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Elder Scrolls Online - The Calm After the Storm - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Elder Scrolls Online - The Calm After the Storm - MMORPG.com
With Summerset being released and everyone enjoying the new content, we have news of more content coming down the road with the newest DLCs announced. Wolfhunter and Murkmire. As much as I like the design of Wolfhunter, I am more excited for Murkmire because of the story content. There hasn’t been an official date announced for these two packs but I am sure we will hear about them more as time goes by, so let’s focus on what we have now: Summerset Isles.
Comments
I have to agree the Psijic line was long and a little repetitious. I enjoyed going through it the first time but I may not take other alts through it. One of the greatest things I enjoy about ESO is the fact there is so much to do that you don't have to repeat things that often if you don't want to.
For the future I would love to see a new class; I enjoy creating an alt for each class. Race isn't as important to me but if they introduced one at this point I would hope they think about all the lore to make it properly fit into Tamriel to the same level the other races already do. Perhaps it would work if they brought in a race that already existed in history that had been hiding away?
I am one who looks for immersion in story rich MMO's, and ESO has been my favorite now for the past year. I mainly hope they just keep doing what they've been doing. Well, maybe an auction house ;-) ?
They keep the content coming with no end in site.
Top MMO /dev team IMO.
Sherman's Gaming
Youtube Content creator for The Elder Scrolls Online
Channel:http://https//www.youtube.com/channel/UCrgYNgpFTRAl4XWz31o2emw
The Psijic skill line abilities are also an interesting mix that are fun to play with and can be easily incorporated into builds although more so for some roles and classes than others.
The quest line for acquiring those skills though is something that you may get some enjoyment out of once, and then only if you enjoy exploration and visiting out of the way places you may not normally get to. Repeating it for alts is a whole different thing: it's a chore that is more annoyance than enjoyment.
The combat balancing, centered around buffing light attack damage, feels uninspired and lazy. It's like the combat balance team has just thrown its hands up in the air and decided to embrace the animation canceling and light attack weaving meta and follow along instead of leading with more imaginative changes.
The jewelry crafting implementation though is just god-awful. It's like it was designed by a bunch of clueless amateurs with no regard for consistency with the other crafts. Upgrading jewelry to green, blue and purple requires 10X the mats compared to upgrading anything else... all done in the name of not making gold jewelry too easy to obtain... like WTF? Didn't it occur to them to just make the upgrade to gold grindier (if that were even a sensible design goal) and leave the other quality tiers the hell alone and consistent with all other crafting?
The end result of what they've done is to make crafting your own jewelry all but inaccessible to the new or casual crafters who can craft any other piece of equipment with a reasonable amount of grind except for jewelry. It's laughable when you consider how much easier weapons can be upgraded and the much larger impact on fighting performance those upgraded weapons have compared to jewelry.
They then outdid themselves by making the jewelry master writs reward the same amount of vouchers as those for other equipment crafting master writs despite having 10X the mats requirement. Currently no one with half a brain will either use those master writs themselves nor can they be sold - no one does them and no one wants them.... good job crafting team! lol
I'd easily give this DLC an A if it wasn't for how badly they botched JC implementation. And that implementation is so horrible I can't go any higher than a C- for the whole package.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Compared to what game? Its way more action and entertaining than combat in any older games, the only combat that is more actiony is TERA, Bless, BnS, black desert and other Korean games that are all low quality in all other areas.
GAME TIL YOU DIE!!!!
And no JC is not like e.g. the warden. JC - in theory! - impacts all characters whether they have the DLC or not. Strong argument for this being part of the base game imo.
As it stands those who haven't gotten Summerset (yet) needn't worry about JC.
Even before release crafting in ESO was always talked about by the developers as something they wanted to be superior to drops even at end game. The crafted sets were for a time but that eventually became less so as the quantity and quality of dropped sets became more dominant. Still, crafting remained relevant for one reason: the ability to take those drops you might get as green or blue and use your crafting to improve them to purple or gold.
