The current state of combat in MMOs is pathetic, apparently it's based solely on PVP

Vhayne

Over the last couple of days I've dabbled in a few popular mmos.  Keep in mind, I didn't get very far in any of them.  The main component to all of these games is combat.  It's just what you do, period.  Yes, you can do tradeskills and explore, but I don't care what game you are playing, combat is still 70-90% of the game.

GW2 - So popular, but I can't figure out why.  Beautiful game.  Combat is horrible.  I mean, sure, you give me a couple new skills as I level up and switch to whatever weapon....but those skills are POINTLESS when my auto-attack (first skill) kills the mobs just fine.  I can see no reason to use any of the other skills except for situations like AE or something.  Even still though, if I don't use the AE, I can just mow them down with my auto-attack one-by-one.

BDO - Tried playing a wizard.  Got to like level 25 I think, doing the black spirit quests.  Combat is amazing....well it LOOKS that way.  I have all of these super awesome abilities and attacks, ways to upgrade them, combo them, etc.  Sounds awesome.  But...there's no reason to use ANY of them as far as I can tell.  I mean I "could" run around and gather up a bunch of mobs, then stand back and case fireball and explosion and murder them all in like 1 hit.  Or I can just blindly run around like a maniac just literally holding down my right mouse button, spamming some ice bolt spell at everything.....again killing all in one hit!  

FFXIV - I hopped back onto my warrior who is level 39 to mess around a bit.  Haven't played in a long time.  This game kindof gets it....barely.  Auto-attack isn't going to kill anything very quickly, so you need to use your other skills and "combos".  But the 2.5 GCD makes everything feel SO dang slow.  The combat, the running around, etc.  It's just so slow.  BUT, I wouldn't mind that if combat was challenging.  It isn't.  I never have any fear of dying.  It's just so easy.  

ESO - I didn't play this one recently, but I remember the time I did try it.  God the combat is horrible.  Sounds cool with the blocking and dodging stuff.  But in reality it sucks.  Again, everything is just too dang easy.  No challenge.


I don't know, maybe it's me.  I have been on a Soulsborne/Nioh kick for a while.  Where each and every fight you can die easily if you aren't careful.  I don't need that kind of combat really in an mmo.  I just want a BIT of a challenge!  EQ had it once, WoW had it once (barely), DAoC had it, AO had it.....what are these current companies thinking?!

What in the hell am I missing??  I mean, these are the MOST popular mmos out there right now. GW2 is mmorpg.com's top rated mmo currently.  BDO is always suggested by fellow forum members as the game to play right now.   ESO is showing numbers close to what WoW was in it's prime!  How are all of these people having fun with the atrocious combat??  I must be missing something.  I'm willing to try and change my expectations.  But I need a carrot or something.  Because the initial showing of these games are pathetic.

Vhayne

I forgot to add....

Apparently BDO, GW2, and ESO have all of these abilities solely for the PVP aspects of the game.  It's the only thing that makes sense to me.  

Well what if I don't want to freaking play PVP??

Ridelynn

PvP -- lots of people claim to like it.

Also, it's very cheap content for the developer to add. 

A PvE experience is highly scripted and requires a lot of resources. PvP - just throw some people in a room together and tell them "Chicken Dinner"

Vhayne

Ridelynn said:

PvP -- lots of people claim to like it.

Also, it's very cheap content for the developer to add. 

A PvE experience is highly scripted and requires a lot of resources. PvP - just throw some people in a room together and tell them "Chicken Dinner"

My thoughts exactly.  Is that what all of these people are playing these games for?  PVP?  I know the "e-sports" scene is ruining all the FPS's and dominating the market with MOBA's, etc.  But is that what's happened to mmos as well??  Whatever happened to just BEING in another world, and slowly leveling up your character, while acquiring new abilities and gear?  Is it the little kiddies (I'm 40 btw) that are all super competitive, and have to measure their epeens (is that even used anymore? lol) by "winning" all the time?  

I mean, yeah I have liked some PVP in the past.  Classic WoW, getting jumped by horde, or laying an ambush for some unsuspecting guys that wandered into our zone looking for trouble.  Even the battlegrounds were fun for a while....at first.  I totally like the FPS games like Battlefield and CoD in small doses.  The Division Dark Zone stuff was great when it first came out (at lower levels).  

But seriously....what's all of this HUGE OPEN WORLD that was custom designed good for, if everyone is in a battleground all the time???

