software and design of the game will only represent the same philosophies that created the problems to begin with.
Therefore, for me to come back Zenimax would have to:
(1) Fire all the marketers (with malice). Marketing should never have priority over good design; marketing should never set schedules.
(2) Fire the management team. Noting that ZOS was formed as a subsidiary to Zenimax just for this game, its whole management team is at fault for a whole lot of bad decisions. Good management (male or female) actually has to have a big set of balls to tell owners, investors, and marketers that a product isn't ready to be fielded -- even if it means losing their job and the fat paychecks and bonuses. Integrity is important, especially to customers buying the product.
(3) Fire the lead developers. Badly flawed designs are not the same thing as coding mistakes. Badly flawed designs are inevitably the result of runaway egos coupled to inadequate experience. You can bet a lot of the flawed designs got through testing because they got "pushed" through testing in spite of tester reports that the design was unacceptable, awkward, fun-diminishing, open to exploit, poorly thought through, etc.
(4) Hire a "real" (professional) test team with authority to force things to get fixed. Big gaming guilds are not professional testers. Beta testing as a marketing tool is not testing.
(5) Hire new lead developers who work as a team, critically reviewing each and every design decision so stupid ones can be discarded before they get into the game. If you've ever been a lead developer, than you're used to your design concepts (and your ego) being crushed by your peers, because inevitably one of them is going to see the hole in the doughnut.
(6) Hire a new management team whose bonuses aren't tied to fielding schedules, but are instead tied to product quality and player retention.
(7) DO NOT hire a new marketing team. Take the money that would have been spent on their salaries and spend it on good QA people.
(8) Get a "real" customer service team, not a bunch of folks using canned email messages who presume all players are sheeple, lemmings, and twelve-year old kids.
All of the above steps occur in "REAL" industry all the time. Been there; done that. There is no excuse for the gaming industry to operate any differently (although we continually see it because game companies are inherently unprofessional).
THEN:
(1) Fix the bugs. First and foremost, fix the bugs. Adding new stuff is going to add new bugs, so fix the existing bugs before anything new is added or any existing designs are changed.
(2) Do "something" with Cyrodil besides three-month long campaigns and keep sieges. Running five minutes and dying in three seconds is not fun; games -- shocking statement -- are supposed to be fun. There actually needs to be some worthwhile rewards, too. Maybe turn Cyrodil into (primarily) another questing zone, only with open world PvP; get rid of the sieges, turn the keeps into protected areas with uber-guards (quest hubs; merchant and crafting zones), or something, but keep sieges frankly suck. Right now IMHO Cyrodil is a large WASTED area in the game.
(3) Do a MAJOR balancing pass on all quests and especially PvE bosses. Self-healing ranged builds have a much easier time against quest bosses (solo and group) than non-healing and melee builds. Players shouldn't have to out-level a solo boss by five or more levels in order to beat it. Kiting should not be the only viable tactic against many bosses.
(4) Do a MAJOR pass over the terrain; falling through the world and screaming interminably isn't fun, and is hard on the ears, too. If a player's graphics are hitching or the network is lagging, the player is pretty much guaranteed to fall through the world (especially on steps) -- I can reproduce the problem without even trying hard. THEN do something with /stuck to make it actually work without killing the player and damaging his gear.
(4) Create focus groups on the private test server(s) to look at all of the major design flaws that have been identified with the game so far and to evaluate every proposed solution before anyone ever considers taking it live. Too much crap fell through the cracks the way they did the original design.
(5) Replace phasing with something.
(6) Add a real auction house.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I'm finding myself asking this too . In Skyrim I can get a lot of what ESO offers apart from the group dungeons and pvp . While I support the subscription model in principle I cant help feel this should have been buy to play with DLC you can pay for at a later date when they are released . I think if it does do well it will be because of the its release on the consoles where there is less competition from other mmos . I suspect this is one of the reasons FF14 is doing so well . Having said that even though I find FF14 a little slow paced at times it is extremely well put together compared to TESO in its current state .
To be fair the Elder Scrolls always has had some linear questing . Its just that theres a lot of choice with linear paths you want to take . If you join a guild there is linear quest lines . The central story is a linear quest line . So it would be unfair to expect them to offer no linear quest at all . There could be more side quests to make it feel less linear though .
I think confining pvp to Cyrodil is a mistake . A choice should have been given for people that like to play pvp to play on a pvp megaserver . I don't like looting on death myself because it can be abused and over all I don't think such a move would have been popular .
I can't speak about the actual PVP yet a I have not tried it .