My review after BETA

[ermacos]

take notice that I am dyslexic.

 

Character creator

 

I give it 3 A's (AAA). I love to spend lots of time creating my character and not something totally premade and ends up the same faces for all my characters (eg SWTOR). So I love this game because of the character creator. I uploaded 2 videos already about it, I provide with links from my utube.

 

My videos

 

Female Breton character creation http://youtu.be/UwTyGs7nM0M

Male Redguard character creation http://youtu.be/zNeT7w1WzEs

 

Graphics

 

In my compuer runs with 40-100 fps at ULTRA settings. Its smooth, only few areas I experience some dramatic frame drops, but these areas are very few. The in game world is beautiful, only some areas are not well made, as an example, small grass clifs, are like flat polygons. But these can be improved in times. I love the sun effects, the waters, the weather effects, fog, etc. Textures are fine...

 

Animations

 

I believe the game have some difficulties there. The way the character runs is funny, or when I jump into the air, its more like falling from a tower and it gives you the feel that your character is like a feather!! You feel no weight in your characters movements... Skyrim is better in that one! I also provide a 10 seconds video, of how it looks, if someone gets a mount (horse). The horse is moving funny!! You have to fix these things.

 

Looking at a mounted player looks cheesy the way he moves http://youtu.be/jTDKg8ATQhY

 

Combat system

 

The first thing I notice is the luck of choosing my spells with the mouse. I have to use both, keyboard for the spells and mouse for moving and rotating all the time. I know that they want to keep the elder schrolish thing, but they could give some more free to our control experience. To choose.

 

Questing

 

Some quests gave me the creeps, the indicator is buggy in many of them and the rewards are not very good. Some more quests choices would due. Quest rewards give you some gold and each kill gives you 1 gold?! They have to fix that... random gold drops from kills, not 1 per kill.

 

Other bugs

 

Minimizing the game is a problem, it's not working properly and sometimes not working at all.

Shadowplay for NVIDIA gpus, is not working.

No mini map! we have to stop and check all time the map by pressing M button.

No information given what we loot from our kills, if we have AUTOLOOT selected, we have to open our bags and check.

The game have lots of things to kill, explore and loot, but the bag space and the bank space, are limited.

We need more merchants in the quest take/give areas, because we also need to repair! Some areas didnt have at all, only major cities and villages.

 

 

Things and features, that I have a bad feeling about.

 

instead of AH we have guild stores and we can join up to 5 guilds (?). I believe that this will shrink and destroy smaller guilds.

1) A player will join a populated guild with the most active people, be able to trade

2) A guild will try to coop with equal or bigger guilds to make their members more satisfied...

 

So I believe it will end up being a fiasco and thousands will start complaining in the ESO forums. This feature will bring up "super guilds" or no guilds at all.

 

Mega servers may be convinient, but naming our characters will be a huge issue from the first week!

Marriege between players to get more experience. I believe its a bad feature and it gives wrong example and values of an action such as marriege between 2 indeviduals, especially the kids. Only to have more xp... I would suggest them to allow us marry an NPC instead and use it as a merchant (read bellow). Than a real person/friend.

 

Some suggestions

 

Suggestion 1

 

 

The idea is to hire services from major towns. An NPC merchant to sell our stuff across all alliances... You can place your items for sale to them, with YOUR desired price and your desired amount of time, you send it out and the NPC spawns in populated areas as (our) personal merchant/shop. This could also be limited by the amount of items we are about to sale. For example, we cannot send out our merchants with 5-10 items, we must gather a respectable amount of resources and items, be able to hire it.

 

This merchant could be our spouse! Instead marrying a real person.

 

That could be good, for selling your stuff into other alliances!...

 

When and if they implement houses/towers/castles for guilds and players, we could have our own NPC's doing that job...

 

I personally highly support the idea of a hireling, especially when we get our housing, mostly for services (such as selling our stuff).

 

ps: Thats why we also need a better system for tracking npc's in world MAP, so we can track down NPC's with services.

