[Megathread] Elder Scrolls Online

[Deleted]

one way to make tanking more fun is the way someone said before, with unit collision, you actually have to your self infront of the bosses attacks to block it from hitting your healers, might not be perfect but probably more fun than the click to taunt system. i dont think ESO will have the same problems of loads and dps and not many healers/tanks, but we will see.

[Deleted]

TERA has that, GW2 as well till some degree (positioning being important in the 2D or 3D field), as does till some degree D3 (I had my cousin boost me in secret pony level inferno; he was tanking).

[ddsad2212]

While I don't mind the "holy trinity" I really hope if that is the route they go they will not have aggro, but instead some of the ideas mentioned above

[Zeek Daniels]

While I don't mind the "holy trinity" I really hope if that is the route they go they will not have aggro, but instead some of the ideas mentioned above

Judging by their videos so far there is a whole lot of standing still and not alot of movement.

[Northy]

Aren't tanks the reason why mobs HAVE to be braindead? I completely dislike this game concept.

The tank concept just completely eliminates artificial intelligence in games. I don't know why this is considered good. Mobs are just mind controlled by the aggro mechanic and can't make any other decisions. This is especially pathetic when it comes to world bosses, primal evils, that have enslaved complete civilizations and claim world domination... but aren't smart enough to NOT touch the tank and instead go for the more squishy characters, a strategy which undeniably would yield better results.

Without further going into detail, the tank concept just kills AI, and I don't think that this is good or challenging or interesting in any way.

I enjoy it more than the GW2 zergfest is all. Sometimes I just wanna play a class designed to absorb damage and protect others, or heaven forbid actually cast heals on players. It's enjoyable.

[Deleted]

Why do I have the feeling this game is going to be a lot like GW2?
Endgame focus on pvp. No trinity. No raids but just dungeons.
Going to be a great leveling experience again and then..

I don't get why they focus on pvp this much, it's based on a offline game without pvp.
Crossfaction guilds really? Why pvp if there is no hate between the factions.
Big giant pvp battles are great until it becomes a zergfest with just lots of aoe spells going on.

And then there's the interface with an 6button actionbar, minimap etc.
That brings me to the skill cap of 6 buttons/combinations, how far can you go with 6 spells?

How can they ever make the world interactive?
Player A murders and steals everything in a village, player B arrives and has to wait for respawns?

Worried.

[Okacz]

I enjoy it more than the GW2 zergfest is all. Sometimes I just wanna play a class designed to absorb damage and protect others, or heaven forbid actually cast heals on players. It's enjoyable.

I hope ESO will find a "perfect spot" here. Tank/Healer/DPS system is very outdated, even WoW starts realising that. But GW2 clusterfuck isn't very funny at all - especially in those poorly designed dungeons.

I think there should be a kind of "role" of tanking, but to way lesser degree. Tanks shouldn't take all monster damage and attention, it's pretty stupid. Instead, they should be trying to get AS MUCH of monster attention as they can, and negate AS MUCH damage the group takes. Active tank with Intervene, not passive tank with Shield Wall.

I would love the system that has no roles, but has players. And each player, with their slowly built character, can find his way to perform a specific role in a specific encounter. You made a Ranger character with a lick of Illusion magic? Then you mostly DPS, but also should do your best to minimalise damage and help the player who chose to "tank". The "tank" could be the Warrior, who uses 2 handed axe, but has as well a lick in alchemy - thus he can successfully draw attention with his strong melee attacks, and boosting his endurance and groups abilities with his potions. Who heals then? Well, maybe a kind of cleric - when he stops slashing his opponent with 1 handed swords.

Thats pretty much how it should look like in Elder Scrolls game. This franchise allowed you to make your own character, not choose one premade. Utilizing "holy trinity" here would be a kind of betrayal to the fans of the series.

[Zeek Daniels]

Why do I have the feeling this game is going to be a lot like GW2?
Endgame focus on pvp. No trinity. No raids but just dungeons.
Going to be a great leveling experience again and then..

