High expectations vs reality

[yerion]

Today I was reading searching for leaked footage. Eventhough I could not find any leaked beta footage, I did find some 7 months old reactions of people to the leaked beta footage video's. And these reactions were not positive at all. I was a bit disappointed after reading most of the comments, because I have been really looking forward to this game. Personally I liked almost every piece of information that has come out, wether it has been abilities or combat mechanics. I have really high expectations for this game and I thought most people thought this way. But all the reactions to the beta gameplay were really negative. They stated things like "terrible graphics", "cookie cutter mmo", "Boring as fuck" and "How is this Paid 2 play"  

 

I have not seen this gameplay footage (from 7 months ago). And maybe some of these people have changed their opinion. Personally I am an optimistic person. This was footage of very early beta, and at this stage gameplay is much more important than polishing graphics and the smoothness of the game. I was quite happy with the graphics that I have seen so far (it looks  a little worse than skyrim, which is awesome for an MMO in my opinion). Zenimax promised interesting quests instead of generic quests, like "kill 10 bears". But I saw comments of play testers who say there are still grind quests. I hope that those quests are just a few among the numerous really awesome tes-like quests. But I fear they might not be able to polish everything in time for the game release. They told us about so much awesome PVP and combat gameplay, but we have not seen any previews of pvp gameplay as of yet. 

 

I really want to know your opinion about what you have read about the game and how you think the game will turn out.

 

 

Xenon

I just hope combat will be more interesting when playing the game than when watching others play.

 

1) doesn't seem to be any collision detection (you can run straight through your opponent - but you get stuck on small rocks and other environmental debris)

2) either the game have [or at least had back in September] serious latency/netcode/hitreg issues or everyone have huge hitboxes that let you hit even when you visually are several meters away from your target.

3) game also seem to have "auto aim" (or at least soft aim or aim assist) where you "lock" on a target and your arrows connect even if you aim is [slightly] off.

 

I think they will fix the above issues before the actual game is released. I do know that there will be a soft lock to counteract lag. Otherwise the game will be very unbalanced for people with latency issues. But I really did not like to read on the official elder scroll website that when you aim (and lock) at somebody with a bow and another person jumps in between you and your attacker you still hit the person that you locked on. I hope you can dodge arrows around the corner, like you can do in Skyrim.

[Musclemagic]

I'm too much of an optimist, they're going to fix it all! a lot of those old interviews did have negative feedback, but I've heard other quotes from people who played it then and now who say things like, "It felt like a whole new game." (paraphrased).

 

I wouldn't worry too much about it..even if it has issues at first then it'll be patched within a few months probably...hopefully. Since they're doing subscriptions I have even higher hopes for future fixes.

 

Deep Down has such a genius payment method... Pay-to-progress but free to start means that everyone will try it (and that's important because the market's so saturated) and then it gives me high-hopes because if they are confident that people will pay for it after playing it, it's probably a pretty good game! It looks great, too, they worked really hard on their revealed content and I think it's going to pay off. It's unheard of for a big-brand to do it like this.

 

You can tell a lot about a game by their payment methods. ZOS is obviously confident in ESO, giving the first month away for free. If ZOS had done what Capcom's doing with Deep Down then I would have even higher hopes, but it's hard to do that in an MMO...

 

idk, pure speculation, but I hear you--everything I've heard about anything related to ESO so far has made me more and more excited for it!

[Terhix]

My intial response when I saw the game announced and done by a studio that's not beth, was that it's going to be crap. The first footage I saw just confirmed it, and I stopped following the game completely after two weeks or so.I came back to check the status of the game few weeks ago, and got quite positively surprised, just seeing first person mode was huge. First person mode, sneaking and sneak attack with bow all working, made me quite cheerful. Then seeing how the class system actually works and how much freedom there really is, made me calm.I don't expect this game to play like Skyrim, and I think that anybody who does will be disappointed. There are compromises to be made if you want to make not just an online game, but an MMO, and if you absolutely detest MMOs... well, this is an MMO no matter how you slice it. That being said, ESO does go off the beaten path and while it does have to compromise, it seems to compromise the genre with the franchise and it's key mechanics very well - just by limiting the siillbar to 5+1 and getting rid of cooldowns, while keeping the basic actions (light attack, heavy attack, block, bash, dodge, sprint - that would be 6 skills on a bar in a WoW type of an MMO) natural and transparent, they threw away a whole lot of playing the interface game out of the window - which is absolutely brilliant.The graphics of the game also got a huge upgrade, I remember first screenshots of argonians and was very disappointed, the more recent character creation video they showed us is a completely different world. I saw the ogrim video, and seen the feedback to it, then saw the video get comments disabled and felt disappointed, so you can imagine how happy I was to see it being redone, and awesomely too. The first person mode from quake con still looked lackluster, but given the record of them actually listening to what players want, I'm calm about that too. In one interview they said that they are, in fact in the process of making high res textures for every single weapon in game, just to make the first person mode look good.TL;DR: it's not going to be like Skyrim just with multiplayer added, but it won't be a cookie cutter MMO just themed for Elder Scrolls either.(typed on a tablet, forgive any spelling mistakes)

