Since the NDA is lifted . . .

[Incunabulum]

Let's fill this forum with some ESO.

So far I am dissapoint.

Combat is neat(ish) and I am pleased that it is very mobile and not 'hit buttons on your hotbar to maintian your skill rotation while standing in one spot'. But - skill level up if you put them in your hotbar - not using them, simply slotting them. And skill points to get new skills are tied to levels, which are tied to XP. It would have been sooo much better to use the normal skill advancement of TES but I guess that amount of innovation in an MMO is scary as ♥♥♥♥.

Evironment - it looks decent. On par with Oblivion, say. Though washed out - someone on the art team is scared of saturation and lighting effects. 'Its only beta!' you say - yeah, but we're 2 months from scheduled release so I doubt they're hiding much.

Standard 'mobs scattered throughout the zone stand around waiting for you to kill them' layout. You could at least have them doing something environmentally appropriate - this *is* 2014 after all.

Plus! At least most of the 'color' NPC's in towns and whatnot are actually posed or doing something rather than standing straight upright at attention.

Negative! Have any of the art team ever actually *seen* a ship from the age of sail?

Could use some increased in-game settings for view distance, grass, whatnot for people with high-end machines.

Questing - can't fail quests with pointers to everywhere you need to go or click on. There *are* choices (very rarely) to be made. None of those choices seem to have any affect on anything.

I hear rumors of speech checks but I haven't seen anything close.

Non-combat mechanics - crafting. You can learn *all* crafting professions on a single toon (rightly so, the devs figured you'd only make crafting alts so they saved you the hassle. Go Zenimax!). And there's lockpicking, with a little minigame. No way to specialize in this (short of actually getting good at it yourself). That's good and bad - good picklocks will be hard to find, it will be hard to tell who's actually a good lockpicker. Unfortunately this mechanic is only used for chests. No trap disarming, spotting.

Stealth is better than than in most other games - but you can't specialize in it so you can't be better or worse than anyone else. Pick a Rogue class and you'll get an invisibility spell.

But basically its all hack and slash.

[Incunabulum]

Describe, in simple words, only the good things about - the story.
The Story?
Yeah.
Let me tell you about the story.

You wake up in the hell of a god of rape. This has to be the most G-rated hell I've ever seen. You're less likely to encounter a cenobite in an episode of Spongebob than here. All the other denizens stand around - they even have little kiosks! Is the game trying (poorly) to make some (not really) ironic comment about the consumer culture of the modern world?

THE PROPHET contacts you and says he knows how to get out. Why me? Why now? SQUIRREL! OK, its sketchy, but I'm not staying here. After saddling you with a completely useless companion (who seems to know way too much about the place) you and THE PROPHET! leave and end up in Tamriel.

Oh wait, THE PROPHET! ended up in a different place than you and you were pulled from the sea by some (good) pirates. You know they're (good) pirates because THE PROPHET telepathically tells you he 'senses no real malice' in them. I guess all the killing they do later, or to be more accurate, have *you* do, is completely impersonal.

Whatevs man. Sorry you're wherever you are, hope things work out for you THE PROPHET, but I'm outta here man. I got tombs to rob and wolves to hunt with a bow, from horseback, while galloping across the plains of whiterun hold.

♥♥♥♥! I'm on the express plot-train and it don't make no stops.

So I have to do the whole run around the map and get the plot coupons to getoff this damn island. Only to find myself on another one and unable to leave *there* until I do the damn main quest again.

Edited to add.

Oh, and I love the companion you get at the beginning of the game to run through the very first bit. Can't do any damage when attacking and the AI is so . . . there's one section with a bunch of spike traps along the passageway. She got hit by *every* single one, even the one's you can walk around. Its was amusing to hear her yelps 2 seconds after I ran through the trap:)

And I should add - this isn't just a WoW clone. It has a lot of weaknesses but, as an MMO, if it didn't have that huge pricetag it would be a good competitor to what's on the market right now, even to WoW itself.

[Matthew]

You deserve to be disappointed if you were expecting a TES:VI. It was never meant to be.

From what I've seen so far, pretty stock MMO. If MMO's are not your thing, probably won't be interested.

I'm not pleased nor disappointed. It was what I thought it would be. That is, I didn't have unrealistic expectations of it being anything other than yet-another-mmo with a layer of TES thrown on. I will still be getting it. Seems enjoyable enough.

Some random things:

- Surprised at how stable beta has been. I've participated in stress tests before and they have been... pretty ugly. At one point, right after exiting the starting area, there were a ♥♥♥♥ ton of us in one place and the game was still running smoothly for me. I gotta say, as far as the network coding is concerned, I'm impressed.

- Still no spears. Why the hate? They always add 2h warhammer/mauls, which are some of the clunkiest impractical weapons ever, yet ignore spears which are one of the most commonaly used weapons throughout history.

- 1H and shield rolled into one. I guess it was to streamline the process since they figure if you aren't going to use a shield you will dual wield. I suppose for the majority of players that is true, but I have a tendency to play a lot of TES games with just the 1h weapon and that is it.

- Pleased with the environments so far. If they keep adding additional areas over time, the game map will blow away all the other TES games.

- Classes are extremely flexible, which I like. But I'm left wondering why they even bothered. I suppose those not used to TES games need the guiding hand of classes to feel comfortable?

