A month after launch, ESO is at a spot where I consider it “review ready”.  From a feature/bug perspective, the kitchen sink patches have been applied, servers are stable and the initial floodgates are closed.  While I stated that my trip down this path is at a close, I still think it merits an overview of what went well and what needs some work.

What Works

If you like Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim in particular) then the mechanics will be very familiar.  First or 3^rd person view (no one should play 1^st person), mouse to target, mouse buttons for main attacks, inventory control, organic skill progression based on use, focus on discovery, quick travel, customization, and non-linear quests with multiple steps.  All that is there.  There are a few tweaks that can be irksome, such as if you take any crafting skill your bags will be 90% of that material and perennially full.  More or less, if you like the single player experience from before, it’s very well replicated in ESO.

There are hundreds of quests and when you’ve completed your faction, you simply start doing the other 2 factions.  This drastically reduces any replay value outside of 4 alts, given there are currently only 4 classes but the amount of time required to consume everything is likely around 3-4 months.  Fully voice acted too, and the lore makes sense.  Some quests are mirror copies of others (so much Worm Cult) but the paces within are decent enough.

There’s a ton of build variety and you can swap between without too much hassle. Skill point distribution makes sense, though I’d prefer to know the morphed abilities first.  Easy enough to wiki-it though.  Raising skills is intuitive and the power curve, generally works.  Instead of fixed level ranges, ESO uses a scaling system for power.  You could be killed by a bunch of level 1s at max level and you can take on an enemy 20 levels higher than you, which is very different from the standard.

PvP, in my limited experience, is fun.  It’s massive, there are goals, factions are “balanced” enough that no one group can completely dominate the entire map forever.

Dungeons are fun when they work.  It’s a middle ground between GW2 run everywhere and the traditional trinity of tank taking all the damage.  You’re basically mitigating problems and saving the healer with the tank taking on the big guy in the room.  More like FF14 if you’ve played that.

The art is impressive.  The initial player customization has a ton of sliders but only 3 races – humans, cats and lizards.  Enemy variety is also very limited – 80% humans, 10% skeletons, 10% bears/cats/fauna.   That’s a lore limitation though, one that SWTOR had to live with too (which uses the same engine co-incidentally).  Often times I found myself stopping to just look around.  The atmosphere is really well done and while a lot of the set pieces are reused, their combinations are often unique.  Maybe it gets better at higher levels but you generally have no idea what class anyone is until they use a class skill and telling two players apart (assuming same race) is pretty hard.  But they do look good, which is a plus.

What Needs Work

This one is basic enough but there are still dozens of game breaking bugs.  The forums are full of them.  Designer hat for a second but it’s clear they needed another 2 months or so to clean that up.  The first 2 weeks of launch and entire faction couldn’t progress to veteran content.  They are being fixed slowly but I found at least one bug every 20 minutes that either required a /reloadui or a relog.

The combat itself, I have a lot of trouble with.  Aiming doesn’t use a soft lock system (Neverwinter does) so if things are moving, you’re missing.  There’s little feedback outside of knockdowns.  Class skills are unique but the weapon skills aren’t (except for the blingbling of destruction).  I am not a fan of the flow nor the combination of resource management and basic attacks.  A standard fight is 2-3 attacks but a big enemy or a boss is all auto-attacks after 10 seconds.  Pretty boring.

Social structures currently don’t make much sense.  In an MMO you want to see other people.  In ESO that just doesn’t seem the case, outside of PvP.  Quests are phased, which means it’s hard to team up with people or friends.  You’re 5 quests ahead?  Can’t do them again or see any of the targets.  Public events do not scale.  So a “rare” dark anchor event balanced for 4-5 people usually has 20-30 and everything dies before it actually spawns.  Public dungeons are worse.  Open tagging helps but you still need a hit or 2.  Guilds serve next to no purpose other than to have auction houses (which I think is a smart move with a mega-server) and a shared bank.