Lokero

Basically, your complaint is that combat is just too easy.  I could agree with that.  One of the things I personally hate is the red circles and telegraphed moves that seem so common nowadays. 
"I'm going to attack you now, please go stand over there so I don't accidentally hit you."

I think it goes without saying that almost all of the flaws with MMOs, in general, comes down to two particular issues:  Latency and AI.

There's just really nothing that can truly be done about latency.  Latency equates to slower, more telegraphed enemy attacks, etc.

The issue with more challenging AI is that most people really don't want to play hard games, and in MMOs you are stuck catering to the general population.  If the AI can learn and adapt, then it quickly becomes better than the players(too hard and frustrating).  If it can't, then players quickly figure out how to exploit and dominate it without much effort(where we are now).

Vhayne said:

I forgot to add....

Apparently BDO, GW2, and ESO have all of these abilities solely for the PVP aspects of the game.  It's the only thing that makes sense to me.  

Well what if I don't want to freaking play PVP??

This is actually good for the people that don't wish to play PVP.  Those people are exactly why there are PVP specific abilities nowadays.
People got tired of PVE hierarchies being completely uprooted because of PVP balancing.

It sounds to me like you have conflicting interests here...  You want more challenging combat, but you are completely against playing against thinking opponents(PVP players).  If you really want more challenge in combat in online games, PVP is the road you have to travel.

As much as I'd love to play an MMO with Dark Souls-style combat, I don't imagine we'll be seeing really advanced, clever, challenging AI in MMOs any time soon, sadly.

Kyleran

Its something I've never quite understood, complaints about a lack of challenge in PVE combat while at the same time eschewing PVP combat because....its too challenging?

Vhayne

Maybe you are right.  Maybe PVP is the only thing that will satisfy my desire for more challenging combat.  Since all of the mmos nowadays are made for @#$%ys.  

EQ combat - you pull more than one mob? BOOM you're dead.  attack anything higher than a blue con? BOOM you're dead.  But there were ways of overcoming those challenges...dynamic thought, and dealing with the situations.  Or preparing for the fight beforehand.

Same thing with DAoC (recently played the Uthgard classic server).  

Again, even in the early days of WoW, you had to be careful not to pull to many mobs, and you had to actively use certain skills to succeed in killing some of them (stuns, interrupts, etc.)

So, let's say it's just tough-titties for guys like me who want a good PVE challenge.  And we are going to have to resort to PVP to actually need to use the skills provided to us by the game (freaking retarded if you ask me).  Well, what games offer a good ONE-ON-ONE PVP experience?  

Every single mmo pvp encounter I've had in the past decade has been a zerg rush of flashy graphical effects, and no idea WTF is going on.  Meaningful, quality PVP, like open world "surprise attacks" (not to be confused with ganking - I mean, actually honorable fights), or 1v1 or 2v2 or so doesn't seem to exist anymore right?  

If it does, please point me in the right direction.  I'll give it a shot.

bcbully

bcbully

Kyleran said:

Its something I've never quite understood, complaints about a lack of challenge in PVE combat while at the same time eschewing PVP combat because....its too challenging?

You answer rest somewhere in between Artificial Intellegence and Real Intellegence...

Ridelynn

I think part of it, and I admit this is my bias and a good bit of my own prejudice showing in here:

PvE content is generally tuned so the Average player shouldn't have a problem with it. A Good player will bulldoze through it, and even a Poor player will be able to muddle through it eventually.

PvP - An Average player will lose half the time. Even a Good player isn't guaranteed a win every time. A Poor player has almost no chance in hell. For someone where loss = failure, those are hard odds to swallow.

Lokero

Vhayne said:

Maybe you are right.  Maybe PVP is the only thing that will satisfy my desire for more challenging combat.  Since all of the mmos nowadays are made for @#$%ys.  

EQ combat - you pull more than one mob? BOOM you're dead.  attack anything higher than a blue con? BOOM you're dead.  But there were ways of overcoming those challenges...dynamic thought, and dealing with the situations.  Or preparing for the fight beforehand.

Same thing with DAoC (recently played the Uthgard classic server).  

Again, even in the early days of WoW, you had to be careful not to pull to many mobs, and you had to actively use certain skills to succeed in killing some of them (stuns, interrupts, etc.)