I don't get why they focus on pvp this much, it's based on a offline game without pvp.
Crossfaction guilds really? Why pvp if there is no hate between the factions.
Big giant pvp battles are great until it becomes a zergfest with just lots of aoe spells going on.

And then there's the interface with an 6button actionbar, minimap etc.
That brings me to the skill cap of 6 buttons/combinations, how far can you go with 6 spells?

How can they ever make the world interactive?
Player A murders and steals everything in a village, player B arrives and has to wait for respawns?

Worried.

Except that Guild Wars 2's endgame is not pvp focused. Endgame is what ever you want it to be. For WoW players its gear grind, Blizz lets you do this grind in a raid atmosphere but that grind could have been done without raids but instead dungeon tiers and you would still get the same feel for that endgame.

GW2 takes the approach of let endgame be what every you the player want it to be. Either grinding dungeons for sets, grinding materials for legendarys or grinding fractals for gear. Or maybe your endgame is doing the monthly events, where every month there is a new set of activities to complete that so far have always been different. In WoW your doing the same raids day in day out for months before it changes. Some ppl might like playing for a week here or their each month just to do each monthly event and that is their "endgame".

From what it sounds like so far in TESO is that they dont have a gear progression system in place but more of a lateral character expansion where your individual character can continue to grow laterally instead of vertically. In GW2 the vertical progression stops pretty quickly at level 80. And you cant laterally modify your character and what it does at 80 unless you havent gotten all your utility and elite skills. Once you have those your character cant change outside of given parameters (trait points, gear specialization, weapon combo).

Judging from how they have said once you get to max level you will have only grown your character a third of the way. It sounds like maybe your primary stats (Health, Stam, Magicka) will not grow or it would be vertical progression, but the number of abilitys you can still learn or the number of weapons/armor you can acquire is more than what you get leveling to max. So you will then be able to grow laterally in terms of your versatility to situations you come across.

You may level as a tanky sort of character but after max you start picking up skills that are less tanky but more support and when you tank now you can sacrifice some tanky ability's for some support ability's and become a support tank.

Now only time will tell if "endgame" focused players will like that system. I personally think ppl care more about how powerful their character is then the actual game itself. TESO is supposed to have raids, but is raiding enough of an "endgame" to satisfy this "endgame" crowd? Or does their have to be a power increase with each new raid associated with gear for the "endgame" crowd to be satisfied.

If the Raids dont keep increasing in power will players still do them?

[Deleted]

I enjoy it more than the GW2 zergfest is all. Sometimes I just wanna play a class designed to absorb damage and protect others, or heaven forbid actually cast heals on players. It's enjoyable.

Zerg where. You can zerg DE and world boss, tho they will scale, the scale gets off when you get with too many because of revive/corpserun. Now that the hype has gone there's less zerg. In instances, you can zerg story mode till some degree, but if everyone sucks one after another you wipe. I'm not sure this works in normal mode, as far as I understood you have to follow the tactics in normal mode. In GW2, you can perfectly play a healer or support, but you'll also have to do damage, since there is no pure role of healer or support. There's no tank due to random aggro.

How exactly would you make a middle ground, I suppose you could have

Base = damage

A) Pure damage, does more tanking, due to doing more damage.
B) Support, does less damage, therefore less tanking.
C) Healing, does less damage, therefore less tanking.

Then you have classes which are more melee based (thief, warrior, guardian) and classes which are more ranged based (elementalist, mesmer) but still allow overlap. Which pretty much pinpoints one problem WoW has: 4 of the pures only have 1 specific DPS range role: mage (only ranged), warlock (idem), hunter (idem), rogue (no ranged).

Any other suggestions how to get the best of both worlds?

EDIT: I completely neglected the end-game component in my post but you summed it up well Zeek.

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

In my opinion holy trinity is a must, i believe it helps alot designing end game content. Aggro idd affect mobs AI, question is how much you care about it? i don't... certainly can be fights where aggro can be absent, but this can't be the majority... no aggro mechanic may be nice, idd... but when? in a raid environment? no way... in a dungeon consisted to up to 3-4 ppl...

