[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[Tabbycat]

I don't even know why anyone is discussing FFA at all when the server clusters idea completely solves any "I want PvP/I don't want PvP" issues. Waste of breath.

It's another variant of the faction lock theme. People like beating a dead horse.

[Delaios]

Hope smithing will be as good as the one in Skyrim.
10min worth of effort for divinity status.

WTB Iron Bars. WTS Iron Daggers, cheap!

[Drakhar]

My God those developers are assholes. I mean, the game may be good, may be bad - but even before beta all I hear about is them stripping Elder Scrolls franchise from it's most memorable parts. First Person Perspective? POOF. Whole, immerse world? POOF. Crime System? POOF.

I'm starting to get scared there.

Yeah it seems like they've been on a mission to piss off TES fans for a while now. Every time I start to think things are looking up a bit, or feel like I'm not cutting them enough slack... they do this kind of stuff.

2 out of three of those things would never work in an MMO anyway. Can zoom in all the way and get first person there, but what are you really missing with first person in a raid? It'd screw you up alot, especially if you have to dodge obvious, not stand in fire, etc. And why would we need a crime system? Leave those for the single player games, which I believe are still being made, just think of this as one of those spin-off games like handheld systems usually get, don't take it too seriously, it's not changing the entire series of The Elder Scrolls.

What they should do is force you to play first person like EQ did. Really, the feel of a game is completely different when you have a first person perspective. I don't understand why every MMORPG is designed for a 3rd person view only. If they actually put any thought or effort into the game design, they could make all 3 of those things work just fine. A crime system in particular could set the game apart from the shitty WoW clonefest that makes up the MMO market.

[Nerevar]

They're not aiming to piss off the TES fans, they're aiming to bring more attention from other people as well. An MMO will not survive on its title fanbase alone. I think their first priority is to please the MMO crowd, not the TES crowd. Once again, you are expecting a totally full TES game with cooperative - that is NOT what they are making.

Also, they did not remove first-person.

[fizzbob]

1) we've been told that the RPG map scale will translate directly to the MMO. that means at launch, TESO will be 1.5-2x larger than wow is, and depending on the 2 largest zones in TES and how much of them are playable, it could end up being 3-4x. it will be one of the top 3 largest game maps ever and probably the largest ever. this world is going to be HUGE. people don't realize how big each zone is. skyrim is about the same size as northrend. it will be a seamless zone with only instanced areas requiring loading screens. it will be a LOT to load when you zone in. it is 1/3 of a faction's area though and there are larger zones. loading screens are not only 100% necessary because of the size of these zones, they're beneficial to everyone. your computer isn't gonna run TESO on ultra like it runs wow on ULTRA. wow is for low end computers, it's how they keep those subs up. people who can't play rift, swtor, etc don't have a better option than wow until they spend real money on computer upgrades. blizzard chose subs over better graphics in 2002

2) classic TES combat style CAN NOT WORK IN AN MMO. it has to be modified to keep melee from being 100% more effective than every ranged class. until it's as easy to hit a large target with no delay (melee) as it is a smaller target with 1-3 second delay (ranged) target locking will be mandatory. the ONLY other alternative that has been attempted is increasing the power of projectiles to make up for the lower hit chance, and that means ranged are still behind the curve and when you get 1 shot, it's not fun or skill based. you can't avoid some type of target locking system if you want balance.

3) 1st person view isn't viable at a high level in an MMO in pvp or pve. it forces you into something that is universally bad, tunnel vision. until peripheral vision and 360 degree sound is standard, 3rd person will be all that is viable. you can't simulate those things without matching it to your actual FOV and wrap around monitors just aren't happening right now

4) i'm sick of seeing "the beta trailer is generic". if you know anything about TES, you saw a lot of things that were VERY specific to the lore. the way the chain lightning looked. the dwemer ranger armor on the breton. the races themselves, the war paint, the magelight spell, the architecture in the distance should be instantly recognizable. while you don't have to like it, you can't be ignorant about TES and say that nothing reminds of you TES. the problem is that you don't know anything about TES if it doesn't remind you of the franchise

i've not seen ONE PERSON who knew what they were talking about put down what we know about the game so far. they are making an actual effort to keep as much of the feel of TES while making it a viable MMO. a lot simply will not EVER work in an MMO and it has to be dropped and replaced with what will. a static world with 1 person in it can't be like an MMO world. no tech will ever change that. swtor's instancing was too heavy, vanilla wow's was too little. a mix between the two will make it feel like an MMORPG and not one or the other.

