ESO turned free-to-play for those who bought the client at some point.
I've been playing it a bit and it's alright - I usually hate MMO's but there's a bit more action and less macro stuff in this one, plus a nice PVP-battleground with some PVE fluff in Cyrodiil - I loved Oblivion so it's nice to revisit the towns and stuff.
I am past PVE content and I'm getting into PVP, and I constantly get my arse handed to me. Does anyone have any tips? I somehow got stuck on a server with a lot of French people and I'm in a French PVP-guild, but they aren't that good at giving advice in English, so any pointers would be appreciated. I seem to die all the time. My spells do 1.800 damage, and I get hit by exactly the same spell for 10.000-16.000 damage, so clearly I am doing it wrong.
(06-04-2015, 08:48 PM)Pacific Wrote: So you say ESO went Free to play for those who have buyed the game ?
Cuz I have the Imperial Edition right here waiting
It's been free to play for a while now. It's just like GW2, all you have to buy is the box. If you already owned the game then it's free and you have some premium currency depending on how long you subbed.
can you do the enchanting trick? raise your enchantment as much as possible, then enchant gear that raises your enchantment skill. then don that gear and enchant gear to raise your enchantment skill. rinse and repeat here. then enchant armour and weapons to do unbelievable damage.
My preference is to enchant bows, and sneak around. slower, but you can clear a roomful of peeps taking no damage at all, all the while acting as a sniper
No tips, except ESO is crud, stick to what you do best Bethesda, fix skyrim or do a follow on
EDIT: I would really like to see them add co-op gameplay for skyrim, ie: Instead of having a follower you could invite in a friend that took the role of your follower, now that would be cool........or at least do a remake for xbox one/playstation 4 like they did with gta V
(06-06-2015, 08:56 PM)Coin Wrote: can you do the enchanting trick? raise your enchantment as much as possible, then enchant gear that raises your enchantment skill. then don that gear and enchant gear to raise your enchantment skill. rinse and repeat here. then enchant armour and weapons to do unbelievable damage.
No They are trying to have some balance - there's PVP and all that jazz so no room for "exploits". Although you can of course enchant, make potions, meals, beverages, armor and weapons and such.
(06-06-2015, 08:56 PM)Coin Wrote: My preference is to enchant bows, and sneak around. slower, but you can clear a roomful of peeps taking no damage at all, all the while acting as a sniper
Sneak mechanics in ESO are roughly the same, every class can sneak; vampires and khajiit are better at it, leather armor gives bonuses and so on; and it's a pivotal aspect of PVP. Not very realistic to have two armies of 50 heroes each side sneaking around and being invisible on the battlefield; but it's a nice niche where low level players can help the team by playing clever and high level players can get into a position to solo assassinate stuff deep behind enemy lines and get out alive. Of course, there are also skills and mechanics to counter sneaking. It adds some variety.
In general it's my impression that ESO has a lot more player-based mechanics than most MMO's. You can block and roll so timing matters (if you come up against a macro-type MMO player, you can just block his big damage macro and mitigate most of it, leaving him dry of resources and easy to kill), and there's a wide range of utilites (like sneak) that aren't directly put into stats for the player to see.
You have to carefully watch your resources and use the appropriate skills and abilities at the right time; rather than setup a large macro that take cooldown timers into account like in other MMO's. In ESO, you are actually sort of playing the game and not the user interface.
That also means even if you have a super op max level character, you can still be bad at the game and die all the time; and vice-versa. Stats and gear matters a little too much for my taste though; there are cookie-cutter builds in which everyone can have success if they can invest the time in getting the gear, levels and skills, but I reckon MMO's have to be that way due to the crowd they cater to. It has to be grindy and "rewarding".
There are some bugs and really heavy lag when you PVP in large battles, and it can be frustrating. A lot of horseback riding too when you die. And then getting killed by a lone ganker when you are on your horse on the way back to the fight you just got killed in. You have to level up your horse so it can go faster, otherwise you'll die from boredom getting from A to B if the gankers don't get you first. There's a lot of dying, so I'm sticking to an Altmer vampire Sorcerer that's excellent at sneaking and has a teleport skill so I can gtfo when I'm caught in a bad situation.
