Elder Scrolls Online, beta sign-up

[Ian]

I patched ESO yesterday, logged in, saw the clunky dated look of the game again, lost all desire to play and logged out.

Combat is just so boring compared to oblivion and skyrim. It graphically looks worse than both, it runs worse than both. I guess I just really wanted an elder scrolls game as good as skyrim and oblivion with a touch of online features and felt like I got the same old mmo with a tiny bit of an elder scrolls theme and no ingenuity. The more I think about it, the more I'd rather just have a new elder scrolls game than another crappy mmo.

I love elder scrolls, but ESO is not it.

[Sir Edward]

Yeah, the more I think about it, something really feels "missing". I don't hate it, it would be fun for a little while... and yet. Usually I'm dying to get my hands on a new MMO, and I will get sucked in hard, and play as much as I can for the first week or two. After playing last night, it was like "OK, that was cool. Now what."

The thing I have to remind myself, is that I'm sometimes slow to get into RPGs in general. I had to just get through the first couple of hours in the Dragon Age games as well, and then I was hooked. I don't get hooked easily when I have no equipment and only one attack.

They've done some interesting things in ESO. I like the first person perspective, and the fact that they only bring up HUD elements when they're needed, to aid in immersion. But something is still missing.

EDIT: I thought the graphics looked OK for an MMO (they're always going to be slightly behind the curve compared to single player games). Which aspect felt dated? The interface design?

Something I'm hating though are the stupidly long login/loading times. They'll have to fix that, or it will kill their game. This is of course a stress-test weekend, but even at 9am it's spinning for minutes at a time?

[Sir Edward]

Something I'm hating though are the stupidly long login/loading times. They'll have to fix that, or it will kill their game. This is of course a stress-test weekend, but even at 9am it's spinning for minutes at a time?

Case in point:  I finally got logged in, after it was "logging in" for about 10 minutes or so.

[Aiden of Oreland]

Have you guys been playing solo or with groups. Cuz this game is more of a group effort. Plus i think after playing Skyrim where you start off fleeing from a dragon and slaying dragons this game might feel slow. I think regardless of the game play I may just play it just because. But so far this game sounds like Guild Wars 2 to me. At first i found it like "ok" but then it just got really slow because I felt like the quests were getting harder and I wasnt finding enough quests for my level. This game might be slow because the beginning gets you to the actual "main quest". Unlike in skyrim and oblivion the main quest starts when you start the game. Idk thats what it sounds like to me so far. I'll have to play the game first. And if Im correct its provably really slow to log on due to the faxt that its a "mega world". No servers just one world.

[Sir Edward]

Yeah, I wish they had a stronger "hook" at the beginning of the game. They're taking the typical MMO approach of giving you so little to work with at the beginning, that they're assuming that you're completely new to this sort of game. I don't find it fun having only one attack at first. Once you get past that, it starts to get better.

I'm starting to see some of the light-hearted and fun writing style in the Khajiit area.

I'm still on the fence as to whether it will hold my attention, but I'm tempted to buy it anyway and give it a chance at launch.

[Ian]

Sir Aiden, you mentioned GW2.  I had wayyyyy more fun in GW2 than I'm having in ESO. 

You also asked about group vs solo.  The problem with ESO is there's no reason to join up with other people or even acknowledge that there's other players, other than getting annoyed when you're all doing the same quest and it's totally ruining your immersion.  The on-the-fly group questing and dynamic events of GW2 were a LOT more engaging and encouraging of group play than anything I've encountered in ESO. 

I'll still probably play at release, just because it says Elder Scrolls in the title, but I'm definitely underwhelmed.  GW2 felt cool, fresh and inventive.  ESO feels stale and clunky.

[Sir Edward]

Sir Aiden, you mentioned GW2.  I had wayyyyy more fun in GW2 than I'm having in ESO. 

You also asked about group vs solo.  The problem with ESO is there's no reason to join up with other people or even acknowledge that there's other players, other than getting annoyed when you're all doing the same quest and it's totally ruining your immersion.  The on-the-fly group questing and dynamic events of GW2 were a LOT more engaging and encouraging of group play than anything I've encountered in ESO. 