 

That would also make the world more alive, because there is no traveling merchants anyways.

 

Suggestion 2

 

I would suggest them to make the feature housing more spicy, than a just plain house, because just a house, sounds and is boring. And bellow is how I imagine it and want it to be. Housing for guilds and individuals. Castles for guilds and towers for individuals.

 

1) to be obtained/created : needs lots of mini quests, farming materials and gold. Shapes and sizes of castles and towers, may vary. Each time we save a village or a town, we can have access to that.

 

2) Be able to hire "hirelings" as a personal army or guards inside our keep's, totally modifiable, be able to add defensive systems (traps) inside our keep's and through missions be able to add mythical or rare beasts in specific floor/rooms/cages (the reason explained bellow), the treasure maps could be a good use for it! Also the hirelings, can be modified and dress them with the desired tiers and emblems.

 

3) The keep's can be used for resting, accommodate a friend, vendors, etc.

 

4) Be able to use the keep's as a DUNGEON. If another guild or group of people, wants to challenge me, in a unique experience (4 man for towers or 24 man for castles), through an invite or queue system, they will have to face my armies, beasts and tower or castle defenses. If I accept the chalenge ofcourse. (that means, both have to enter in the queue, the host and the intruder).

 

5) to be potentially for both sides to win. If I am good enough and I have strong defenses inside my tower or castle, I win rewards and titles and respect from my hirelings. If they win my defenses (with a timer maybe for small towers), they get all rewards. The towers and castles to have a dynamic system of getting damage and me (the owner) if I lose, I have to repair, replace all the damages with lots of gold and finding other hirelings.

 

6) that idea gives you enormous amount of dungeons, without even needed to create them!! The players do. Also the difficulty will vary from a keep-to another keep.

 

7) the castles, as a more complicated and bigger dungeon, can hold more surprises compared to the towers. The final boss could be a (24v24 pvp arena!!) guild vs guild. And whoever stands alive - last, wins.

 

I hope you liked the features I want to see in game...

Edited March 10, 2014 by ermacos

[StupidDunmer]

Interesting. In most parts, I completely agree with your observations.

[DestroyerDeathsmane]

Sadly this past weekends Beta event was again on an older version of the game , meaning the fixes to the game for bugged quests , the UI lock up issue and the under the hood fixes are not being stress tested properly . there will be a lot more problems at the launch then there should be .

Character creator

there is a lot of options for customization , you have a triangle to set your physical build between Muscular , Thin and Heavy/Large body types . You then use sliders to set your hieght , body markings , hair stlyes , torso size , chest sive , hip size , waist size , leg size , arm size , hand size , foot size , eye size , eye angle , eye spacing , nose shape , nose size , eye brows, forehead slope , cheeck bone hieght , cheeck bone depth , jaw size , chin size chin hieght , facial markings and color boxes to select skin , hair , and eye colors . I might have missed a couple but you get the idead you can have a very customized character .

The races each have some selections that are only available to them for the color boxes and you can preview the novice and vetern gear for them when your creating the character (if you like one race but prefer the gear look of another you can learn to make the other race gear by finding the appropiate motif book for the crafting system).



My videos

I have none


Graphics


I like the graphics as far as art goes , they look good and are consistant through out the areas of the game I was able to access during the stress test weekends



Animations

combat animations are still a little jerky in motion but have improved , the running animations are ok (about on the same level as most other MMO's on the market today) , the various emote's have decent animations to them , so for me the animations are acceptable .




Combat system

you have very few choices for use during combat as your limited to only 5 abilities plus your ultimate skill on the hot bar ( you can have a lot more combat skills to choose from as you level up ). You are unable to swap weapons in combat until level 15, as that is when you get access to a second hot bar and the ability to do a weapon swap . Almost evry build for Dragon Knights , Templars , and Nightblades must be a Hybrid build , meaning you have to have magika and stamina using skills on your hot bar . If you do not you will run out of one of your resources and only have your spam attacks to use (light( press and release the left mouse button) and heavy(press and hold the left mouse button) basic attacks) , regardless you will use your light and heavy attacks the most.