My last thoughts: A lot of these TESO threads... "reach for straws" when trying to put the game in a negative light. Fair criticism is fair, and if it turns out negative so be it. But at least keep things in perspective. The animations in every other TES game have been just as horrid. The story lines just as cliche and generic. Choices still didn't matter. Even in Morrowind, which you all love to worship (Oh gee, you get a slight modification to speech disposition for joining an opposing guild, talk about extreme!). While TESO certainly won't appeal to a lot of people, even many TES fans, there really is no reason to try and skew information to justify your hate. If you don't care for the game fine, but judge it fairly is all I'm asking.

[Incunabulum]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย matthewameluxen:

- 1H and shield rolled into one. I guess it was to streamline the process since they figure if you aren't going to use a shield you will dual wield. I suppose for the majority of players that is true, but I have a tendency to play a lot of TES games with just the 1h weapon and that is it.

- Classes are extremely flexible, which I like. But I'm left wondering why they even bothered. I suppose those not used to TES games need the guiding hand of classes to feel comfortable?

My last thoughts: A lot of these TESO threads... "reach for straws" when trying to put the game in a negative light. Fair criticism is fair, and if it turns out negative so be it. But at least keep things in perspective. The animations in every other TES game have been just as horrid. The story lines just as cliche and generic. Choices still didn't matter. Even in Morrowind, which you all love to worship (Oh gee, you get a slight modification to speech disposition for joining an opposing guild, talk about extreme!). While TESO certainly won't appeal to a lot of people, even many TES fans, there really is no reason to try and skew information to justify your hate. If you don't care for the game fine, but judge it fairly is all I'm asking.

Regarding 1h and dual wielding - here you can cast spells (well the class specific ones anyway) with weapons and the rest of the spells require a staff so its not like sword and spell has a use here.

I also don't understand why classes, except I imagine they think free-form characters are too much for their expected customer base maybe. Or they just figured its easier to do PvP balancing with set classes rather than the bajillion combos that'd exist otherwise.

I do think I judged it fairly. Sure its an MMO, but MMO's don't have to be all themepark setup. There are others that have merged themepark with sandbox. Its just if your game follows on to a series known for wide-open, go anywhere (and suffer the consequences) gameplay where the paler makes his own story, and you drop in something that is mostly an interactive movie, people are going to be dissapointed.

Especially when that story is turning out to be kinda silly. TOR had the same problem with its storylines.

[Skyrimnut]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย matthewameluxen:

You deserve to be disappointed if you were

- Still no spears. Why the hate? They always add 2h warhammer/mauls, which are some of the clunkiest impractical weapons ever, yet ignore spears which are one of the most commonaly used weapons throughout history.

.

I know, right. The only thing I could think of is that you have to program more things for a spear. You can use a spear in many ways/ You can jab an apponent with it, or throw it at a target, you can even block with it, so you need the mechanics of a stabbing weapon, a ranged weapon, and a blocking weapon all in one, and the option to make it one handed or two handed depending on how you use it. Maybe it was too hard to throw that all in? Stinks, I can only imagine spears with mounted combat.

The Beta was suprisingly stable for me too, I only encountered one bug and that bug never let me get out of the prison cell in the very beginning. Hahahaha. So I had to reload and do that part again. It was ok, I admit that I am horrible with a mouse and keyboard, so that killed the gameplay for me and to be honest, I can't make judgements on their game design if I'm struggling to use the controls. That's not, however, their fault, but mine. I loved the first test when I went fishing and did some simple quests. Their fishing function was very good. That was a pure roaming test and I enjoyed it a lot. Subsequent tests have been more plot driven. Hopefully it'll do well. I wouldn't do well in their PVP environment. If they have a PVE section for wussies like me, then I'd play when the price goes down.

[Matthew]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Incunabulum:

Regarding 1h and dual wielding - here you can cast spells (well the class specific ones anyway) with weapons and the rest of the spells require a staff so its not like sword and spell has a use here.

Indeed. I don't know. Just feels like I am being forced into dual-wielding, which is fine I suppose. It is the forced part I don't like :)

I may end up playing with a resto staff anyway, depending on what kind of group content they have later on. Turns out I can still use the backstab ability on a nightblade while wielding a resto staff lol... Fine by me, I don't need to use a dagger if the game still lets me play the same way.

I do think I judged it fairly.

I was [mostly] speaking in a general sense. You can't tell me you haven't noticed the group of people eager to hate this game as soon as it was first announced way back when we knew absolutely nothing about it. I agree with you completely. It is disappointing that it is just "another average MMO", and it would have been interesting if they at least made an attempt to break away from the pack. But at the same time I favor objectivity in all areas of life. A lot of people are whiny because they need to wait longer for a TES:VI (and wondering whether or not there even will be one at this point!) and passing off their feelings on TESO. The game is what it is, a TES MMO. Take it for what it is, because ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it won't turn it into a TES:VI.

[Incunabulum]

Let me add - the game is kinda growing on me. The quests aren't *completely * linear. There's some optional stuff that can be done that's kinda neat. While the *writing* is par for an MMO, the *structure* of the quests is a cut above.

[Incunabulum]

Oh, wait. Now that I've 'saved the orcs!' - because apparently no-one in their army could follow the step by step instructions as well as my character.

And now my 'good pirate' captain seems to be defering to me on when she sails.

[Zloth]

Wait, the NDA is lifted? When did that happen? Can somebody confirm? (Though I don't know if I have anything valuable to say. I played waaaay back when Microsoft Bob was still doing a lot of the voice acting.)

[Incunabulum]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Zloth:

Wait, the NDA is lifted? When did that happen? Can somebody confirm? (Though I don't know if I have anything valuable to say. I played waaaay back when Microsoft Bob was still doing a lot of the voice acting.)

On the 7th.

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

There must be at least one TESO forum out there on the big wide internet.