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All of the above refers to PVP mechanics and balance, in PVE it's impossible not to win. That's my major issue apart from the grind. More or less every character build you can come up with rocks in PVE, and you can waste mobs that are higher level than you with ease. Then you take your build to PVP and realize that it totally blows and all your theorycrafting was in vain. The PVE difficulty is way too easy; although towards the end-game there are more challenging dungeons you actually need 4 players to complete. Another thing is the group finder, which is terrible, plus the fact that everyone writes either French or German in group, even when they are capable of writing in English and know that there are non-german/french speaking folks in the group. Rude!
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I'd say it's definitely a game worth playing. Don't expect Skyrim or a regular TES game, it's something else than that. It is an MMO at heart, but you feel it the least when you are roaming the open Alliance War PVP-ground in Cyrodiil. When you get towards the end-game, you realize that it's going to be a long grind until you can compete with the better players, and that has sort of put me off for the moment.
Anyways, if you got the game come find me on Azura's Star, Aldmeri Dominion.
EDIT: ALSO the audio and music is absolutely top notch.
Heya, I was playing around with recording software yesterday afternoon and shot this 5 minute video of some quick PVP-action alongside random strangers, and thought I'd share it if anyone's interested in ESO.
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The Daggerfall Covenant (Bretons, Orcs, Redguards) has launched an attack on Castle Faregyl (north of Bravil, close to the Inn of Ill Omen, for those that played Oblivion), currently under control by my fascist Aldmeri Dominion (High Elves, Wood Elves, Khajiit). They've taken over a local farm and are sieging our castle from that position. Using our own ballistas and trebuchets we've scattered their forces from the safety of our walls, and then pushed the attack on the farm. The enemy is heavily fortified, so I try to flank their position, and a few other sneaky types got the same idea. That's where the video starts.
We kill a few unsuspecting players at the edge of the small conflict and then launch an inpromptu sneaky counter-attack on a nearby Daggerfall Covenant stronghold, taking out targets of opportunity along the way. In the end I get stomped by a Vampire's worst nightmare, a fire-wielding Dragonknight. Watching the replay I can see I strafed too far away from the minefield trap I laid out when I saw the guy so he didn't hit it, and when he pinned me I was panicking and spamming my attack when I thought I was spamming my teleport to get out safe and sound. I even had half my magicka left when I went out. Oh well, a lot of room for improvement there
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Anyways I hope you can see it's a fun game that rewards cooperation and provides a lot of instant team play. My character is low level (Veteran 4), where everyone else is maxed out (as seen by the level '14' next to their name when the reticle hovers over them) and using super epic quality crafted gear and potions. I just wanted to show that you can still be helpful to your alliance and have fun, even when you are a noob and just use the trash loot you find and don't spend time on grinding/crafting/powerlevelling and generelly don't buy into MMOs and the way they work.
A lot of the mechanics (like sneak and other things) are not class-specific, so the game feels a lot more free than most MMOs, and actually more akin to a proper TES title. There's a lot of variety and ways to design unique builds that fits with the way you like to play, although to perfect your character you will have to grind at some point, and that sucks.
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I'm playing on medium settings with most lighting and particle effects turned off so my fps doesn't drop too much when the action peaks. The game can look really good on higher settings when doing PVE content with less stuff going on. Also the shabby looking parts of the UI are mods I installed, the vanilla UI is neat and clean without ugly text, minimap and giant icons.
![[Image: 120px-BhgLogo.png]](https://discoverygc.com/wiki/images/thumb/7/7c/BhgLogo.png/120px-BhgLogo.png)
![[Image: 120px-LH_Logo.png]](https://discoverygc.com/wiki/images/thumb/7/7b/LH_Logo.png/120px-LH_Logo.png){kind=logo}
They are trying to have some balance - there's PVP and all that jazz so no room for "exploits". Although you can of course enchant, make potions, meals, beverages, armor and weapons and such.