[Francis]

Ah, yes, the negative quibbling...

 

In an anonymous society, such as the web, where the ability to discriminate people eye-to-eye rarely exists, the ability to judge people into high and low status groups also disappears. So, the average knowledgeability middle-ground that usually exists among the archetypal "normal guy" group, is then lowered to include idiots, young'uns and culturally-alien foreigners.

 

The hate bandwagon is garbage. I've yet to hear from a beta-tester who doesn't love the gameplay.

[David]

There are three things that guarantee that people will be disappointed regardless of how good (or bad) the game actually is.

 

1) It's a TES game not developed by Bethesda.

2) It's not going to be Skyrim.

3) It's not going to be 2007 WoW.

 

I'm sure there will be a lot of panicking at release due to bugs / game-play issues but these days games grow a great deal over patches. Skyrim wasn't even an MMO and just compare v1.9 to vanilla.

[Kaloom]

ZeniMax Online is owned by Bethesda. I think when it comes to making it feel like a TES game it won't dissapoint. The only thing that i'm worried about, and forgive me because i'm one of those vanilla Wow players, but, I don't really know how i feel about being limited to 6 skills or 12 when changing weapons. I know they've said somewhere that they didn't want it to just be people working on a cd cycle but 6 skills feels like it could get very monotonous. Especially in PvP when you need to have different skills for different situations. Thats the only thing i'm worried about.  Oh and also i feel like the racial abilities are too specifically aimed at classes, which narrows your options a bit.

 

Nevertheless looking forward to the release.

[Draconian]

With developers employed who have previously worked on DAoC and Warhammer (Brian Wheeler being the lead PvP designer), everything suggests that ESO's PvP will be those games' successor - but in a new and improved form (pressuming that they've avoided the pitfalls of those ealier games and just taken everything that worked). This really fills me with hope, and I think the PvP will set a new standard - even though it will differ from most MMOs with its lack of cooldowns (thank you) but increased flexibity and complex theory crafting.

[yerion]

Thank you for all the responses. It is good to put things in perspective once in a while. I normally try to have no expectations of everything that I deal with in my life, that way I never get disappointed (it really works, I happily surprised by alot of things). But I could not help myself this time. I had very high expectations for Skyrim, and the game managed to exceed them. Oblivion and Skyrim are the best games I have ever played (eventhough I mostly like online pvp games).

I do no think I will be disappointed by ESO. I know it is not skyrim, but alot of changes that are made compared to skyrim are actually improvements imo. I know that some mmo aspects of the game can not be avoided. I still like the feel of MMOs, and will accept this trade-off.

 

 

 

know they've said somewhere that they didn't want it to just be people working on a cd cycle but 6 skills feels like it could get very monotonous. Especially in PvP when you need to have different skills for different situations

As reaction to Kaloom; Do no think of the combat system of other MMOs. Combat in ESO is not about autoattacking and keeping up a spell rotation, while saving a few defensive cooldowns for dire situations. ESO combat is about using your resources at the right time. The more I read about the combat system the more excited I get. Imagine if you spam a single target ability, e.g. poison arrow,  that just does damage and yourstamina is depleted. This means your block will mitigate a lot less damage, this means you can not interrupt your opponent anymore, you can not dodge to avoid a ranged attack, you cannot sprint away from a charging warrior, you cannot break free of cc using only stamina. Resource management will be VERY important. It will be a dance of normal attacks, blocking, using situational abilities and heavy attacks. 

[Kaloom]

Yeah i understand it's more about resource management and I have to admit it will make PvP more interesting, but it just means that if i want to roll a sorcerer  i have to invest in stamina if i want to be competitive in PvP. Also as a lover of end game PvE it will be interesting to see what the boss fights have to offer as it sounds like the AI will make 'raiding' interesting.