Crafting needs some work.  You can make something for every other level of progress, which is a great thing.  The days of 5 levels between tiers is gone.  However, there’s no real variety outside of enchantments and the process for increasing skill is pretty boring.  The unique crafting stations, that make item sets, don’t really seem to have much purpose since you need to have a ton of pre-requisite steps complete before.  Just doesn’t seem balanced.  The only good thing I see about crafting right now is that repair costs are so prohibitive, that crafting is a free alternative.  A full repair at level 35 costs about 2,000 gold which takes about 3 levels to actually fund.  By crafting, I’ve easily saved about 30,000 gold.  It’s odd that this is the first game where crafting is not a money maker but a massive money saver.  Does raise concerns around high level repair where you might not be able to re-craft….

Balance is sorely needed.  Many skills don’t work as described, or don’t scale or just don’t work.  Maybe the tooltips need to be changed.  I do know that AE skills are currently uncapped, which makes coordinated PvP efforts essentially an AE spam-fest.  AE stacking of 5 attacks can kill 1 person like it can kill 20.  It makes bottlenecks that much deadlier (or zergs).  Stat scaling and enemy scaling also need tweaking.  1 hand and shield does ~50% of the damage of all other attacks.  Assuming they are using a tank build, they also take ~20% less damage (armor is not linear).  That math doesn’t work.  Some enemies appear to be scaled incorrectly, or designed for multiple people.  The main quests in particular are unforgiving.

Summary

ESO is a decent game and scratches quite a few itches.  If you enjoy the single player aspect of the ES franchise and like the massive PvP then you’re in a good spot.  I think $15 is a bit much for that but that’s my opinion.  The MMORPG stuff, that still needs a lot of work.  If you’re on the fence for trying it, I’d suggest coming back after the summer.

So it’s been a few days with me running around ESO.  Well to be honest, the weekend was a WildStar beta and I tried a few more classes out.  Other than being themeparks, I can’t stress enough how dissimilar these games are from each other.  They are not aiming for the same market.

So, Molabal Tor is the zone for 30-37 I hear.  At least the enemies are that level.  I must have messed up somewhere because I’ve been at least 2 levels under since the early 20s.  I explore every nook, find every part of the map.  I don’t avoid combat but I’m not grinding either.  I’m just “playing”.  Still enough experience though.  At least to keep pace with the content.  There is some debate about level balance in that you aren’t penalized for level differences, so I can take on enemies 4-5-10 levels above me.  They hit harder and have more hit points but it isn’t like I miss every attack.

While some bloggers have found the difficulty to go down as they level I have found the complete opposite.  I will admit, I am a massive MMO meta fan.  I play them for the numbers and the tactics.  The numbers in ESO make no sense to me.

A solid 20% of my skills don’t appear to be working, or the wording is simply wrong.  This applies largely to morphed skills.  I have a charge that should stun for longer the larger the distance.  It doesn’t.  I have a blade attack that hits 6 times, 4% chance to disorient.  Now, you’d think that would be 4% per hit but it’s 4% for the entire skill…completely negating the point since I can just slot a stun attack instead.  Attack numbers are just not intuitive.

Defensive skills are also simply broken, there’s just no other explanation that I can come to.  I have a full tank build.  All heavy armor, shield, skills that increase my armor and decrease enemy attack power.  I still die at the same rate as if I was in medium armor.

Valley of Blades

This is the level 35 main quest.  I’m 36, so should be ok.  I enter the zone, nothing much going on.  I do have 3 DPS companions though, so I figure this should be fun.  Complete some basic tasks and then this dragon shows up.  Who proceeds to kill me in a few shots, including some stuns that I can’t avoid.  Fun times.  I do manage to take him down eventually.

Big Boy

The next part is just a walk down a tomb to get a ring.  Simple.  Turn around and I have to “protect the tomb”.  So, ya, fun times right?  Not so much.  What occurs now is what I consider “tested but unbalanced” content.  I get to attack a few undead.  First a knight who, even though I’m in full tank gear after 1 death on the dragon, proceeds to kill me in 4 hits.  Ok.  That’s not right.  I try again.  Dead.  4 times.  Dead.  I then decide to cheap it and stack stamina regen and just chain stun him and run away.  He dies.

Great, fight done!  Nope.  Next is another undead knight.  Cheap him out.  Then a knight and a mage.  I die twice avoiding the magic and then just hide in a corner and wait 5 minutes for the companions to kill him.  Next is either a bug or something, because the original knight is back.  I run like mad.  Thinking I’m clear, I walk a bit and end up with 2 mages and another knight.  I mean really?!

Hide to live another day!

