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My thoughts on ESO early game
thark
Member UncommonPosts: 1,188
After playing the beta weekend I felt bad, because I have more/less made several of my friends order this game on the idea that we would play this game. It really looks good by looking at videos and previews etc, but the reality is Another story, atleast for the starter Island.
At starter Island and prison the game is ok at best in the overall adventure feel
So ..My question is ...Is the game any better after the starter Island ?
Atlest in regards to these issues
1 TRAPS ..Is the traps going to be totally visible (like it is on the starter Island) Its not a trap if its visible and only thing you need to do is walk on the side of it or jump. and if you for some reason step inside a trap you are hardly damaged anyway.
2 QUEST POINTERS... Is there Always going to be quest Arrows leading you to every possible location in a quest ? Really exiting to obtain Dwemer gear pieces when they are market exactly where they are on the map..!!!?? The clue here is to write better clues in the journal not give the players an Arrow on the map. And make the Arrows optional if there are folks that needs them.
Sure there are errands that are just that errands , those can have markers , but a quest is NOT a quest if you know Beforehand where to go and what to do ..
and some Points that I feel makes the game bad but I understand is the same after the starter island
1 NO Collision detection, It makes the combat borderlining to stupid most of the time , but I guess this is a sacrifice they had to make due to huge PvP zone
2 Ugly characthers but ok enviroment graphics
I understand that these things are there for obvious reasons and will not change, maybe they will change the characthers Graphics eventually 
Comments
Collision detection is live on the next patch for PvE, but not PvP, but not this beta, this, for some daft reason, is an older beta build.
Does the game get better, yes, a bit, but it's still basically the same game.
Quest markers are a staple for all MMORPG's these days.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
Its not for some reason...
The reason is stresstesting the servers, this requires a rockstable clientbuild... and thats why they use this older optimized build.
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)
Which no one will ever use... because who will make the game harder for himself and give others an advantage?
right only those three really hardcore donkeys
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)
right only those three really hardcore donkeys
Not to mention the in game directions are terrible so I'm not even sure it is possible to turn these off unless they go over all of the quests and tweak them.
Obviously
It's designed around "questmarkers" To rectifie it all you need to do is write proper quest descriptions and make the Arrows toggle on/off in options..and yes maybe you could only have a few quests Active to not make it confusing..
Seriously, by doing this easy change you open up a whole new level of gameplay and immersion that many players want, just because they had "stupid Arrows" in Skyrim and other MMO's does not mean this game can't change that or that it will loose any subsvribers if it's togge on/off..
Yes TSW had it right, they had markers for the OBVIOUS errands and then you did have to solve the rest by yourself..
Decent game , has a lot going for it. They still have a month to fix a few minor issues. Glad I beta'd this instead of listening to the trolls. The only real issue I have with this game is the fact that they are making you buy the collectors edition to buy all the races. That tells me this game is going be a lot more than 80 base +15 a month. If they make you pay extra from the start to play all the races imagine what the future holds. Also with no end game to speak of I am not sure if this qualifys as a standard MMO. Its more like a multiplayer version of regular elder scroll games , without the grouping that goes with multiplayer. Your basically sharing a world with a bunch of people who are also soloing the same quest you are. Still even with these issues , it isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Put it this way...
ALL games get harder from the beginning. If traps are easy at the start...it's just a taste. They will get harder and more deadly later on. It's supposed to be easy at the beginning.
The option to turn off quest markers is available in the latest PTS build, as is collision detection.
I'll use it - as will plenty others. I made this poll on the beta forums asking if you would like the option to turn off quest markers (before they added it) and 75% said yes.
A few more donkeys than you might expect.
The majority of players are not going to turn off quest markers. Sure some people on a forum may say this and might actually try it but it wont last more then 5-10 minutes before they are turned back on.
This is why you don't base the entire game's gameplay off of the tutorial. Rarely in games are the two identical. The tutorial is nearly always a watered-down, easy-mode version of the game. Simplified so that it is literally impossible to fail (in most games). ESO is not different in this regard, and many people have already commented on disliking the tutorial.
As for the traps, the do more damage the further into the game you go, but so far they aren't too hard to spot if you're paying attention.
The quest markers, function literally identical to how they do in other Elder Scrolls games. If you pick up a quest, it gives you the general area or location of the next stage of the quest on the map. However, this doesn't mean that every quest is clearly pointed out to you in the game.
There are tons of quests that are off the beaten path, you just need to take the initiative to explore.
And again, I repeate take the initiative to go exploring, once you get out of the tutorial zones. Too many people just auto-pilot through the zones, and just assume they've seen everything.
This will make me purchase the game then, othervise I would have skipped it..
Seriously folks, It's time to get a few of those old WoW features gone from MMO's or atleast to some degree so it will make you atleast Think in small doses when playing.
Some say they do not have time for this and that, I do not Believe in that, sure, there may be some that has very limited time to play a game, but If you have this limited time to play , you either skip it or play a facebook game for 5 min instead.
It's not like ESO is built to play in 5-20 minutes, then log-off. Infact most of the Skyrim players has 100-200+ Hours listed on Steam.
Sure not all players play for the quests, but those players can happily turn on questmarkers and PvP or whatever they are after :=)
I agree with you, on the other hand thou ..If the tutorial or in this case the Island ...doesn't pull you in "gameplay vise" they will loose alot of players that did try these beta weekends . The Island takes fairly long to complete , and many may not even finish it..
And..You do NOT have to make a games start "that easy" It's just redicoulous to Believe that players needs to have it this easy just because it's the start, yeah maybe the first 10 monsters but not an entire area.
I uninstalled GW2 after half an hour of watered down gameplay etc regardless if the game may or may not have gotten any better.
Ohh yes..The idea with your .."off the beaten path" would work SO MUCH BETTER if they got those quest Arrows out of the game , It would practically solve itself with them gone
Well, its good to know that you can skip starter islands in the next beta. For your sake.
It doesn't get harder after the tutorial though. At least not in the first zone. I am level 10 and my health has never dropped below 90%. A huge part of the reason is that they emphasize exploration, so they don't know where you'll go when you first arrive. Everything has to be really easy easy so that a fresh level 2 can do it.
+1 this
I got my ass kicked at level 9 with my patented "spend all points in Stamina while using only Assassination skills" Nightblade build, only to discover that I didn't have access to the area I needed to respec. Combine that with running out of cash from testing the crafting system and I was left with a character that I couldn't advance, unless there's some option I'm not aware of (always a possibility)
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