As you level combat styles you can spend skill points to morph the special attacks to gain a form of crowd control , resource regen , health recovery , extened duration , or extended range .This also applies to the various class and guild skill lines.

Due to the restricted hot bar size you do not many choices when in combat if your part of a group , you can only perform the role you have the skills slotted for for so if your a DPS you can not replace a Healer that goes down or a Tank that goes down .This means that you might have the ability to be a tank but in the middle of a fight you can not be a backup for the groups tank because you do not have the ability to slot your needed DPS skills and a few tanking skills to be a temporary tank while the tank is ressurected . This is a serious short fall in a game where any class can learn to be a tank , healer or a DPS . Players need enough hot bar slots to be fexible while playing so they can react to things as they happen the current hotbar setup is at best problematic and at worst gamebreaking for a MMO.



Questing

There are some quest hubs but if you explore you will find quests out in the game world , this leads to a very open game play for a MMO but is more restricted then many TES games have been in the past , but this is a needed compromise to have a viable MMO. One thing I noticed is that you can also pick up steps in a quest chain without having to get the first step all the time so you can do a part of a chain before you actually get the chain and still complete the quest chain .

Some of the quests have problems with the interactive object(NPC or actual object) not spawning(relogging usally fixes this) or not being usable (no reliable workaround relogging and /reloadui might work but usally do not), the PTS server players claim that these issues have been fixed but as of the last Beta Stress test (3-14-2014 to 3-16-2014 ) these fixes do not hold up under a load on the servers and software .



Other bugs


UI locks up sometimes when you try to exit a conversation with a vendor , banker , or leave a crafting station . This is worked around by opening the ingame mail , using /reloadui , or by hitting the escape key . This is again an issue that was suposedly been fixed on the PTS servers has failed under the loads of the last Beta stress test .





Things and features, that I have a bad feeling about.



Instead of AH we have guild stores and we can join up to 5 guilds (?). I think this will be detrimental to small guilds.

1) A player will join a large guild with a lot of active people , to be able to trade

2) Large guilds will co-op with other large guilds to expand the trade options for thier members

3) This will reduce the access of small guilds and unguilded players to trade for crafted items and resources that they do not have the time to farm/craft themselves .



So I believe it will end up being a fiasco and many players will start complaining in the ESO forums. This feature will bring up "super guilds" or no guilds at all.



Mega servers may be convinient, but naming our characters will be a huge issue from the first week!

They changed the starting location less then two months before launch . The change to starting zones was poorly done left many feeling like they where going backwards to return to the starting islands so they could get some gear , have a cohesive story , and reach a level where the quests and mobs outside the city where not so far above them . This is the kind of change that should have delayed launch by at least six months to get the redone story set up , implemented , and tested . that is not being done . My opinion is if you have not pre-ordered the game then do not and delay buying the game for six months to allow for those who have pre-ordered to do a pay to play Beta to get the games issues fixed(assuming they stay there long enough for that to happen).


Based off of the beta from this past weekend the game is not ready for launch in my opinion.

Edited March 18, 2014 by DestroyerDeathsmane

[Veraaloe5]

I am an old Elder Scrolls fan and was in Beta and also preordered the Imperial Edition. Sadly I cancelled my account today after really giving it a go and this was mainly because of all the items listed in the previous comments.

 

Bank and bag spaces are just too few, especially for crafters. You can purchase extra bank spots for a huge amount and I did this, upgrading twice spending all my gold of many days and half nights of playing, not upgrading armor or anything. Sadly as I found out from other players, there is a 'known' bug that deletes that bank upgrade and you lose the goods in those extra slots plus it takes all the gold you have stored/saved in the bank.

 

Then I had the bad luck of quite a few quests bugging out, especially a very long one where today when I eventually got to the boss the door to the bosse's chamber would not open. After trying relog etc I had enough. I gave up. sadly. cancelled my account.

 

I am now going back to Skyrim and look around for another MMORPG that comes on the market.