Why so much negativity..

I felt the need to make a thread regarding the amount of negative reviews about TESO there are on the internet, and the extremely large bashing its getting from randoms.

First thing id like to say is that anybody who reads a review online and makes a decision based off that is bound to have a hard time playing games they truly enjoy, they will have a limited experience and strange expectations.

Another point I keep seeing people saying over and over, they say the graphics are bad...
On this alone I have decided these people are not playing the same game I have played. Anybody who has been in BETA, and played around with graphics settings should know, on maximum settings, they game is on par if not better than Skyrim. (Skyrim because thats what its commonly compared to, never mind anything else in the MMO market).
The scenery is on a whole new level, in which no MMO has been able to provide, whether it be the volcano's spewing down mountains into the ocean, or ice covered tree's to rolling hills, its beautiful.

Next thing I see are people complaining about what there is to do, Some people say its just the same quest after quest monotony.
To put simply, they are unable to find things to do, and must be told to do them.
I had finished every quest in the zones available to play. (excluding cyrodiil).
I then spent and entire day trying my heart out to do the rest of the stuff, and I just couldn't do it.
And it isnt boring things like 'Kill 1000 chickens'. Its things like taking out strong semi-boss encounters that you cannot easily solo. Its hunting for not just materials for professions but a massive amount of other stuff you need for them.
If you even pay attention to details you would be amazed at the little details, like in the top of an inn there was a guy lying on a bed with a topless girl dancing on the end of the bed...
He told me I was ruining the show.

Now if anybody says there is anything bad about PvP, I am not sure they should be entitled to an opinion, its an unrivaled experience, I literally had to go to work to stop myself playing PvP.
Every aspect you enjoy about PvP is in the game.
Whether is Siege battles, Large group battles, small group battles, technical battles using terrain, ambushing, you can even gank people doing quests in the towns.
There really isn't much I can say about PvP, but when you experience, you will know for yourself just how amazing it is.

When I was asked about crafting, I was asked: Is it as good as in Skyrim?
My honest answer?
I said it was significant better, it felt more rewarding, and it remains relevant no matter what level you are or what equipment you have.

And to save this getting too long, last off I will say a word about the payment model..
It receives more complains than anything I have seen,
A common one is "its not worth it"
Well unless you are Richard Branson, I'm not sure you have to best idea of what is worth it or not.
"its too much"
It might be for some people, but that's why there are plenty of F2P games, this is just one you don't get to enjoy.
On the other hand during 4 days of playing I spent so much time playing that instead of spending money on other things I actually saved myself $50-$60... (in 4 days).
Also from experience, there are no Pay to Win aspects, I have personally experienced the benefits of Imperial collectors edition, and I was not advantaged.

Thanks for reading however much you did.
End Rant.

the graphics are the best ive seen in a mmo, but the character animations are pure lazy and bad. ZOS should have hired a mo cap studio and thats all there is to it. right now, the character animations are straight immersion breaking they are so stiff and unnatural.

(February 11th 2014, 02:18 AM)Rickter Wrote: the graphics are the best ive seen in a mmo, but the character animations are pure lazy and bad. ZOS should have hired a mo cap studio and thats all there is to it. right now, the character animations are straight immersion breaking they are so stiff and unnatural.

To be honest, the I didn't find the animation that bad, just comparatively to the rest of the game it stands out, I found the animation a lot more relaxed and natural compared to most other MMO's.

Either way its something that doesn't take much to improve, and I can imagine with patches coming out every so often and 2 months left of production they have a good opportunity to improve them.

thats the thing, it will take much to improve. a motion cap studio would need to be hired and all the animations in the game recorded and the actually altered at the code level. it will never happen - it was jsut a missed opportunity.

most other mmos? the only other mmo ive played that had animations worse was Rift. even Lotro had better animations. SWTOR, WoW, WildStar, GW2, FFXIV all had motion capture.

maybe thats why i notice it so bad in TESO, because so many other mmos DO have mo cap.

it was just lazy on ZOS' part.

Im pretty sure ZoS had motion capture, and WoW is like robots swtor is barely better than WoW, GW2 very unnatural.

FFXIV is the only one of those that's any good.

Yeah, the graphics are top shelf, definitely. I don´t know whether it´s as good as Skyrim (without mods) but that might come from a more cartoonish style. But it´s not really cartoonish, either. Everything Looks realistic except a few enemies (like the parrot harpy seen in a Trailer last year)

The quest are pretty much like Skyrim: You find them while exploring. To that part it would be best in my opinion to Play the PvE zones like you played Skyrim or Oblivion. You will meet enough other players on your way when facing something you have to face as group. On the other Hand, repetitive random quests, like kill 20 deers, deliver letter from random guy to random guy, bounty hunting missions (go kill a giant/dragon/Bandit Boss) or clear the same cave again and again are missing. What I find good. At some Point you will definitely have done everything in a PvE Zone. But that´s okay, as there are 3 PvE zones to explore. Also, it´s a MMO. PvP is endgame, not repetitive errant quests.

