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[Column] Elder Scrolls Online: Three Ingredients for Late Nights in ESO

SBFordSBFord Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129

Depth is an element of MMOs that players need to feel immersed and involved in their game of choice. In our latest Elder Scrolls Online column, we take a look at depth in Zenimax' game and much more. Read on!

Elder Scrolls is synonymous with extremely late nights and cups of coffee. For me, the first day I purchased Skyrim I stayed up until 4 am that night. Thankfully, it was a Friday, but I still have two small kids to look after. Yet, almost every player I know both young and old will purchase an Elder Scrolls game and say, see you next week as they close their door.  However, in recent years I have found MMOs lack the depth of some single player RPGs. There are a ton of game mechanics and ideas that Elder Scrolls Online can incorporate into their worlds. Here are three that I feel would work extremely well for the game in order to get their players to make that extra cup of coffee at 2 am in the morning.

Read more of Garrett Fuller's Elder Scrolls Online: Three Ingredients for Late Nights in ESO.

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Comments

  • Nemesis7884Nemesis7884 Member UncommonPosts: 1,023
    i have seen about 4 hours of beta gameplay....i am just not sure if the online game manages to capture that epicness of an open world the single player game does...i am not sure if a multiplayer game can do it at all...i am not sure why im so hungry for mmo's anyway since i enjoy all the important aspects of a single player game more and am mostly a pve player but well...
  • zevni78zevni78 Member UncommonPosts: 1,146

    My biggest doubt with ESO is whether is can capture the immersion and freedom of Skyrim, it certainly lacks the open player development of SKyrim's Mods, for that we will have EQN/L, but I would have loved ESO to have also embraced a more sandbox and player driven philosophy. 

     

    Still, if the 1st person view works and the content is non-linear, then it may do for awhile, but I think Zenimax missed a golden opportunity to involve the community, but that's more an amount of content issue, and the article correctly addresses the quality one. Till I get into beta I won't know personally if it's TES enough for me, it will be interesting to see how many who buy it find what they expect.

  • RaventreeRaventree Member Posts: 456
    I think launching ESO as anything other than a giant sandbox is going to cause tons of people to cry and moan, since that is what the ESO games are known for.  That being said, the setup which has you leveling in PVE zones and then moving on to a central PVP zone toward endgame reminds me of DAoC and is the single reason I will be playing.  That is one of the things DAoC had so right, since there are no high level players spending all day ganking lowbies and when you get sick of the PVP you just head back to the PVE areas.

    Currently playing:
    Rift
    Played:
    SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
    World of Warcraft, AoC

  • DeadlyneDeadlyne Member UncommonPosts: 232
    Anyone expecting a giant sandbox or non-linear content is going to be disappointed.  They have already stated their design philosophy and it's far too late to change it now.  Managing expectations means actually having a clue what to expect in the first place.  I hate to burst anyones bubble, but, they have made it abundantly clear that, sandbox or open ended non themepark gameplay isn't what ESO is delivering.

    Just to question the philosophy. Army of Socrates.

    image
  • CazNeergCazNeerg Member Posts: 2,198
    This game will probably end up being very similar to TOR, in that it will actually do a very decent job of delivering the experience the developers said they were creating, but will be considered by many to be a "failure" because it doesn't deliver the experience they imagined in their heads, which it never so much as hinted it would actually give them.

    Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
    Through passion, I gain strength.
    Through strength, I gain power.
    Through power, I gain victory.
    Through victory, my chains are broken.
    The Force shall free me.

  • Nemesis7884Nemesis7884 Member UncommonPosts: 1,023
    you might all want to look into pathfinder online - seems to be the only true sandbox on the horizon...even when we do not know if they can deliver
  • CazNeergCazNeerg Member Posts: 2,198
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    you might all want to look into pathfinder online - seems to be the only true sandbox on the horizon...even when we do not know if they can deliver

    Wait, more of a sandbox than Landmark?  That seems a little hard to believe.

    Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
    Through passion, I gain strength.
    Through strength, I gain power.
    Through power, I gain victory.
    Through victory, my chains are broken.
    The Force shall free me.