i hope it's not like wow. i don't want to play wow. i hope it's not as convenient and if it doesn't appeal to 10 million people, it means they did a LOT of things right. i hope it's more rift than wow because rift has a bright future with the 1-1.5 million subs. when an MMO appeals to the masses, it stops being anything more than the next maplestory. the masses aren't gamers and don't like challenge. dear god i hope it doesn't appeal to them

[Throren]

That was not a quote from the developer, it was just a poor choice of words from the person who wrote that article. From one of the threads on official bethsoft forums:

"They didn't drop it. It was simply the author making an assumption, that things change from the single player games to the MMO. Sounds like he was using VERY old info. Also if you notice you know its the authors own words because Firor words are in quotes.

That article needs to be retracted and edited asap, spreading false info like that is very irresponsible." (c)

No need to spread the panic on a false account.

^This 100%

Seriously people, read

[fizzbob]

^This 100%

Seriously people, read

the problem is that people who don't want to like it haven't read a thing, they don't want to know fact from fiction they want to dislike it. a LOT of the worst haters are TES fans too. there is this dipshit-driven idea that since zenimax (who writes bugthesda's paychecks) created another studio SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS MMO they'll decide to shut down bugthesda and TES in the future since it's only a multimillion dollar franchise

like i've said though, there is no logic behind the hate so far. TES fans should be thrilled the universe is being expanded. this isn't blizzard saying they're done with RTS and making an MMORPG, this is a large company with many studios creating a new studio for an MMO while everything else goes on as planned.

TESO was in the works before skyrim was

[Drakhar]

snip

1) Size wise, this is pure speculation and/or wishful thinking. Not to mention they've said that Skyrim in ESO will not be the same scale as in the single player Skyrim (read: smaller). Loading screens are the easy solution, plain and simple. In WoW you do not load an entire continent at once, which most people seem to believe. Instead, it loads nearby areas in the background, so this is purely a technological thing, which most games nowadays avoid.

2) Yes it can. This is again simply taking the easy way out. Thinking outside the box is teh hard, for forumgoers and game designers alike, I know.

3) EQ says hi.

there is this dipshit-driven idea that since zenimax (who writes bugthesda's paychecks) created another studio SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS MMO they'll decide to shut down bugthesda and TES in the future since it's only a multimillion dollar franchise

Yeah I don't think I've read a single comment suggesting that in the last 80 or so pages.

[Deleted]

What they should do is force you to play first person like EQ did. Really, the feel of a game is completely different when you have a first person perspective. I don't understand why every MMORPG is designed for a 3rd person view only. If they actually put any thought or effort into the game design, they could make all 3 of those things work just fine. A crime system in particular could set the game apart from the shitty WoW clonefest that makes up the MMO market.

If you play 3rd person and zoom out you have a better field of view both before you in distance as well as behind you. The higher your monitor resolution, the better the zooming out still works. I remember Raggy HC with those invisible wall bugs, RL saying I should stand here or there while that stupid wall behind me forced me to zoom in a lot. 1st person is more realistic and dare I say immersive but unfortunately, 1st person doesn't work well together with ARPG's skill shots (meaning 3rd player, if an option, makes them easier to deal with)

As for WoW, an entire continent is loaded when entering it and this runs possibly on a separate server (especially on big servers this used to be the case at least). The content is loaded from SSD/HDD into RAM, but not yet drawn by the video card, due to fog of war. Better video cards allow less fog of war (with more detail), so more content is rendered. Less fog of war is an advantage is world PvP as well as big PvP zones but in something like arena it doesn't matter.

[Zeek Daniels]

I do know one thing. Anyone that tries to play first person in PvP will be easy pickings.

