Elder Scrolls Online - It's Not All Perfect - MMORPG.com

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Elder Scrolls Online - It's Not All Perfect - MMORPG.com

I’m sure I am not alone in this: Whenever I play a game I think to myself as I play, what would I change or what would I do differently? I’ve done this countless of times with Elder Scrolls Online. By no means, I’m not a game designer or a professional developer but I always think of how I could enjoy the game more or change something I dislike. In this article, I would like to discuss with you all what I would change or tweak. As much as I do love the game, nothing is ever perfect.

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virgommo

I'm really surprised ESO hasn't gone the GW2 route of base game for free. At this point, it seems they would gather much more sales via cash shop (considering the cost of most items) than lost by the buy in of the base game.

Sovrath

What is the bow/quiver in the first picture?

jimmywolf

the game been on sale cheap many times already, if they have not bought in at those prices their not going spend a dime as F2P and it best to avoid them.

it make it easier to try exploit any game paying nothing if you just need a new email address versus paying to try exploiting again, true not all F2P are trying harm a game but their plenty of games catering to them already.

Margrave

I'm hoping for another 9.99 sale for a friend of mine. Trying to get him to buy it but he doesn't want to spend a lot.

decease

summerset have less then 1/5 of path of fire.. and they are same price. further more summerset is again, filled with inaccessible mountain. i really like the elder scroll series, been a huge fan.. but am not sure if i want to stick with eso anymore... it is just too much money for too little content...

Sovrath

Margrave said:

I'm hoping for another 9.99 sale for a friend of mine. Trying to get him to buy it but he doesn't want to spend a lot.

Just be a "bud" buy it for him!

KaliGold

Summerset brings a new story to the game, but nothing much else that is truly new. The "help me find my sister" side quests are not my idea of a great gaming experience.

The non-combat pets are useless and worthless. I would like to see pets removed from the classes and a new pet system installed that is available to everyone. Each pet will have different abilities and a complete leveling and upgrade structure built around them.

Mounts look different, but they all do the same thing. Outside of speed/stamina upgrades, give the ability for mounts to augment the players stats in some way and have an upgrade system for it.

Create a new crafting system and start off by allowing players to use it to make boats/ships of varying degrees that can travel on the water. Its hilarious that this game has so much water, but you can only look at it.

The combat feels very "clunky" and needs an overhaul.

gervaise1

virgommo said:

I'm really surprised ESO hasn't gone the GW2 route of base game for free. At this point, it seems they would gather much more sales via cash shop (considering the cost of most items) than lost by the buy in of the base game.

Well they have gone pretty much the same route. The GW2 base game was included with the expansion; ESO base game was included with 4 DLCs in the Gold Edition and the base game was also included in the Morrowind edition - itself included with the subsequent expansion.

As far as cash shop stuff goes -  yeah. Not buying anything is an option of course but an argument can be made for housing etc. adding to a game. 

Sovrath

KaliGold said:

The non-combat pets are useless and worthless. I would like to see pets removed from the classes and a new pet system installed that is available to everyone. Each pet will have different abilities and a complete leveling and upgrade structure built around them.

Then everyone will have a "pet" as they will become a requirement for leveling/functionality.

It looks absolutely ridiculous in Black Desert.

Octagon7711

From the first time I played this games and each mob only dropped one gold no more no less, and looked at how tight the bag space was I knew there would be problems. Even though crafting was good I was able to causally level every class without crafting, so I saved on a lot of space and didn't have to make extra accounts just for the space. Of course now a sub gives crafting space but I've grown use to not crafting.

Cash shop is expensive and it really does pay to wait for a sale and after a year or so a big sale on combined expansions. Combat is much better then at the start and I've gotten use to it and actually like animation canceling because not many people use it so it gives me an advantage in some situations.

A regular auction house would be great. Or something like SWG did with a limited auction house that directed players to crafters home locations and shops.

Alomar

There's a reason the dozens of hardcore ESO players I knew throughout 4 years of playing, their dozens of guilds, and their hundreds of friends no long player ESO. It's not a game made for hardcore players expecting content, balance, and features as a regular occurrence.

Recently, I had a friend list me 58 bugs still plaguing him and his guild's weekly pvp raids. Almost half of them have been in game for over 2 years. I feel the game's purpose has become to hold onto the ES fanbase as a replacement to an ES 6, with continuing small dlc's, lootboxes, and cash shop items. I've finally given up on ESO and am hoping Bless, Camelot Unchained, and Crowfall keep me occupied to the point I never return.