  • Nemesis7884Nemesis7884 Member UncommonPosts: 1,023
    Originally posted by CazNeerg
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    you might all want to look into pathfinder online - seems to be the only true sandbox on the horizon...even when we do not know if they can deliver

    Wait, more of a sandbox than Landmark?  That seems a little hard to believe.

    we hardly know anything about landmark yet, besides landmark for me is less of a "consistant immersive world game" and more of a "toolbox"... i know a alot of people disagree but for me, landmark is not a true game because it does not have defined rules since you can change the rules...its basically like playing skyrim with an open console and constantly changing anything to your liking - thats not immersive for me.

     
  • MaquiameMaquiame Member UncommonPosts: 1,073
    Originally posted by CazNeerg
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    you might all want to look into pathfinder online - seems to be the only true sandbox on the horizon...even when we do not know if they can deliver

    Wait, more of a sandbox than Landmark?  That seems a little hard to believe.

    Landmark is advanced voxel Minecraft. As mentioned its a toolbox. Pathfinder and The Repopulation are both sandboxes.

    image

    Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!

  • Scott_JeslisScott_Jeslis Member RarePosts: 627
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    ..i am not sure why im so hungry for mmo's anyway since i enjoy all the important aspects of a single player game more and am mostly a pve player but well...

    LOL similar here as I only average 12 hrs of game play a week...

  • CazNeergCazNeerg Member Posts: 2,198
    Originally posted by Maquiame
    Originally posted by CazNeerg
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    you might all want to look into pathfinder online - seems to be the only true sandbox on the horizon...even when we do not know if they can deliver

    Wait, more of a sandbox than Landmark?  That seems a little hard to believe.

    Landmark is advanced voxel Minecraft. As mentioned its a toolbox. Pathfinder and The Repopulation are both sandboxes.

    Please, define sandbox.  Pathfinder's own page calls it a hybrid between sandbox and themepark, not a sandbox.  I think you are splitting hairs when you call Minecraft and Landmark "toolbox," because that appears to me to be the same thing as sandbox.  

    From what I can see, themeparks are about experiencing content someone else designed.  Sandboxes are about using in-game tools to create content yourself.  (The developers give you the bucket and the shovel, and you build your own castle, hence "sand" box.)  With that distinction, Landmark is probably going to be the purest sandbox in the MMO space.  A lot of games that have been called sandbox in the past, it seems to me, weren't really sandboxes.  They were just themeparks without any rides, defined more by what they lacked than by what they provided.

    Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
    Through passion, I gain strength.
    Through strength, I gain power.
    Through power, I gain victory.
    Through victory, my chains are broken.
    The Force shall free me.

  • Nemesis7884Nemesis7884 Member UncommonPosts: 1,023
    na, the difference for me is, in a sanbox game i cannot make up my own rules and simply change the fundamental natural laws and physics of things - i have to live within the boundries of the existing world and its limitations - i dont have to do that with minecraft or landmark. Sure they are "sandboxes" - but for me they are no games but rather editors...just not my cup of tea - i think that is boring...i dont want to spend money to do sonys work for them.
  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719

    People who have fun in anything other than a sandbox should all be shot...or at the very least prevented from breeding... they're just doing it wrong.

    /sarcasm

     

    Back on topic...

     

    I agree with all the points in the OP... an early story hook, maps that tempt you to go off in a new direction and enough vistas that make you want to take screenshots... all subtle parts of the SP or MMO experience that make it more enjoyable.

    "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”

    ― Umberto Eco

    “Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” 
    ― CD PROJEKT RED

  • superconductingsuperconducting Member UncommonPosts: 871
    I hope ZOS has a dream team working late nights there because 3 months does not seem like it's long enough to fix their game.

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  • EndoRobotoEndoRoboto Member Posts: 275
    ^ if they do you know theyre working on the console versions...
  • koboldfodderkoboldfodder Member UncommonPosts: 447
    When the NDA is lifted, we will tell all about this game....and then you can make your own decision.
  • BruhzaBruhza Member UncommonPosts: 391
    Originally posted by koboldfodder
    When the NDA is lifted, we will tell all about this game....and then you can make your own decision.