[Drakhar]

If you play 3rd person and zoom out you have a better field of view both before you in distance as well as behind you.

Clearly third person provides better FOV, that's why I want a MMO designed around first person, because you'll always be putting yourself at a disadvantage by being in first person when both options are available. I understand that this game was designed with third person in mind from the beginning, which is why this whole discussion isn't all that high on my priority list for ESO specifically, just something I'd like to see and only slightly related. As you suggested, it's a whole new level of immersion from first person.

I do know one thing. Anyone that tries to play first person in PvP will be easy pickings.

Yep it'll be up there with keyboard turning and clicking.

[fizzbob]

1) Size wise, this is pure speculation and/or wishful thinking. Not to mention they've said that Skyrim in ESO will not be the same scale as in the single player Skyrim (read: smaller). Loading screens are the easy solution, plain and simple. In WoW you do not load an entire continent at once, which most people seem to believe. Instead, it loads nearby areas in the background, so this is purely a technological thing, which most games nowadays avoid.

2) Yes it can. This is again simply taking the easy way out. Thinking outside the box is teh hard, for forumgoers and game designers alike, I know.

3) EQ says hi.

1) "Some of the provinces may not be completely available, or may appear in reduced size. Possible expansions packs may fill out missing sectors at later times."
devs have specifically said they aren't downscaling or reducing the size of zones in relation to others. size is often measured in the time it takes to run across the map, but there hasn't been a standard movement speed so that's not always 100% accurate. skyrim and oblivion have been used as examples for what to expect for scale. morrowind was a whole lot of nothing and actually had less in more space than oblivion and skyrim has. assuming nothing has changed and oblivion and skyrim are good keys for what we're gonna get, tamriel is going to dwarf azeroth.

in wow you DO LOAD THE CONTINENT, you do not load the textures until a certain variable has been reached. there aren't 5,000,000 gamers out there who can play current MMOs on the highest settings. even blizzard said that the low end market is more valuable than the high end market and that influenced wow more than anything else, they just created an art style that worked, but it was NOT their original plan. they went for a more realistic look that simply didn't test well internally. they said the original style/textures for wow would have put a hard ceiling on subs due to the hardware needed to run it at the time. it's why our "new and improved cata water" is still pathetic by computer graphics standards

2) 100% wrong on this. it will NEVER be something that can be balanced. if you could come up with even an idea, much less a potential solution, you would. it's been attempted. it's failed. until the laws of physics change, target locking is necessary for balance in pvp. in pve you can compensate by making targets VERY stationary but even then, lag still affects ranged more than melee. this will simply NEVER work. it will be like the ranged folks are playing an FPS while everyone else is easy-moding it with a melee toon that simply has to face what he's aiming at. in single player games, this is fine, you can predict the pathing of the NPC and there is no lag since it's offline.

in an mmo this can't be pulled off and never will.

3) lol, seriously? EQ raid mechanics make LFR look like heroic content. there was no need for situational awareness, positional awareness was barely needed and it was simply about stats. more stats = you killed stuff. a game like EQ or even vanilla wow today would bomb before beta was over. doing anything like EQ nowadays would be taking a step back about a decade. go do heroic mop raids or pvp even in the bot-filled bgs in 1st person. you will not be effective. the reason 100% of all high level content is done in 3rd person in wow is because it's necessary to see what is going on to react to it

in 1st person you can't. hell in skyrim you'll be in 1st person taking damage from an unseen archer from the side/back and not realize it.
you are gimping yourself in a competitive environment by letting everyone know you are seeing what your character is pointed at. hell it's like giving stealth to everyone

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 11:20 AM ----------

I do know one thing. Anyone that tries to play first person in PvP will be easy pickings.

of course. games have too much going on these days to play 1st person with anything but AI-driven NPCs around you

[Edge-]

The "No first person" thing seems to be referring to no first person like you see in Skyrim/Oblivion and FPS games where you can see your weapons (or glowing hands). Still appears you can use first person, but just as you see it in MMO's with a simple first person view without seeing any of your characters movement.