Full aggro absence create issues... like (imo) not enjoyable encounters... someone said that end game content can be a dungeon, and feel equally epic with a game that its end game content is a large scale raid... allow me to disagree, not even close.

And guys sry to say, but in order to satisfy the more casual crowd, we altered the meaning of Mmo games... where is the fun when i only play with my 3-4 buddies to complete an instance... Massive is the key word if you ask me... there should be a game that will bring that back...

[Deleted]

Full aggro absence create issues...

Which?

like (imo) not enjoyable encounters...

Why?

And guys sry to say, but in order to satisfy the more casual crowd, we altered the meaning of Mmo games... where is the fun when i only play with my 3-4 buddies to complete an instance... Massive is the key word if you ask me... there should be a game that will bring that back...

I frankly prefered playing challenge mode with 4 friends over anything 25m or even 10m. I don't want to deprive people from big content, but small content also has its place. The problem is when players are forced to do one over another, like with the whole 10 vs 25 debate. LFR is just the zerg people don't like from GW2 (which does exist in big numbers only) so I wonder how you'll be able to balanace massive PvE battle without it feeling zerg.

Also remember the tanking can be classic style (like WoW and SWTOR etc) or active style (like ARPG like D3, GW2, TERA) where the tank has to literally dodge. I find this far more fun, because its more realistic and requires constant positioning evaluation. It makes the battles more rich and realistic. One exception, like I said, is some kind of random aggro a human does while the enemy he's on is almost dead. That is unrealistic.

[Nerevar]

And guys sry to say, but in order to satisfy the more casual crowd, we altered the meaning of Mmo games... where is the fun when i only play with my 3-4 buddies to complete an instance... Massive is the key word if you ask me... there should be a game that will bring that back...

Massive? I remember 40 man raids in WoW, and that was a MAJOR pain in the ass. There was nothing fun about it. 3-4 is not okay too, I guess. But overdoing it is not good as well.

[Zeek Daniels]

I dont feel agro is a must for endgame content as it makes some fights pretty boring from certain perspectives. Its the mechanics of the fight that make a good encounter or at least an interesting one. Having fights with enviornmental objects is always good imo because as a dps pressing the same buttons over and over again isnt really fun, but being a savior for the entire raid does make you feel a bit more needed. Mags layer with the cubes or the sound fight against the blind dragon in the Blackwing raid in cata. Those were fun fights for me because i was the one clicking the objects which was a hell of alot more fun than standing in a group trying do dodge circles, i got to be by myself and support myself.

Im really waiting to see what they do with this game once beta rolls around. Then we can see if a hard trinity or a soft trinity is in place and if it works with their encounter design.

[Valeron]

If they absolute have to put in a trinity concept then I really hope they don't have artificial skills like taunt.

If you have to tank, then make them tank by positioning, using block skills, use cc skills. Anything but a one button taunt monkey.

[Nirawen]

Massive? I remember 40 man raids in WoW, and that was a MAJOR pain in the ass. There was nothing fun about it. 3-4 is not okay too, I guess. But overdoing it is not good as well.

Main reason 40man raids became an issue was the decrease in content. In vanilla we usually had too many people interested but due to there being multiple tiers of raids that were actually relevant gear wise it meant you could more than a raids worth of people in a guild and still have everyone get a raid spot each week, even if it was just ZG/AQ20.

[Deleted]

If they absolute have to put in a trinity concept then I really hope they don't have artificial skills like taunt.

If you have to tank, then make them tank by positioning, using block skills, use cc skills. Anything but a one button taunt monkey.

Absolutely. The problem with the Holy Trinity is, it's useful, effective, but more importantly extremely predictable.

You play a game like WoW to roll along the conveyor belt to end game then conveyor belt to gear. It's NOT a Bash because I LOVE that system for WoW, heck it's also one of the reasons my WoW sub still runs after so many years. I mean, the most unpredictable thing about the entire game is the RNG when it comes to loot, and even that people are shouting to remove..

WoW is your old, fuzzy slippers. They're comfortable, you know everything about them, they fit you like a glove and you wear them because they're nice. But we don't need two pairs of fluffy, fuzzy slippers, do we? No.