Well, technically, from the perspective of someone who has done a lot of soloing, even some of the modern day games can be pretty challenging like that if you are going it alone.  GW2 can be pretty challenging if you try and solo certain elite mobs/dungeons, etc., for instance.

Really, the old games like mentioned above didn't have particularly hard combat encounters either.  In EQ, for instance, the majority of the game was mindless, fairly risk-free grinding groups. 
Sure, a train could wipe you out, but getting swarmed by a ton of mobs will kill you in many of the modern MMOs as well.  Though, I feel it fair to point out that most games these days do have some type of tethering system that gives you a chance to escape by outdistancing the enemies.

In older games, if you wanted challenge, you often had to deliberately pull a ton of mobs at once just for a little excitement because the basic combat was so easy.
In modern games, you can usually find some challenging fights if you go looking for them, though the regular combat is super easy there as well.


I think the main difference in the old games wasn't challenge, but punishment.  Games like Dark Souls are "challenging", whereas older MMOs were "punishing".  If you look closely at the differences in the two: 

In the "challenging" setting, you are expected to die and the combat itself is where the challenge comes in, but usually the punishments are bearable.

In the "punishing" style of older MMOs, the games were designed where the combat itself wasn't particularly difficult, but if you got greedy or stupid, they beat you over the head for your failures.

My personal view is that when people are talking about how challenging older MMOs were they are more often remembering their fear of the punishment, rather than remembering actual strategic challenge.  Most of those games didn't have much in the way of strategic or deep AI enemies.
You either beat yourself by simply screwing up(pulling way too many enemies to get to that named mob), or you rolled right through enemies with very little effort and using the same few attacks over and over, same as you are mentioning with the modern games.

Pacing is another pretty big difference.  Those older games had some long bloody fights, so even though I don't personally think they were particularly challenging or dynamic(in most cases), there was a higher risk of losing your focus and screwing up over time just due to how long you were repeating the same actions over and over.  So, I guess it could be argued that longer fights created something of an additional layer of challenge.

Summary:  I don't think the older games were really all that much more "challenging", but the punishments for mistakes were much more brutal.

Thebeasttt

The problem is immersion has been abandoned in favor of non stop ADHD combat button spam.

Shaigh

Solo combat has always been bad in mmorpg and once you keep noticing how bad combat really is, its much harder to get immersed in the games because solo combat is such a huge part of modern mmorpg

TheScavenger

Dark Souls the MMO

It be niche, but be a successful niche (if done properly of course)

Vhayne

Mars_Orbital said:

Vhayne said:

BDO - Tried playing a wizard.  Got to like level 25 I think, doing the black spirit quests.  Combat is amazing....well it LOOKS that way.  I have all of these super awesome abilities and attacks, ways to upgrade them, combo them, etc.  Sounds awesome.  But...there's no reason to use ANY of them as far as I can tell.  I mean I "could" run around and gather up a bunch of mobs, then stand back and case fireball and explosion and murder them all in like 1 hit.  Or I can just blindly run around like a maniac just literally holding down my right mouse button, spamming some ice bolt spell at everything.....again killing all in one hit!  

Trust me when I say this, combat is 1/4 of bdo. If that is what you did and didn't explore life skills , trading or node managemnt then it was your own failure. For your one shot theory, move to harder mobs. Though bdo itself is designed for massive mob pulls.  Wizard awakening : .

The link didn't work.  No, I didn't do any life skills, trading, etc.  I figured the black spirit would try and explain those things to me eventually, and I would then tackle some of them.  What got me to try BDO though was that people are always recommending it.  That, and the videos (trailers, etc.) of BDO show off the amazing combat animations, effects, and combos.  It looks like an incredible game.  

So are you saying, that once I get to awakening (56) and begin pulling MASSIVE (I've been pulling like 10 mobs at a time if they would just follow, or stay aggroed) amounts of mobs, THEN I'll get to use these incredible abilities? Instead of course, 1 button spam?  Is there a risk of actually dying?  

Vhayne

TheScavenger said:

Dark Souls the MMO

It be niche, but be a successful niche (if done properly of course)

Seriously. lol

I'm hoping Monster Hunter World will scratch that itch a bit later this month (gotta wait longer to get it on PC though).  I haven't really played any MH before, but it looks like it requires a group of people to take down the big stuff.

Vhayne

Lokero said:

Vhayne said:

Maybe you are right.  Maybe PVP is the only thing that will satisfy my desire for more challenging combat.  Since all of the mmos nowadays are made for @#$%ys.  