    Pretty much this. Hype seems to be increasing more than it probably should be and most know how this normally ends up.

    Regarding another post above, this game seems very linear and this alone could really bring this game down. I wish the best of luck to the devs, but once people board the hype train, its pretty hard to stop.

  • CazNeergCazNeerg Member Posts: 2,198
    Originally posted by Bruhza
    Originally posted by koboldfodder
    When the NDA is lifted, we will tell all about this game....and then you can make your own decision.

    Pretty much this. Hype seems to be increasing more than it probably should be and most know how this normally ends up.

    Regarding another post above, this game seems very linear and this alone could really bring this game down. I wish the best of luck to the devs, but once people board the hype train, its pretty hard to stop.

    An MMO seems linear?  Color me shocked.

    Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
    Through passion, I gain strength.
    Through strength, I gain power.
    Through power, I gain victory.
    Through victory, my chains are broken.
    The Force shall free me.

  • ste2000ste2000 Member EpicPosts: 6,194

    So 70% of the map will be PvP?............. really?

  • Nemesis7884Nemesis7884 Member UncommonPosts: 1,023
    Originally posted by ste2000

    So 70% of the map will be PvP?............. really?

    i doubt that...probably rather 20%...since there is a dedicated pvp zone.

    For a themepark game it probably does make sense to center the end game around pvp since its the only "persistant" option and easy to do - seems somewhat logical and gives devs time to come up with new pve content...of course, if tehy would have done it right they would have made a sandbox game in the first place...but well

  • MrMelGibsonMrMelGibson Member EpicPosts: 3,033
    Originally posted by Nemesis7884
    Originally posted by ste2000

    So 70% of the map will be PvP?............. really?

    i doubt that...probably rather 20%...since there is a dedicated pvp zone.

    For a themepark game it probably does make sense to center the end game around pvp since its the only "persistant" option and easy to do - seems somewhat logical and gives devs time to come up with new pve content...of course, if tehy would have done it right they would have made a sandbox game in the first place...but well

    Actually, its more like 33.99999999%.  From this article explaining it being 1/3 of the world size.

     

    http://eso-guides.com/elder-scrolls-online-vs-world-of-warcraft/

  • ShadanwolfShadanwolf Member UncommonPosts: 2,392
    "So when you think about the depth of Elder Scrolls Online there is a lot more out there than just the character development and the crafting".
     
    We don't know a single detail about Elder Scrolls crafting. We have just glittering generalities from Zenimax.

     

  • Lord.BachusLord.Bachus Member RarePosts: 9,686

    Lotro, swtor and Tsw managed to pull me inside with their stories...

    and there is no reason why ESO cant do the same... The above three games are just as enjoyable story wise as a single player rpg..... And they offer a lot more on top of that.. And ESO will manage to do so even better...

     

    Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)

  • kinkyJalepenokinkyJalepeno Member UncommonPosts: 1,044
    Originally posted by Shadanwolf
    "So when you think about the depth of Elder Scrolls Online there is a lot more out there than just the character development and the crafting".
     
    We don't know a single detail about Elder Scrolls crafting. We have just glittering generalities from Zenimax.

     

    Aye and that worries me.  You can stuff your PvP..  PvE and crafting is where its at for me.

  • umcorianumcorian Member UncommonPosts: 519

    I've come to the decision I'm not going to touch this game for some of the reasons this column pointed out.

    Overall, the shallowness of MMORPG gameplay has finally caught up with the genre. The inability to effect the world, the hotbar abilities, the target-based attacking, the 2-dimensional ways you interact with the environment, the quest hubs, the stale repetative animations... ESO just isn't doing anything I haven't seen before and, given Oblivion/Skyrim, it just has too much to live up to because the very things that made those two games great just aren't visible in this MMO.

    For the very same reasons I'm not touching ESO, Everquest Landmark/Next has my attention. They seem to be addressing at least SOME of my issues with the stagnating genre. The building, traveling and lack of quests are big first steps. 

     

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