So let TES be that wild pair of sneakers and keep WoW as your slippers. Don't make TES a pair of Slippers with high heels as some malfunctioning hybrid.

And also;

I saw a post a while back which said "The Holy Trinity allows more complex encounters" - That's incorrect. It FORCES more complex encounters because without them it's just hack'n'slash. Developers spend hours upon hours trying to come up with ways to make the trinity even remotely more complex by forcing people not to stand in things, not to do one or two things just to desperately break the monotony.

[Flaks]

Massive? I remember 40 man raids in WoW, and that was a MAJOR pain in the ass. There was nothing fun about it. 3-4 is not okay too, I guess. But overdoing it is not good as well.

Massive isn't 40 man raids. Massive is opening of AQ gates. Massive is IQD dailies. Massive is launch night of a WoW expansion.

If they do it right, Cyrodiil could be truly massive.

[Marksman12]

I hope ESO will find a "perfect spot" here. Tank/Healer/DPS system is very outdated, even WoW starts realising that. But GW2 clusterfuck isn't very funny at all - especially in those poorly designed dungeons.

I think there should be a kind of "role" of tanking, but to way lesser degree. Tanks shouldn't take all monster damage and attention, it's pretty stupid. Instead, they should be trying to get AS MUCH of monster attention as they can, and negate AS MUCH damage the group takes. Active tank with Intervene, not passive tank with Shield Wall.

I would love the system that has no roles, but has players. And each player, with their slowly built character, can find his way to perform a specific role in a specific encounter. You made a Ranger character with a lick of Illusion magic? Then you mostly DPS, but also should do your best to minimalise damage and help the player who chose to "tank". The "tank" could be the Warrior, who uses 2 handed axe, but has as well a lick in alchemy - thus he can successfully draw attention with his strong melee attacks, and boosting his endurance and groups abilities with his potions. Who heals then? Well, maybe a kind of cleric - when he stops slashing his opponent with 1 handed swords.

Thats pretty much how it should look like in Elder Scrolls game. This franchise allowed you to make your own character, not choose one premade. Utilizing "holy trinity" here would be a kind of betrayal to the fans of the series.

I really don't understand why people say Tank/Heal/Dps is outdated.... How is WoW starting to "realize" that? They have no future intentions to wipe out the trinity and make it a gw2 type system. Why is tank/dps/heal outdated? What is so bad about it? It adds diversity to the game and class uniqueness; what is going to be so special about YOUR character when everyone can do the same exact thing? Please explain this to me.

It goes back to that old saying, why fix what isn't broken?

[ddsad2212]

Judging by their videos so far there is a whole lot of standing still and not alot of movement.

Well that is dampening my excitement a fair bit I must say. But hey we will see when the beta comes out

[DoctorDoomkin]

Here's what I'm hoping they'll do, at least gameplay mechanic wise:

Have it set up that tanks, healers, and dps is not required, but can be helpful should they choose to go that route. At the same time, I don't want them to be "dumb" where all they'll do is go after the tank when the healer(s) is the reason they're not getting anything done.

I don't want them to be pulled traditionally. In past Elder Scrolls, if enemies see you, they attacked at the spot. Making them stand around and not attacking a hostile party(you) would break the emersion to me. This was also a problem I had when I played Star Wars: TOR on my bounty hunter: Walked into a hanger, see a bunch of enemies posed to fire a barrage of lasers at me, and they do nothing as if they have terrible eyesight...Lame.

I'd like to not have a completely restricted class like WoW had. Ex: If I want to be a sword duel-wielding cloth guy, I should. At the same time, each set up should have pros and cons, like wearing lighter armor allows me to be a bit more mobile while offering less protection. If I want to be a heavy armored mage, let me. At the same time, balance the options I could use so we don't run into overpowered combinations that the games tend to have.

To me, a WoW clone can't be the answer, or it will be something I'll just eventually pass on. It should be Elder Scrolls from cover to end-game content, balanced around the idea of multiplayer.