So this weekend marks another Elder Scrolls online beta, and with the NDA lifted I think it’s time to write a bit of a review. Now go into this knowing that this is a beta, an unfinished product, and anything I talk about might change. And as always the views and opinions expressed are solely mine. So with that in mind here we go.
The Good:
This is an Elder Scrolls game. If you played Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, you can pick this game up for the most part. The game plays incredibly similar to previous installments of the series with a few noticeable differences. As with all MMOs you gain abilities, and those abilities get put in a quick bar. Buttons 1-5 are your ability bar, allowing you to slot a decent combination of class, weapon, and racial abilities.
There are however more similarities than differences, in basic gameplay. Quite early on, with no tutorial on resource collecting (if there was one I never noticed it) I found myself mining Iron Ore, simply because I found a rock that looked very familiar to some I saw in Skyrim, if just smaller, and moved to use it. You automatically have a pickaxe and wood axe as well, and it doesn’t weigh you down.
Crafting is similar to Skyrim too, from enchanting to blacksmith, but there are some differences, mostly with converting raw material to usable materials, like ore to ingots, and maple to sanded maple. The tutorial for this isn’t very thorough but it also wasn’t hard to figure out. But what might be simple for me, might be hard for a casual player. It’s something that should probably be looked at either way.
Combat is very Skyrim esq with the addition of being able to block while Dual Wielding. Enemies also telegraph their big attacks with cones on the ground, which actually sucks if you play in first person like I do.
The Bad:
It’s an Elder Scrolls game. Though yes, enemies respawn they are populated like a single player game, you’ll see about as many enemies outside of a town as you might in Skyrim, or Oblivion. This can be a problem if you’re in a highly populated area and need to kill x amount of Covenant soldiers or spectral warriors. There is very, very little instancing in this game, and where there is it’s where you don’t want it to be.
Missions where you can solo it you’ll find 2 or three or upwards of a dozen other people wandering about the same cave, killing the enemies you need. And while for the most part objectives persist, like if there’s a book you need to read, or a block of cheese you need to steal it’ll stay there. But enemies will die, and unless you manage to get a few good hits in on them before they do you don’t get credit, and certain objectives, like the Spectral Slaves in one of the Ebon Heart missions, will vanish without giving you credit at all, and some are just plain bugged.
ESO Quest Journal
The Ugly:
It’s an Elder Scrolls game. Leveling happens like an Elder Scrolls game, you don’t get experience from fighting enemies but from completing quests. This is just like Skyrim or Oblivion where you could get experience from swinging your sword, jumping around, casting spells but overall I saw little to no experience gain from fighting enemies.
However unlike Skyrim the enemies don’t scale, and while this is to be expected, it poses a problem. At the very start you level rather evenly with the difficulty of missions but around level 8 you start getting missions that are level 10 to 12. You also get missions that are not scaled properly to the level they’re listed. One mission in particular, The Death of Balreth.
This mission is an Ebonheart mission that requires you to fight a boss named Balreth. Balreth is a giant flaming bone golem. The mission is listed as level 8, and so far as I can tell it’s solo only, the problem is, that even with the assistance of an NPC and a talisman that stuns the boss, he’s able to kill you in two or three hits, on top of spawning Scamp adds that seem to have glitchy hitboxes. And when you finally do start doing damage to him he starts to ignore you, walks over into lava where you can’t touch him, and heals himself.
This presents one of my biggest issues with MMOs, and one I was very vocal about with Funcom’s The Secret World, an MMO with Single Player instances. If I want to team up with five friends and do something, anything, in an MMO I should be able to. If I wanted to play an Elder Scrolls game by myself I’d play Skyrim.
Mission progression and leveling seems highly convoluted and varied, with a mission going from being level 8 to level 10, and with that level 10 mission containing enemies that can lay waste to you in moments. This I think is something that really needs to be fixed before the game goes live because players are going to feel like they’re hitting a wall, both a level wall and a ‘I must pay for an MMO I have to play by myself’ wall.
And that’s probably not going to make people stick around.
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No thoughts about the post
Newcc66
This game is a massive pile of crap
March 5, 2014 at 10:18 pm
Solarmon
You have some points. I participated in the last three betas and I can see the huge amount of work which is put into the game. However, I feel that the concept is flawed. The mix of ESO solo games and MMO mechanics is not very appealing.
Personally, I liked a more “realistic” fantasy game experience. Skills which are not too disconnected from the weapon style you chose. Spells which you actually learn from Spellbooks. Loot from enemies actually corresponds to what they are wearing and using (e.g. the knowledge that that health potion they just quaffed could have been your loot if you would have interrupted him in time…). Scabbards. Arrows, aiming, and the amazing fact that you could go look and find each arrow which missed. I hated ESO inventories, and I hate inventory stacking and the magical gold credit card. I liked in Diablo 1 that had to have gold piled in your backpack.
All these elements are not there. Instead we have some “class” powers which are more like eastern games superpowers, and the classes feel totally disconneced from the story and the world setting. I was appalled when my dragonknight suddenly grew a hump of burning spikes on his back; this is the animation for an armor buff ability. This just does not fit into the world without the proper lore and background; this is the total antithesis to the famous dragon shouts in Skyrim. I would not mind so much if there was a questline which would transform you into some kind of half dragon. But a standard low level character having things like this just feels weird and out of place.
The story was never particularil good, but TESO hits a new low with all the clichèes in the wrong place, trying to make your character feel unique and not at the same time.
All in all, certainly a good enjoyable game, but certainly also not a “must-have”.
March 6, 2014 at 9:58 am