EQ combat - you pull more than one mob? BOOM you're dead.  attack anything higher than a blue con? BOOM you're dead.  But there were ways of overcoming those challenges...dynamic thought, and dealing with the situations.  Or preparing for the fight beforehand.

Same thing with DAoC (recently played the Uthgard classic server).  

Again, even in the early days of WoW, you had to be careful not to pull to many mobs, and you had to actively use certain skills to succeed in killing some of them (stuns, interrupts, etc.)

Well, technically, from the perspective of someone who has done a lot of soloing, even some of the modern day games can be pretty challenging like that if you are going it alone.  GW2 can be pretty challenging if you try and solo certain elite mobs/dungeons, etc., for instance.

Really, the old games like mentioned above didn't have particularly hard combat encounters either.  In EQ, for instance, the majority of the game was mindless, fairly risk-free grinding groups. 
Sure, a train could wipe you out, but getting swarmed by a ton of mobs will kill you in many of the modern MMOs as well.  Though, I feel it fair to point out that most games these days do have some type of tethering system that gives you a chance to escape by outdistancing the enemies.

In older games, if you wanted challenge, you often had to deliberately pull a ton of mobs at once just for a little excitement because the basic combat was so easy.
In modern games, you can usually find some challenging fights if you go looking for them, though the regular combat is super easy there as well.


I think the main difference in the old games wasn't challenge, but punishment.  Games like Dark Souls are "challenging", whereas older MMOs were "punishing".  If you look closely at the differences in the two: 

In the "challenging" setting, you are expected to die and the combat itself is where the challenge comes in, but usually the punishments are bearable.

In the "punishing" style of older MMOs, the games were designed where the combat itself wasn't particularly difficult, but if you got greedy or stupid, they beat you over the head for your failures.

My personal view is that when people are talking about how challenging older MMOs were they are more often remembering their fear of the punishment, rather than remembering actual strategic challenge.  Most of those games didn't have much in the way of strategic or deep AI enemies.
You either beat yourself by simply screwing up(pulling way too many enemies to get to that named mob), or you rolled right through enemies with very little effort and using the same few attacks over and over, same as you are mentioning with the modern games.

Pacing is another pretty big difference.  Those older games had some long bloody fights, so even though I don't personally think they were particularly challenging or dynamic(in most cases), there was a higher risk of losing your focus and screwing up over time just due to how long you were repeating the same actions over and over.  So, I guess it could be argued that longer fights created something of an additional layer of challenge.

Summary:  I don't think the older games were really all that much more "challenging", but the punishments for mistakes were much more brutal.

You have a good mind about these issues.  

I have to agree with you on EQ.  If you were playing a melee class (I didn't most of the time) it was mind numbingly boring, as you didn't really have any skills to use except taunt.  I played casters mostly.  Playing an enchanter was totally absorbing and dynamic.  Solo or group.  Only if you were charming though.  It required skill to maintain and deal with the constant threat of a buffed beast that would decimate you in one hit, once it was freed.  

I would definitely not call myself a "good" player.  I consider myself an average mmo player.  Seriously, if combat is this easy for the rest of these games (pve), then the majority of their player base must be heroin-fed-monkeys just hammering away on the keyboards to see the pretty lights.  

GeezerGamer

PVP:
It's a thing.

That being said, There are a few points that I agree with in your post.
The overall idea that too much emphasis is spent on combat, has been my opinion since GW2 TBH.

1. ESO combat tried to capture the feel of combat based on the ES single player series. Personally, I didn't like it.

2, FFXIV, the slow GCD is necessary at the higher levels in order to create the combos as they are more complicated than at lower levels. THis, however, leaves low level combat very boring. Not sure how that can be fixed.

3. GW2, I agree with your sentiment largely. I always felt Abilities were cut n paste with different animations. But generally, you have your auto, your nuke, your AOE, etc.

4. Can't comment on BDO.


I used to play Anarchy Online. Combat was basically spam what's not on CD. Your power came from your character's build, not the combos and buttons you can click. Combat was to spam your cool downs. But the game was still fun. You could still lose in combat. 

Combat, no matter how well developed, gets old very quickly. So, why not treat it that way? Seems current developers haven't realized what the older ones knew back then.