[derpkitteh]

ok... i know the "dropped first person" isn't legit, but what about the dropped crime system? did they really do that? that would really fucking suck.

and another problem i have... it's gonna be stupid if we can join the dark brotherhood or some other underground faction, and we're still counted as part of our faction. it never made sense to me that i could be an imperial and a dark brotherhood member at the same time. or a thane in a city i'm being a criminal in. i say that, if we can join kinda bad/neutral parties, like the brotherhood, we need to be defected from our current faction.

[Drakhar]

1) "Some of the provinces may not be completely available, or may appear in reduced size. Possible expansions packs may fill out missing sectors at later times."
devs have specifically said they aren't downscaling or reducing the size of zones in relation to others. size is often measured in the time it takes to run across the map, but there hasn't been a standard movement speed so that's not always 100% accurate. skyrim and oblivion have been used as examples for what to expect for scale. morrowind was a whole lot of nothing and actually had less in more space than oblivion and skyrim has. assuming nothing has changed and oblivion and skyrim are good keys for what we're gonna get, tamriel is going to dwarf azeroth.

What part of PURE SPECULATION do you not understand. You don't have to write me an essay to try to prove your point, when there's no point to be proven. There's no discussion to be had, because we simply won't know until someone plays the game, and even then chances are it's based more on "feel" (i.e. it will change person to person) since it's an entirely different engine than was used in previous TES incarnations. There is an obsession with some definite scale for "world size" which is frankly idiotic. One simple example to illustrate this point, that I think most people can associate with: WoW's world is massive, but feels rather small due to the prevalence of high speed flying mounts.

in wow you DO LOAD THE CONTINENT, you do not load the textures until a certain variable has been reached

That's not the point, nor does it have anything to do with graphics fidelity. It's about building the technology a certain way. Blizzard did that with WoW to reduce the number of loading screens, and it was revolutionary at the time. Other MMOs have not even tried to resolve this in some new way. However, on a personal level I find this to be a rather insignificant issue.

2)100% wrong on this.

We're going to have to agree to disagree then, and I'm glad that people like you:

in an mmo this can't be pulled off and never will.

aren't designing the games I play, running businesses, being involved in any kind of research, or developing new technologies.

3) lol, seriously? EQ raid mechanics make LFR look like heroic content. there was no need for situational awareness, positional awareness was barely needed and it was simply about stats.

The level of ignorance in this statement is astounding, the difficulty of raiding in EQ makes Vanilla WoW look like fucking child's play. In fact, that was essentially the prime goal of WoW, to casualize and broaden the interest in a very hardcore and niche genre. It boggles the mind how someone with no knowledge and no experience with something can make such a broad and dismissive claim to try to prove a [wrong] point.

[fizzbob]

ok... i know the "dropped first person" isn't legit, but what about the dropped crime system? did they really do that? that would really fucking suck.

and another problem i have... it's gonna be stupid if we can join the dark brotherhood or some other underground faction, and we're still counted as part of our faction. it never made sense to me that i could be an imperial and a dark brotherhood member at the same time. or a thane in a city i'm being a criminal in. i say that, if we can join kinda bad/neutral parties, like the brotherhood, we need to be defected from our current faction.

i'd rather them drop it than have a watered down crime system, the one from the RPG will not work
what do you do when you have no gold and you're imprisoned for 3 days, play another toon? of course not. and they can't expedite the "sentence" since it's a perpetual world

and then what happens when folks figure out how to use it for griefing

they never even got it right in the RPGs, no way they're getting it right in the MMO

[Deleted]

WoW also has first person (you can zoom in completely) but I haven't found a use for it. Thing is, in first person you only see your gear in a mirror and the look of gear appears to be important in MMOs. In FPS, the only relevant gear is the weapon which is by default drawn. Furthermore in FPS, everything is a skillshot (there's no aimbot) and the skillshot is mostly aimed at an other person single target, with very little AoE.