[Musclemagic]

Thank you for all the responses. It is good to put things in perspective once in a while. I normally try to have no expectations of everything that I deal with in my life, that way I never get disappointed (it really works, I happily surprised by alot of things). But I could not help myself this time. I had very high expectations for Skyrim, and the game managed to exceed them. Oblivion and Skyrim are the best games I have ever played (eventhough I mostly like online pvp games).

I do no think I will be disappointed by ESO. I know it is not skyrim, but alot of changes that are made compared to skyrim are actually improvements imo. I know that some mmo aspects of the game can not be avoided. I still like the feel of MMOs, and will accept this trade-off.

 

As reaction to Kaloom; Do no think of the combat system of other MMOs. Combat in ESO is not about autoattacking and keeping up a spell rotation, while saving a few defensive cooldowns for dire situations. ESO combat is about using your resources at the right time. The more I read about the combat system the more excited I get. Imagine if you spam a single target ability, e.g. poison arrow,  that just does damage and yourstamina is depleted. This means your block will mitigate a lot less damage, this means you can not interrupt your opponent anymore, you can not dodge to avoid a ranged attack, you cannot sprint away from a charging warrior, you cannot break free of cc using only stamina. Resource management will be VERY important. It will be a dance of normal attacks, blocking, using situational abilities and heavy attacks. 

 

The more I read about the combat system, the harder I think it will be to balance. There will definitely be discrimination in what does well in PVP and what does well in PVE.

 

The thing is though...I LOVE PvP freedom even if it results in circumstantial imbalances!!!!!!!! I think it's what sets good planners apart from people who are just good players, and gives a higher skill curve on both a gameplay level but also a game-knowledge level. The higher the skill-curve of a video-game, the better the game is as long as casual players can still use it to get their kicks. There will be good players who are also good planners who will be at the top, for sure, and there's nothing wrong with that. If people want to be good, they can invest a lot more time and thought into getting better. It just makes people strive harder for greatness because it's more competitive, but the ability to achieve even greater greatness is here more than in most other games...and that right there is why I'm so taken by ESO already.

 

I've been learning a bit of Platonian theory lately, mainly being written by Hayek, and I think that there's a lot to say about having individual freedoms and only having one's self to blame--giving you more overall satisfaction with the world--than when there's a lot of control and having the system (rather than yourself) to blame for any injustices. Anything that gives players things to exploit and such is just reality, some people are going to find ways to use the system to their advantage and I think there's nothing wrong with that.

 

As soon as games stopped being okay with this, nobody has freedom because every character is the same after true balancing occurs. In WoW, every class has pretty much the exact same abilities.. Every ranged DPS = the same, every melee = the same, every healer = the same, every tank = the same, with very minor differences.

 

6 abilities works wonderfully to force people into a unique role. I can tell you guys, who might not have played Diablo 3, that 6 abilities is THE perfect number of abilities for strategic customization and strategic gameplay to come together. Also, in Diablo 3 I actually predicted the cookie-cutter-combos for all 5 classes before open beta, and they're pretty much still accurate to this day. So, to the people here who would argue that none of this early theorycrafting matters, that's not necessarily true.

 

Edit: I'm not saying that there should be a huge difference in how well you can perform across the board if you choose to melee instead of ranged DPS or something...but I think that people need to realize that their "fun" builds won't be the "best" builds and that there are specific combos that utilize mechanics better than other combos would. I don't think some of you realize how important the build combos will be. Things like light/heavy attacks and block/dodge/mitigation will be standardized between everyone without much difference...so, unless you suck at using these basic standard actions, or they fail horribly at getting them even close to balanced between class/weapon choices, then these aren't going to be what determines how good your character is. The 6 abilities we get along with what gear we have equipped is definitely THE deciding factor in how your character will perform at the task at hand.

And yes, obviously the skills will change a bit..like Weighted Shot will turn into Poison Arrow and then be able to get Weighted Shot VS more damage later..and the numbers will change a bit... but HOW the skills work isn't going to change much at this point.

 

Anyway, this is why I am focusing so hard right now on all the skills while others of you don't think that they matter at this point. It's just my opinion, so it's fine to disagree, I just felt the urge to explain myself...probably to justify all the time I spend on here to myself...rofl. XD

[Draconian]

Looking over the spread sheet, it seems to me that it will be impossible to make a single best build. And there seems to be so many counters, too. So a single character will most likely never be able to be the master of everything and will always have some form of vulnerability to certain other builds. If this is true, the rock-paper-scissors effect will still be present despite the huge flexibility and freedom, and I think this is what will make PvP truly epic in ESO. So many variables, so many options, so much fun.