I'll still probably play at release, just because it says Elder Scrolls in the title, but I'm definitely underwhelmed.  GW2 felt cool, fresh and inventive.  ESO feels stale and clunky.

Agreed. GW2 was one of the first MMOs to truly address a lot of the problems that plague typical MMOs. While not perfect, it had some creative and unique solutions, and the dynamic grouping by location was fluid and easy to work with. I had a lot of fun with that one. I need to go back in at some point. I hit the level cap and then stopped.

[Aiden of Oreland]

ESO like GW2 has the feature where two players can combine moves together. Say a rogue throws oil on the ground a mage can light it on fire. Or say like in most ES games if you start attacking a bandit and the other bandits in the area are in view they will come to the aid of their comrads. Unlike in WoW when you attack an enemy the sureounding enemies don't do anything. I agree I found GW2 really fun. But at level 23 I stopped playing because I was busy with school and forgot about it. But when I got back on I found it incredibly boring because I was to weak to do any of the quests and I had already completed all of the quests I could do. Also my bro moved out wih the computer lol. Speaking of group quests or the "any one can part take" quest like the ones that pop up in GW2. DESTINY!!! That open world shooter has those.

[Sir Edward]

I agree I found GW2 really fun. But at level 23 I stopped playing because I was busy with school and forgot about it. But when I got back on I found it incredibly boring because I was to weak to do any of the quests and I had already completed all of the quests I could do.

The good thing about GW2 is that it scales your level to content around you (if you outlevel it), which means you can go to another lower-level area and quest there for a while (like one of the other starting zones), and you'll still gain experience.

[Aiden of Oreland]

I agree I found GW2 really fun. But at level 23 I stopped playing because I was busy with school and forgot about it. But when I got back on I found it incredibly boring because I was to weak to do any of the quests and I had already completed all of the quests I could do.

The good thing about GW2 is that it scales your level to content around you (if you outlevel it), which means you can go to another lower-level area and quest there for a while (like one of the other starting zones), and you'll still gain experience.

Now you tell me! I would have done that before my brother moved out with it

[Sir Nate]

Im start playing oblivion again

[Ian]

PC Gamer's closed beta impressions (the impressions seem pretty consistent across the board):

linear, bottle-necked, not really  open-world, and it's missing the soul and feel of what makes ES great.

[Sir Edward]

PC Gamer's closed beta impressions (the impressions seem pretty consistent across the board):

linear, bottle-necked, not really  open-world, and it's missing the soul and feel of what makes ES great.

That's really a shame. I'll play it a little, but clearly the expectation at this point is that I won't stick with it for a long time.

I'd probably be a lot more disappointed if I had played the more open-ended single-player games in the franchise. Maybe I should take the hint and really dive into Skyrim at some point.

[Sir William]

I generally don't do the online versions of games...not since Counterstrike (was a lot of bs going on, I got tired of it) which was a shame because that was "Testosterone Thursdays" game of the night more often than not.  Then some friends got me involved with Call of Duty which was a lot of fun but it got old after a while...once you realize its just a bunch of idiots running around and blasting eachother in different environments with interchangeable loadouts, it gets old.  GTA Online is much the same, except the world's a lot bigger than a 9v9 pvp map...but any of these online games are much more fun with like-minded friends than alone, or with strangers.

[Sir Douglas]

I agree, Sir William. I really have a hard time getting into any kind of multiplayer game, not just MMOs. They're fun every once in a while -- I like the occasional TF2 match, and LotRO is my one major MMO exception -- but I get much more satisfaction from playing alone. It lets me play the game how I want to play. If I'm playing an RPG like The Elder Scrolls, sometimes I like to play it realistically. Walking instead of running everywhere, eating food, sleeping at night: roleplaying. It kind of breaks the immersion when some goofball runs up to you, starts jumping around all over the place, and generally acts silly. Other times, I like being that goofball, and it's a lot easier to do that when you don't have those super-serious spreadsheet gamers calling you a n00b.

I grew up playing games mostly alone, so I just prefer single-player games. I don't like how so many games are starting to favor the social features over a solid single-player experience. Maybe I'm just grumpy and anti-social.