Screw that.  10 minutes go by for the companions to kill them while I hide.  Finally done.

So grand total is over an hour for a quest where I spent ~45 minutes just standing there watching because the content was so overtuned there was no real possibility of success.

Grouping

I wanted to add this previously but here it is.  I have never played an MMO where grouping is a bad thing.  Outside of AvA, grouping is a massive negative in ESO.  There is not a single item in the game that scales to the players around the content.  If you do not have a ranged attack, then you should avoid other people as much as possible.  Now, I’m not saying they are being malicious but if you have 20 people attacking a creature with 500hp, good luck seeing him run a single animation.  Dark Anchors are a joke.  It looks like they were designed for 3-5 people.  Instead because they open so rarely, you’re going to have 20-30 people around.  Public dungeons are the same.  Quests aren’t so bad as it’s rare enough to have more than 2-3 people around you due to the massive phasing for quests.  So even if I try to play with friends, I really can’t for half of the content.

I just don’t see how that makes sense.

Conclusion

I think I’ve reached the end of this road.  There is a lot to enjoy but it has absolutely nothing to do with being an MMO.  AvA is the exception but if the PTS patch notes come through, I think that’s done too.  I’ve cancelled my subscription and have 7 days to go.  I am honestly disappointed. There was/is a lot of potential here but it just feels wasted.  I do hope that the rest of the players still logging in are having fun and that ZOS can tweak it enough to keep the player happy.

PS.  Interesting note.  ESO doesn’t have a feedback form for cancelled subscriptions.

I know I mention the bugs in ESO and I’m guessing a few people think I’m exaggerating.  ES games have been known to be buggy, what with the open-ness of it all.  I never really minded that part, as you could save/reload and try some wacky things out.

MMOs though, I am less used to buggy launches.  I mean, really less used to it.  The last one that launched with this many bugs was Star Trek Online, at least in recent memory.  FF14 aside.  ESO is getting buggier the farther along I get.

Is this a multi-verse?

The one above happens every so often, especially when the particular NPC follows you around.

What book?

This one happens way too often.  The little lights mean there’s a book, or a note or something to interact with.  /reloadui doesn’t work, so that means that  the item is just below the world line.  I’ve seen this a few times in other games with resource nodes, specially mining nodes.  Those I sort of understand, what with the randomness and the fact that they are used when collected.  These though, these are manually placed.  I don’t get why the person who placed them didn’t put them at the right spot.  Maybe on a server reset they come back?

There are plenty of dungeon bugs too, some that prevent you from completing them.  Frustrating.

No pictures this time, there really hasn’t been much different to show.  Which is actually a little irksome.  All the items are identical, you just get a palette swap.  I mean, there’s racial variety (if you have the knowledge to make it) but a level 1 Khajiit breastplate looks near identical to the one I’m wearing now.  Plus it’s made out of spandex.   I guess I should take a picture of that…

A separate trend I am noticing is that people strafe bookshelves.  Many dungeons and houses have bookshelves, sometimes a dozen or so per room.  Most players just move around from shelf to shelf to get the automatic skill point gain (I’ve raised dual wield to 15 without every equipping 2 weapons).  I’ve read all the books on the shelves, now, or at least I have yet to see a new one.  The actual books you find on tables, those are unique and I read them too.  I would hazard to say that well above 50% of my play time has been on exploration activities – reading/looking/listening.  I hit level 23 last night and from the blogosphere, quite a few people are much higher level with a similar time investment.  I am thinking if I had an alt, in the same faction, I could probably level 4-5 faster.  Sort of like SWTOR I guess.

Still playing a templar, still focusing on tanking.  Still wondering why.  In the “olden times” if you played a tank or a healer, you couldn’t really get anywhere alone.  It was joined at the hip with other players since neither role did any damage.  Healers in ESO are a bit different, in that you can still raise healing skills outside of DPS abilities.  Tanks though, that’a slightly different conversation.  New games allow you to level as a tank/healer without issue – ESO takes a slight turn here.

Healers use macgika and so do ranged DPS.  Healers can slot 3 DPS attacks and 2 healing and level up both Destruction and Healing together.  After level 15, they can actively swap between both too, which is good.  Equipment (light armor) is shared between DPS and healing.  It’s doable, very doable.