Maybe it's because "they can" now......But then again, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Phry

Vhayne said:

Mars_Orbital said:

Vhayne said:

BDO - Tried playing a wizard.  Got to like level 25 I think, doing the black spirit quests.  Combat is amazing....well it LOOKS that way.  I have all of these super awesome abilities and attacks, ways to upgrade them, combo them, etc.  Sounds awesome.  But...there's no reason to use ANY of them as far as I can tell.  I mean I "could" run around and gather up a bunch of mobs, then stand back and case fireball and explosion and murder them all in like 1 hit.  Or I can just blindly run around like a maniac just literally holding down my right mouse button, spamming some ice bolt spell at everything.....again killing all in one hit!  

Trust me when I say this, combat is 1/4 of bdo. If that is what you did and didn't explore life skills , trading or node managemnt then it was your own failure. For your one shot theory, move to harder mobs. Though bdo itself is designed for massive mob pulls.  Wizard awakening : .

The link didn't work.  No, I didn't do any life skills, trading, etc.  I figured the black spirit would try and explain those things to me eventually, and I would then tackle some of them.  What got me to try BDO though was that people are always recommending it.  That, and the videos (trailers, etc.) of BDO show off the amazing combat animations, effects, and combos.  It looks like an incredible game.  

So are you saying, that once I get to awakening (56) and begin pulling MASSIVE (I've been pulling like 10 mobs at a time if they would just follow, or stay aggroed) amounts of mobs, THEN I'll get to use these incredible abilities? Instead of course, 1 button spam?  Is there a risk of actually dying?  

Before you reach level 56 you can aoe kill mobs just using chain lightning as a wizard, or witch for that matter, some of the harder mobs will need you to use fireball+explosion, lightning+residual etc. but its not exactly difficult, it only takes an hour or so to reach level 30 ish if your just going to grind mobs, you can easily level up to 50 in a day if you go that route, but as has already been pointed out, thats barely even 1/4 of the game, though if your looking for a game thats just about the combat and grinding mobs, sure you can do that, but it would be a bit boring and repetitious, at 56 the combat changes completely for wizard, previous spells are literally thrown away as you switch them for awakened skills, you will still be using aoe damage spells, i think all classes pretty much deal aoe damage but as a wizard you'll switch from chain lightning, fireball, lightning etc. to using spells like aqua jail, water sphere, hellfire, lava field etc. plus you have an 'elemental' 'pet' sort of, that supports you in combat. But again, if your limiting yourself to just the combat, then perhaps BDO isn't the right kind of game for you.
Also, risk of dying, up to level 50 or so the game is practically in tutorial mode, so there isn't much risk of dying, but once you get 50+ and awakened, the risk increases dramatically, by then it expects you to have learned how to play the game.

beebop500

I am one of those people (fortunate, I think) whose end-game has typically been half PvE, half PvP.  Both are enjoyable in their own way.  And actually, I am hopeful that more games will balance PvE and PvP separately.  Guild Wars 1 did this beautifully (GW 2 is horrible imo), and so it really can be done right.

I think what we have seen a lot of is games that base their entire class balancing off PvP, and imo that's a bad way to do things.  Skill functionality, at least for your bigger/more damaging abilities, should be adjusted in order to keep PvP interesting.  At any rate, PvP is loved by quite a few people OP, and of course PvP content is much easier to create and maintain that PvE.

Vhayne

So I'm still waiting for some answers to my main question...

Since, according to Mmorpg.com's ratings system that these games (GW2, FFXIV, ESO, BDO) are the "best" right now.  The fact that tons of fellow forum users on this site are suggesting repeatedly those particular games are great. 

What is the draw?  
Is it all about the pvp (because obviously the pve sucks)?  
How are they overcoming the total lack of the need to use all of these abilities until "end game"?  Is it because reaching "end game" is only a couple of mindless days away from creating a character, then the "actual" game begins....pvp?

What about the pvp interests them the most? 
Again, I've stated that all of my past experiences with pvp have been battlegrounds type (open field, etc.) zerg rushes.  I hate that.  Some good 1v1 threats while out in the wilderness farming mobs could be great.  (You're leveling in the woods alone - You see out of the corner of your eye, someone else scamper behind some trees - Oh crap, I hope they aren't going to attack me, but if they do, then it's ON!)  Is there any meaningful pvp in these mmos?  

Point being....what is it that I'm missing?!  I'm willing to do some pvp, if that's where all the fun is (apparently).  But is there a point to it?  Exp? Loot? Special points to buy gear to show I'm a badass in pvp?  