Albatroes

Torval said:

Crown Store prices have become crazy. A fully furnished clockwork house can cost ~ $125 worth of crowns (not on sale) and about $85 when it's all on sale. There should be a whole damn game within that feckin house for that price! 

It bothers me most because that's the stuff I like to game for it. It's what gives me long term golas and keeps me returning to an MMO. Without those long term "in game" chase items I lose interest. My break from ESO has been longer than usual because of that. I love the combat and gameplay. I have nearly zero long term character goals for the game. Better gear, more powerful skills. Big deal. That's only one part of an RPG for me.

So that's where this one part of the game falls apart for me and where I'd like to see them pick up the ball and change direction.

Well to be fair, FFXIV sells a lot of furniture via the cash shop that is only once per character and some cannot be returned if you give up your house. Keeping in mind too that this is a game that requires a sub to access those virtual goods you bought lol. One might say that its easy enough but the game requires you to stay subbed in order to keep your house, so if you unsub for more than 30 days they auto deconstruct your house and send you a box with SOME of your furniture and some of the price you paid for your house.

Iselin

Sometimes these days I get the impression that ESO has entered a special case of maintenance mode I'll call cash shop mode and that they're letting the interns try their hand at development.

It's not that they aren't adding new game play content, they are, but that the portion of new game play they add takes a back seat to what they really focus on and promote which is the in game, loot crate and cash shop cosmetics. More outfit styles, more costumes, more mounts with gaudy GFX... this is clearly where their focus is these days.

Not that I want to do away with cosmetics or downplay the fun factor of having them available as extras in the game, it's that the $$ incentive totally warps their place in the game as additional fun in the context of overall development.

There are bugs still in the game that are 4 years old. For example, there is a place in Grahtwood on the road between Heaven and Redfur where you are always dismounted for no reason. It's not a huge bug, nor is it a huge annoyance but it has been that way for 4 years, has been /bugged in game thousands of times and it's still there. Why? Presumably because they have better things to do. Things like fixing clipping issues with a new loot crate costume when worn on a Khajiit.

With the new jewelry crafting they've created a craft that is much less accessible to new or casual players. When you play ESO even as a brand new player, crafting your own weapons or armor as you level-up is accessible. You may not have the mats to make all your gear purple or gold but making it green or blue is within the reach of most players. And that's what crafting in ESO is all about: no one does it for profit since you really can't compete with the hundreds of similar or better dropped set gear - you craft for yourself or for friends.

With jewelry crafting they decided that they wanted to protect the rarity of gold jewelry and they want trials to still be the place where you get that from. Never mind the fact that gold armor or weapon slots are not "protected" in a similar fashion, let's just pretend that they have a valid point and jewelry really is extra special.

Their solution? They have made the ability to improve jewelry to green, blue and purple, in addition to gold, a hard-core activity that requires literally 10X the upgrade mats. Instead of getting upgrade mats from harvesting, refining and deconstructing like you do for all other crafts, you get "dust" by doing those things with jewelry and you need 10 dust to make 1 grain. Then you need the same quantity of grains to upgrade as you do upgrade tempers for the other crafts: for green, blue and purple in addition to the gold rarity they're trying to "protect."

This is idiotic and sucks all the fun out of casual jewelry crafting when all they needed to do was change the requirement for improving to gold without messing with the other lesser qualities even if that were truly needed.

Their response to the overwhelmingly negative criticism in the Public Test Server about this? They hunkered down deeper in their bunker and have said nothing.... zero... zilch engagement. In the past they've usually reserved their bunker mentality, non-engagement policy for criticism of cash shop and loot crate issues. This seems to be expanding to other areas of development now.

That Camelot Unchained beta can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

Solancer

As much as I do love Skyrim, Fallout, and ES series but Bethesda as a company/dev/whatever is not really all that great or that respectable. Fallout 3 was unfinished, bugged to hell on launch, then came the DLC crap, you know any company who tries to adopt anything to have you spending more then you need to, they are the definition shady(sugar coated) ppl at work.

Then came Fallout 4 Creation Club? Ha that scream they are trying hard to steal from their fan base. Oh yeah the games Bethesda make are indeed interesting but without the Modders Community their games are a 6/10 when comes to RPG.