Tanks are a bit different.  They run on health and a tiny bit of magicka/stamina.  DPS run on magicka and stamina, depending on the skills – class skills use the former, weapon skills the latter.  Armor is different too, as tanks use heavy and DPS use medium.  Skill slotting is similar to Healers, you can swap to dual wield or two-handed pretty easily.  The downside is that a) you have the wrong armor which lowers damage and b) you don’t have the magicka/stamina to actually use your skills.

I’ll give an example.  Trolls.  These buggers hit hard and have a lot of hit points.  A DPS wins through sheer damage output, which is about double mine as a tank, so the fight takes on average, half as long.  I don’t have twice the hit points, what with a +15hp boost per level.  10 levels is equal to one piece of food right now.  I don’t mind lower damage, but I would like higher damage absorption or faster health recovery.  Make the fights take longer but let me survive them.  Now, if I have a healer around, then I can tank a zone.  I get that.  But in 90% of the cases, outside of dungeons, I don’t have one.  Side note – having an “open tap” system, where kill credit is shared, actually increases the odds of someone helping you.  The polar opposite of WoW and “single taps”.

I think this might be related to my strategy on leveling the tank too.  I slot abilities that are next to useless playing alone (like a shield buff to reflect spells) in order to get them to rank 5 and see their morph potential.  I’m about 90% of the way there right now.  I don’t mind that part as I expect it to open up in a couple more levels.  Once they do morph, it takes longer to go to rank 6 than it does to go from ranks 1-5, so there’s no huge rush on that front.  It goes “unlock base skill, slot, raise to rank 5, morph, drop from slot, pick another skill”.

I like the concept of my tank, I do.  The implementation I’m a little iffy on.  I seem to keep coming back to this point.  I enjoy the exploration aspect and the lore but am having a lot of trouble enjoying the actual mechanics of the game.  The meta just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

I clearly remember Age of Conan and Tortage.  This opening zone, from 1-20 or so, was full of voice acting, quality build and was an amazing experience.  Once you left Tortage though, the game turned to a separate beast.  No voice acting at all, huge balance issues, bugs everywhere and next to impossible to progress without future balance changes.

ESO is an interesting beast in that the quality of the content remains solid so far but the bugs are getting absolutely ridiculous.

As a Templar, the above bug happens every 10 minutes or so.  My weapon gets replaced with a spear graphic, from one of my attacks.  It sticks around for 2 minutes or so, prevents me from sprinting, looting or interacting.  /reloadui has been used more often than some of my skills.  Some quest markers won’t show – /reloadui.  Stuck in a wall, /reloadui.  It’s buggy to a point where I would quit out of frustration but the rest of the game has such good stuff I keep on trucking.

Don’t get me wrong now, the content that’s behind these bugs is fun, if more sparse.  If the first zone could be considered 100% full, then the next one is about 60% full.

When I tried to finish off the first zone, and it’s dungeon, I hit a “known” bug.  This is one where the first part of the quest has 3 types of failures – either the object doesn’t show, the scene doesn’t trigger or a party member can’t progress.  Our group hit all of those bugs, multiple times.  After all that, we decided to take a trip in the dungeon and everything was ok but the last boss, who requires the quest I guess since he never spawned.

I’ve run dungeons hundreds of times.  ESO uses a trinity with wonky mechanics.  Taunt works fine, I guess but the concept of threat doesn’t.  It’s kind of like GW2 I guess.  Bosses themselves are either bugged or badly balanced.  One boss, a lizard-type, has an instant charge on a random player with no animation or warning.  This charge takes them to 10% life, then applies a DoT over 3 seconds that kills them unless you hit the enemy.  Think about that a second.  Without warning, an enemy will drop on a party member and kill them in 3 seconds unless you can find them and hit them.  In a game where you aim with the mouse, not TAB.

The third issue I have is crafting materials.  I craft as a Blacksmith and an Enchanter.  My bank has nothing but crafting materials and it’s full.  My bags are full of material.  I spend way too much time mailing stuff to mules.  Way too much.

I’m going to honest.  MMOs need a few months of beta testing simply to polish and bug test.  ESO doesn’t really appear to have done much of that.  An end-game bug that prevents people from seeing any end-game content?  How is that even possible?  The content is superb and I am enjoying myself.  But wow, there are some real headscratchers in here.