[Blake]

All I ask for are three things.

 

1. Huge area to explore

2. Khajiits

3. Khajiit women

 

Really though, when I played it, I honestly didn't think it was that amazing. Then again, this was in beta in September I think. And I also had to deal with a lot of login issues prior to actually playing since they were stress testing the servers. Maybe that put me in a salty mood.

 

Combat wasn't all that bad. I was melee, but I did try out the bow and the aiming was soft assisted at times. Combat is probably about as exciting as any regular TES combat in my opinion.

[Terhix]

Yeah i understand it's more about resource management and I have to admit it will make PvP more interesting, but it just means that if i want to roll a sorcerer  i have to invest in stamina if i want to be competitive in PvP. Also as a lover of end game PvE it will be interesting to see what the boss fights have to offer as it sounds like the AI will make 'raiding' interesting.

 

 

You don't really need to invest in Stamina, since it appears that we get 20 health, magicka and stamina per level, plus 10 points to put in either, so even if you max out magicka every level, you'll end up with 1570 magicka and 1080 stamina base.

 

Now on the subject of the limit of abilities - how many extra abilities that you need for PvP can you really list? A melee skirmisher needs a snare, a gap closer of some sort, maybe some burst or execute and some survival or escape tool and... well... that's about it, really. Look at Moba games, that they are able to create rich and interesting gameplay with characters having around 4 abilities each is a testimony of what really matters in PvP: it's the strategy, positioning, communication, knowing when to go in and all out and when to retreat. You really don't need 10 different 5 minute buffs, 4 ways to root people, 10 different frost attacks, 3 different damage shields and 4 escape tools on a mage, all on separate cooldowns. I did buy Razer Naga back in the day, and now I despise the whole concept of having to buy extra piece of hardware to handle all the abilities. I already have a keyboard - it's in the name: key-board, it's a board with nothing but keys on it, if you make a game with so many things to handle that a regular keyboard is not enough, you're doing something very wrong .

 

And if you find yourself in a situation where you can't have everything you'd want and you have to pick between, say, a damage buff or a damage reducing ability - that's very good, PvP is much more interesting when people have specializations and weaknesses.

[Kaloom]

You don't really need to invest in Stamina, since it appears that we get 20 health, magicka and stamina per level, plus 10 points to put in either, so even if you max out magicka every level, you'll end up with 1570 magicka and 1080 stamina base.

 

 

Ah thats good to know i thought that stamina would go up but didnt realise it would go at the same level.

[Musclemagic]

For sure, there's no build that can beat every other build. As far as a "best" build for every individual situation, yes, there's always one build that is superior to the others by at least a slight margin.

 

The best healer's temp, dk tank, nb single target, and sorc ranged dps. This level is where rock-paper-scissors will occur the most, but as the categories get smaller and smaller it increases the number of counters.. As we go smaller and smaller within each category, there is eventually a build that is the best possible for each individual situation. This means that there must be one build that performs adequately in the most number of specific situations (based on how frequent the situations happen, too).

 

But, there's always a build that's the best build at countering the "best" build, as well, that's why it depends on the frequency of builds. As soon as something counters more total players than any other build, that build becomes the new best build..but when people start countering that build, then there's a new best build, and so on.

 

This is why it's important to make notes on a variety of the best builds for specific niche's, because once we find out what the currently highest valued niche is--then that's the current best build and you want to be able to maximize your potential in that area.

 

The best build also varies greatly on who you are partied with, like the best build for someone who's partying with 2 healing templars who both have Restoring Aura might be someone who relies on a ton of stamina attacks and is 100% focused on DPS.

 

That said, there will also be a best 2-man group, best 3-man group, etc.. Just because something can be countered doesn't mean that it's not necessarily the best possible build for the mast majority of other things.

 

In pvp you need to identify the problem and then formulate strategies, which is hard when you can only choose 5x2+1 abilities before you know what the specific problem will be... so once we identify a common obstacle in PVP that poses the most problems, the build we'll want to play is probably the specific build that counters that specific problem.

 

Anyway, right now I'm livestreaming if anyone wants to come and leave a comment--I have no idea how it works on PS4.

 

twitch.tv/musclemagic

[Xenon]

pvp will be easy to balance. everyone can pick up any skills and any weapons. doesnt matter if some weapons and some armors are stronger than others. everyone is free to pick them up and change to the latest fotm set-up.

 

 

...the only thing they really need to focus on are class and racial abilities since you can't pick them up after you created your character. once they are balanced everything else will pretty much fall into place automatically.