Sure, nothing wrong with making money but the fact THEY chose to do the things that sensible gamer don't like or consumer if you like. If a company don't have the ppl, the player, what have you in their best interest or well being then they are just another sh1ty company whos aim to steal(thats what amount to) more money from their customers.

There are a few ways to generate money without the Sh1ty loot boxes, a sub and cash shop?, DLC what seem to be a little more than what was intended to be in the game but decided to sell it to us instead. Oh my how low will they go? To me any mmo have the need to pay for bay space is already a prick move in my book. I mean common its a game with lots of gears/items/pots/craft mats/etc is almost feels like we are paying for every bullet in a mag as it were.

So the solution is just make a game and sell it for $50 pop and expansion for $5-30 pop oh wow its amazingly how well that works and we all can agreed on paying that much.

As for ESO, well pretty much what anyone would expected to see when they want to give a ES game with MMO spin. The term live service is very lucrative after all, the day ESO is made I knew they are trying to milk the fan base hard I guess. Yes I played it, its alright but since is a Elder Scroll game yet can't be modded then the game is already half value at best.

What I want to mod you ask?, first the combat, spamming 3-6 skills is hardly interesting IMO when compare to Lineage 2. Having 3 to 4 bars of skills are really what skills in RPG should be like. I have more examples but the post is already too long as it is.

Regarding housing, well again that is a tall sign of greed is indeed their game, most games have housing is not a pay wall feature. Oh yeah I know ESO is made by ZeniMax so whats your point. So in my opinion Bethesda and ZeniMax as a company I rate them a 7/10, however, for web base creation kit and the whole Creation Club thing that drop them down to 5/10 as a game company and is as respectable as Microsoft which is not much. . .

I can't wait to see what other shady crap they going to pull on their next game. They kept forgetting, their games are nothing too special without the Mods with exception of Story Quests and Open World-ness everything else C grade.

Iselin

I'm sure it'll get linked as separate article here eventually but their latest promotion from today? Link your Twitch account to ESO and you can get loot crates while watching ESO twitch streams lol.

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/26399

Theocritus

Margrave said:

I'm hoping for another 9.99 sale for a friend of mine. Trying to get him to buy it but he doesn't want to spend a lot.

I have $11 left on my steam account and waiting for it to go on sale too lol

Iselin

Theocritus said:

Margrave said:

I'm hoping for another 9.99 sale for a friend of mine. Trying to get him to buy it but he doesn't want to spend a lot.

I have $11 left on my steam account and waiting for it to go on sale too lol

It's usually a November-December thing with them. You might be waiting a while.

StoneRoses

Animation clipping fixed? Still cookie cutter builds?

Octagon7711

One thing that seemed odd about a demo was that a dev used a cheat program to demo the Warden, just doing a demo of fighting mobs across an average countryside.  Made me wonder how invested they really were in what they were doing.  

Zeppel80

The cash shop is expensive, but I've always looked at it as an incentive for players to keep a subscription going. Every month you have an active subscription you get free crowns and they add up over time. I see that as their rationale, rather than prices being an attempt at fishing for whales.

Scorchien

I hate scaling , the Overland experience is shit .. 93% of it is mindless faceroll spamfest since Tamriel One , also the Lore is broken horribly beyond repair

Iselin

DMKano said:

Iselin said:

Sometimes these days I get the impression that ESO has entered a special case of maintenance mode I'll call cash shop mode and that they're letting the interns try their hand at development.

<snip>

They are not quite there yet (maint mode) they are more in - just do enough to keep it going mode.

The reason is - majority of the dev staff has been working on a new yet unannounced project.

Let me guess: Battle Royale in Coldharbour. Am I close?

Viper482

More impactful combat, get rid of megaserver, auction house, single guild per toon. Done.

Azmodeus

StoneRoses said:

Animation clipping fixed? Still cookie cutter builds?

This!

Scorchien

Torval said:

Scorchien said:

I hate scaling , the Overland experience is shit .. 93% of it is mindless faceroll spamfest since Tamriel One , also the Lore is broken horribly beyond repair

I love their scaling system. It's absolutely one of my favorite things in MMO design now. I find the lack of it in my other MMOs grating, detracting, and immersion polluting.

grating, detracting, and immersion polluting.  precisely how i feel about its inclusion in an MMO..
 
  But thats why they make Vanilla and Chocolate..

  Glad ya like it tho , ESO offers alot of good stuff, Most of the game i really enjoy ..