The crafted sets themselves might not be BIS compared to the better dropped sets and very few crafted sets make any knowledgeable min/maxer's list of the ideal gear for any build of any class, but crafting still maintained the relevance of being the way you upgraded that armor or weapon for better stats.
What they have done with Jewelry crafting is undermine that one remaining end-game relevance of crafting by making it almost useless for upgrading drops.
JC also should have been about the positive way of making crafted sets more relevant and competitive with dropped sets by adding the ability to have jewelry for those sets. The fact that dropped sets have always had jewelry drops has always been one of the reason why those sets tend to be BIS for any end-game 5-5-2 gearing. JC in theory, should help crafted sets have a chance to be BIS sets but unfortunately that's only the case if you're comfortable using white or green jewelry because all other rarity tiers are out of reach for all but the most dedicated grinders or wealthiest players. Purple and gold jewelry drops from any vet dungeon run or trial. Pretty easy stuff to get as drops but not to craft.
I have more than 7 million gold so I could easily buy my way around the JC 10X upgrade mats requirement by throwing gold at it. But that's beside the point because the vast majority of players can't do that. IMO, this just highlights what a crappy implementation it is.
You're right in the sense that no one should worry about JC - whether you have Summerset or not. It is actually much more enjoyable and saner to pretend it doesn't even exist and carry on using the plentiful dropped purple and gold jewelry and continue to ignore crafted sets for end-game BIS.
It's not the kind of problem I would expect casual players or non-crafters to understand in detail. It's the kind of issue that makes less and less sense the more you know about the ins and outs of crafting and end-game gearing.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Not much more to say than that really. If you're not bored of ESO's usual PvE style, you'll enjoy it. If you are bored of it, you won't enjoy it. It really is that simple.
As for the loot boxes, you can't get one 'premium' cool looking mount through gameplay. That design has caused me to refuse to spend any money in the cash shop. I get the DLC and I sub when I play seriously purely for the crafting bag.. but I will not support that cash shop.
Other games, like LOTRO, I do support because regardless of cash shop design, pricing or whatever, you can find loot box keys on any mob in the game, get them from Deeds, get them from dailies and can slowly but surely earn cash shop currency by playing. I must have opened well over 100 boxes for free without even trying. Lost count tbh. I spend about $15 a month on the game just because it's a fair system, even though I really don't need or want anything from the cash shop anymore.
That's what happens in Beta's and Early Access, spoils you for the game.
Josh asks us about loot boxes, is there anyone out there not convinced we need to remove gambling from gaming? We just had gaming classified as something that can become addictive by the World Health Organisation. Unless we want to see the sort of restrictions on gaming you see with tobacco and alcohol, get rid of the gambling.
Why I avoid this game so long? Already subscribed for Premium.
Only researching all about this game, and wanna go slowly zone by zone.. so at the moment I'm avoiding Sumerset isles and expansion.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/417603/console-needs-to-be-taken-down-asap-freezes-updated-with-message-from-zos
I was excited when JC was announced looking at it from the perspective of enhancing the competitive value of crafted sets by adding the jewelry slots to those sets. Screwing that up is the most horrible part of this implementation - not the extra grind required to upgrade drops, bad as that also is, which seems to be the only part of JC the developers thought of when they went with this system.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The traits research part of this is no different than traits research for any other gear crafts: you need to research 9 traits over a set real world time and that part takes literally months to get it to the 9-trait max that opens up crafting for the top of the line sets... and we're not even complaining about that part because that is just the normal grind we've grown accustomed to for all gear crafts
That part of it is worth doing since that won't change. Acquiring the mats to make crafted jewelry green, blue or purple is where the obnoxious part of this lies. It'd be kind of nuts to pursue that part of it as a goal right now.
Bottom line: go ahead and research the traits and save that knowledge for the proverbial rainy day.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED