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Beta reviews...
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
Here a topic where everyone can put his beta reviews and ooinions...
here is my opinion based on 3 beta weekends.. Mostly restricted to PvE...PvP is just awesome..
The PvE world
The PvE world is highly based on lore and story, every quest, many NPC, the enormous number of books, everything in this world has a story to tell. Voice overs are good, and to me personally it makes for a very immersive world. Now you dont get these stories offered for free, you need to find them in the world, but every area has a story to tell. If you dont like lore and stories you might not like this games PvE as much. Because its supposed to give you the feeling of a deep lorebased ES RPG. And in my opinion it succeeds remarkably well at that.
combat
Combat is disputed by many, but personally i love the somewhat slower combat, its less flashy then most recent mmos, and maybe a little slower paced. This allows for a more tactical combat. I think the combat works great for solo PvE and even better for PvP... Which seems to emphaze on making the right choices out of the few skills you have. . From the PvE grouping experience i have learned that healing with targetting is a very dun thing... Tanking is much more taxing then in traditional mmos, its akmost i possible to keep all agro, which means that the DPS requires to have some survivabillity to survive the mobs that sometimes jump on them. Its different enough to feel fresh compared to other mmos and close enough to Skyrim combat to make the ES players feel at home.. Currently combat has some issues.. Espescially when melleeinga nd moving to close to your ennemie and then not being able to use your skills, but this will be solved when collision detection gets added in a future build.
Gather your stuff
gathering and collecting will be a main asset in this game, everywhere in this world stuff is hidden in baskets and bookcases, in chests or barrels.. But also offcourse in the resource nodes that are actually somewhat hard to spot. And then offcourse there is all the lorebooks and stories hidden in books. And dont forget about the gathering of skyshardds and skillpoints..
Crafting
Crafting is the core of the gear game.. Crafters can craft anything they want and improve anything they need. But its slow. Leveling, it requires components that are hard to require, and there is some randomness to the higher level armors. Again it requires collecting of stuff and recipes.. It will take a lot of effort to skill more then one type of crafting.. And with the open market system that requires social interaction, people will learn the value of crafters again in this game.
building a character
More freedom to build what you want and enough room for diversity and trying new builds... Basically every of the 4 classes will have dozens of great builds, i tried some different things and the actuall possibillities are mindbogling. Your stealthy nightbalde can be an assasinator and change tto a healer with the simple swapping of a weapon.. Different builds truely change your character...
Graphics
The world looks just as good as any mmmo out there, and performance with that quallity is stunning. On highest quallity settings even the gear looks awesome.. It has very much improved since early beta builds, but the scenery outdoors and the lighting effects make for some really astonishing environments
A perfect game
there is no such thing as a perfect game, there is many things like housing that did not make the game, and the dark brotherhood and the thieves guild that hAve been announced for post release, or the adventure zones that have not been seen by anyone. But that is of lesser concern.
My biggest gripe is how they implemented the open world pve, which isnt actually openworld but feels like it. It does not give anyone a reason to group up, questgoals are not ahared among party memebers, which means all party members need to do the same things. And solo story immersion. Gets ruined a lot of times because to many people are running around in places where they do not belong.this really needs attention before release..
And then there are many smaller things. Like smaller guilds not having a guildstore as it requires 50 members. Groupmembers being port to other instances, and many other small things..
all in all desp ite being far from perfect, i felt kind of at home in the world, i just loved the story immersion. And the combat. Which made me wanting to play more and more, i had a slow start getting used to the game mechanics but once i got used to the world and the ui i kept wanting for more.. And then the PvP is just the cherry on the cake for me.
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)
Comments
I agree with your post almost 100%, This really is the best PVE content I have seen in any game up to date. The amount of content of stories and how richly they are told in game is amazing, which is why I wish starter islands were still the starting point, because it tells a story of how the alliances formed and shows you the alliance form in your alliance, its very heavily LORE driven. I'm not much of one for PVP but as a PVE person I found the PVP to be quite fun in this game opposed to other games with PVP in it. I really think this is the gem of PVE so far and hope to play it nonstop soon.
Overall I don't see myself playing this game at launch, but the things I like best about the game is how smoothly the game runs while still having beautiful aesthetics. I also find many of the stories behind the quests, if you are like me and actually find it interesting to listen to what the NPCs say, are quite good and interesting. It makes the world feel a lot deeper than most MMO quests manage to. Though I wish conversations felt more interactive like in SWTOR.
Haven't really had time to dive too deep into this yet... Will be playing at launch, so don't want to get too much of this already. I want to keep the game fresh when it really starts.
The part I've been able to get into, this is an Elderscrolls game without a question. With the good and the bad... These games always start off slow and gathers much speed after you've gained a couple of levels. The combat isn't earth shattering, but it does what it is supposed to do. And there seems to be many avenues of advancement in this game... The levels and skill points are just glitz and glamour and the skills you use are improved along as you gain experience in skills as well as towards levelling. If you like the Elderscrolls games, this will tickle that same itch. If you are a WoW fan, this might be too slow and boring for you.
I like it... As I said, I'll be playing and can't wait to get into the meat and bones on this.
I don't have much else to add to the OP except that for the pace is a huge positive factor. Not just the pace of combat, but the overall pace of the game. I know that some folks will power through, but I played 12 hours yesterday and am not even level 10. I love that and hope it keeps up that way.
Also, I usually hate voice work and heavy story in mmorpgs, I like a less linear feel, but ESO does it well enough that I am actually enjoying it very much.
I agree on that... And i love that feeling.
and you get a lot more progression kicks in the game then just the leveling dings...
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)
Actually they are taking the whole genre three steps back ... and integrating it with RPG... they also looked back at older MMOs and things that worked good back then..
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)