As for skillshot not working for ranged in games, its one of the signatures of ARPG! There are many examples of it showing it works (TERA, GW2, D3), AND it makes sense because ranged have it easier when kiting. You don't have to make every ranged ability skillshot, just some. Melee also have it harder to flight if they want to bail. Take for example my Mesmer build. I got blink, I have mirror image, I have mass dispel (to remove movement speed decrease and other nasty debuff). This combo allows me to move through and zone (downscaled or too high level) because the combination simply allows me to run away from enemies. Blink also works while stunned. And those are only the utility slots.

[fizzbob]

What part of PURE SPECULATION do you not understand. You don't have to write me an essay to try to prove your point, when there's no point to be proven. There's no discussion to be had, because we simply won't know until someone plays the game, and even then chances are it's based more on "feel" (i.e. it will change person to person) since it's an entirely different engine than was used in previous TES incarnations. There is an obsession with some definite scale for "world size" which is frankly idiotic. One simple example to illustrate this point, that I think most people can associate with: WoW's world is massive, but feels rather small due to the prevalence of high speed flying mounts.



That's not the point, nor does it have anything to do with graphics fidelity. It's about building the technology a certain way. Blizzard did that with WoW to reduce the number of loading screens, and it was revolutionary at the time. Other MMOs have not even tried to resolve this in some new way. However, on a personal level I find this to be a rather insignificant issue.



We're going to have to agree to disagree then, and I'm glad that people like you:

aren't designing the games I play, running businesses, being involved in any kind of research, or developing new technologies.


The level of ignorance in this statement is astounding, the difficulty of raiding in EQ makes Vanilla WoW look like fucking child's play. In fact, that was essentially the prime goal of WoW, to casualize and broaden the interest in a very hardcore and niche genre. It boggles the mind how someone with no knowledge and no experience with something can make such a broad and dismissive claim to try to prove a [wrong] point.

the first fucking raid bosses in EQ are considered tank and spank. there were only a handful of bosses that had more than 3 mechanics
that game was ONLY about stats. either you played it and you refuse to look back a decade and say "what i did was easier than what i accept" which is just "we walked uphill to school in the snow both ways, kids today have it easy" syndrome or you really didn't play and you're one of those people who think playing eq/vanilla gives you nerd street cred

you wanna see how hard wow can be? turn your fucking DBM off. remove all these alerts that tell you that you should pay attention and for once, pay attention. raiding is harder than ever, but mods are better than ever at helping you avoid mechanics.

EQ was cake. vanilla wow was cake. both were pretty shitty games by today's standards. they looked like shit, were buggy, weren't deep at all and if you played both you agree

i love my memories of the time i spent with them and ultima, but no fucking way i want a shit game like that today. we need more depth, better graphics and more complicated fights

if you're not better at gaming today than you were 10 years ago, wtf is wrong with you?

you seem to want a game that is like you remember, yet that's 100% impossible since what you remember would bore you to tears. gtfo

[Deleted]

minecraft style combat? oh man...

[fizzbob]

WoW also has first person (you can zoom in completely) but I haven't found a use for it. Thing is, in first person you only see your gear in a mirror and the look of gear appears to be important in MMOs. In FPS, the only relevant gear is the weapon which is by default drawn. Furthermore in FPS, everything is a skillshot (there's no aimbot) and the skillshot is mostly aimed at an other person single target, with very little AoE.

As for skillshot not working for ranged in games, its one of the signatures of ARPG! There are many examples of it showing it works (TERA, GW2, D3), AND it makes sense because ranged have it easier when kiting. You don't have to make every ranged ability skillshot, just some. Melee also have it harder to flight if they want to bail. Take for example my Mesmer build. I got blink, I have mirror image, I have mass dispel (to remove movement speed decrease and other nasty debuff). This combo allows me to move through and zone (downscaled or too high level) because the combination simply allows me to run away from enemies. Blink also works while stunned. And those are only the utility slots.

there has never been a true 1st person in TES games either, only some alpha level mods that show your feet or the default view that shows your arms

maybe zenimax will keep doing their thing and ignore the majority, the majority don't know jack shit about gaming and they have wow. TES games without mods aren't really that great

---------- Post added 2013-01-31 at 12:04 PM ----------

minecraft style combat? oh man...

where'd you get that from, it's going to skyrim-style with an action bar and target locking