Aethaeryn

PvP focused adjustments to combat and "balancing" classes has lead the combat to be  genericish between classes.  Bored. . .try another class. . button 2 does the same thing but is a fireball instead of an arrow.  With PvE one class can be OP in one area and another class in another area.  "balancing" is what has ruined MMOs for me most of all.  I love PvP but don't care about balance.  I used to play a balance druid (oh the irony) on a PvP server in vanilla wow.

Sovrath

Vhayne said:

 I have been on a Soulsborne/Nioh kick for a while.  Where each and every fight you can die easily if you aren't careful.  I don't need that kind of combat really in an mmo.  I just want a BIT of a challenge!

There has never been a pve mmo that had even half the challenge of those games.

I think you are spoiled

Either go pvp or just continue to play those games.

For example, mmorpg's just don't have the exploration that I crave so I predominantly play Skyrim and Morrowind. And "no" Elder Scrolls Online doesn't have great exploration.

GeezerGamer

Vhayne said:

So I'm still waiting for some answers to my main question...

Since, according to Mmorpg.com's ratings system that these games (GW2, FFXIV, ESO, BDO) are the "best" right now.  The fact that tons of fellow forum users on this site are suggesting repeatedly those particular games are great. 

What is the draw?  
Is it all about the pvp (because obviously the pve sucks)?  
How are they overcoming the total lack of the need to use all of these abilities until "end game"?  Is it because reaching "end game" is only a couple of mindless days away from creating a character, then the "actual" game begins....pvp?

What about the pvp interests them the most? 
Again, I've stated that all of my past experiences with pvp have been battlegrounds type (open field, etc.) zerg rushes.  I hate that.  Some good 1v1 threats while out in the wilderness farming mobs could be great.  (You're leveling in the woods alone - You see out of the corner of your eye, someone else scamper behind some trees - Oh crap, I hope they aren't going to attack me, but if they do, then it's ON!)  Is there any meaningful pvp in these mmos?  

Point being....what is it that I'm missing?!  I'm willing to do some pvp, if that's where all the fun is (apparently).  But is there a point to it?  Exp? Loot? Special points to buy gear to show I'm a badass in pvp?  

THe draw?

I enjoy the game. I play FFXIV. It's got some big flaws. Combat is certainly one of them, but the game is still worth playing to me. If you are playing these games and not enjoying them, then you have your answer.

khameleon

Sovrath said:

Vhayne said:

 I have been on a Soulsborne/Nioh kick for a while.  Where each and every fight you can die easily if you aren't careful.  I don't need that kind of combat really in an mmo.  I just want a BIT of a challenge!

There has never been a pve mmo that had even half the challenge of those games.

I think you are spoiled

Either go pvp or just continue to play those games.

For example, mmorpg's just don't have the exploration that I crave so I predominantly play Skyrim and Morrowind. And "no" Elder Scrolls Online doesn't have great exploration.

Yes, ESO does have great exploration, tons of chests and shards and things to find at every corner of the map, Treasure maps where you see a picture and have to go EXPLORE and find what you saw on the map to find the treasure, events that have you find locations and participate in events, lots of great exploring in it.

Sovrath

khameleon said:

Sovrath said:

Vhayne said:

 I have been on a Soulsborne/Nioh kick for a while.  Where each and every fight you can die easily if you aren't careful.  I don't need that kind of combat really in an mmo.  I just want a BIT of a challenge!

There has never been a pve mmo that had even half the challenge of those games.

I think you are spoiled

Either go pvp or just continue to play those games.

For example, mmorpg's just don't have the exploration that I crave so I predominantly play Skyrim and Morrowind. And "no" Elder Scrolls Online doesn't have great exploration.

Yes, ESO does have great exploration, tons of chests and shards and things to find at every corner of the map, Treasure maps where you see a picture and have to go EXPLORE and find what you saw on the map to find the treasure, events that have you find locations and participate in events, lots of great exploring in it.

Sorry, no it doesn't. I've played it, I've gone out in the world and it's not that great.

I get more in 15 minutes of, say Morrowind, than an hour in Elder Scrolls Online. The Dungeons are pretty lackluster as well.

Believe me, there is no one who wants to like the game more than I as I spend years playing the Elder Scrolls games and would LOVE to have a main character in a constantly expanding world.

But I have to really press on in order to get anything out of the game. Good that you like it though.