And the world has as many Details as Skyrim had. Or Oblivion. Or Morrowind. And with that I mean such Little details like a guy enjoying a private Dance ;)

What I could complain about is that large parts of the armors have no own model, but are painted on the character's very skin. Only things like helmets, collars, pauldrons and skirts, parts which stand off the Body, have their own model. But that is forgotten after some time. You won´t even notice.

I agree on all points with Avidus.

Since the game was announced, and with the feature list trickling over, I thought it will be pants. Hence I wasn't bothered at all with it.
You see I am picky person as MMOs go. After playing UO between 1997 and 2002, DAOC between 2002 and 2012 (last 3y on classic freeshard), everything that came out on fantasy, had no more than an hour lifespan.
Tried Shadowbane, SWTOR, Darkfall, DDO, Rift, GW and saw my ex wife playing WoW (bliah) and LOTRO. Unfortunately, none of them captured me and went back to DAOC. Only between 2004-2005 played EVE in parallel with DAOC because my ex was playing it also and had a lot of arm twisting.


Until surprisingly got the invite for the TESO beta on the previous session (11th Jan).
And my only opinion is that if they do not change the game to please the people who complain, then I am going to enjoy it for the years to come. Hopefully as long as DAOC.

The graphics were better on this session than the previous one. Better lightning and felling a twice fold improvement.
Battles are in light with all the ES games, and many who complained (especially the one hour reviewers), didn't visited eg the level 14+ places on the NW side of Auridon. Nor tried to use style chains to bring down some pretty hard mobs, not necessary "bosses", and trying to wisely spend mana & stamina while you try to conserve your health pool.

The quests aren't repetitive, they are very enjoying, and they are many if you explore the map. And especially if you play AD very funny when you have to deal with Khajiit NPCs. If you are relaxed person, you will find all the quests very "alive", and the good acting not only on main chars but even normal NPCs is superb. Even found a quest that made me feel sad for an NPC by doing it, because you actually have to kill the poor sod at the end and have the option to lie to it's mother about his fate or not.
Was funny to see people complaining that game sux, has no content and did all 6 quests, now what. Hell I did 38 quests, having explored half the map, with 8 main quests in the pipeline and hadn't gone nowhere near Skywatch. And spend whole day to find all 16 skyshard at Auridon.

Also if you follow the quests through one at the time, most feel like you see a movie with the interaction between NPCs, and of course NPC phasing at various steps of the quest. That is also assisted by the acting and the dialogues.

PvP feels like it should tbh. A fantasy version of Planetside, or even like War of Roses. There are no "OP classes" to insta kill you, there is no "wrong class/combination" and requires more brains than DAOC surprisingly. To improve it is does beg for collision to be put on it. And was on my notes to the last session questionnaire from Zenimax. Is the only fault I see on this game tbh.

Crafting, is easy and tough at the same time. And if not lucky, it will take someone many months trying to learn all the crafting styles and traits for each individual armour part and weapon. Not forgetting the special forges across the lands, that provide second trait under conditions.
And lets not forget to improve, you might need to spend valuable skill points to it.
Btw found enchanting the most difficult to do since you have no known recipes, and the resources are harder to find and more uncommon.

Thats all for me. I could write much more but finally closing that any doubts left from the January beta session, got wiped out over last weekend and pre-ordered the game, booking the first week of April off work as holidays.
(hopefully stays P2P also).

SO after trying or not the game *wink* *wink*, i got to conclusion that many of "bad" reviews are in fact full of bullshit, BUT i am not saying the game is at it best;

- Graphic are good, yes they are, if only we could play with graphics like this in PvP but my PC can't hadel it = (, but dont worry there options to lower the graphics are insanely effective so even if you do haw crappy pc you can enjoy pvp (but with low set graphic)
- Those people who say that game is only "quest hub after quest hub" ... well i dont want to offend, so i wont, but they mostly wrong, yes main quest line feels sort of like quest hub, but you find so many side quest of the beaten path that you hardly notice that, and the best part is decision did mater, like if you completed certain quest certain quest enemy's would not spam in said area any more. I wont go into detail so haw fun experience it for your self = )
- PvP was good, at some points chaotic and frustrating at same time fun and rewarding, what really surprised me was how much people where motivated to get organized to siege keeps, sure there where some less likable individuals but that is not the games fault =)

I could keep talking about good points, like the fine detail in the world, or the game architecture, or that most of storys where fun and suck you in ( and by that i mean that i was exited to see how "some" (not all) story's would end, but let me get to parts i dint enjoy:

- Combat was not fluid enuf, especially spell casting (if you are full mage) they really need to work on that, no mather how good the stroy/qeusts/mechanics is the feel of the combat makes or unmakes games, i mean look at The Secret World, if not for the crappy combat i would love that MMO.

- I know its beta and they working on servers, i am just saying this with hopes in wont happen during the release, because of server lags it would seem i am getting hit by "melee" enemy when hes few feet away, this happen a lot in PvP areas i would get killed by melee from miles away... and i haw 30mb Fiber, i know online games cent be perfect... but still

- Something i hated is and i hope there is option for it, THERE WAS TOO MANY PEOPLE IN "quest dungeon" and i i dont mean the "Open Dungeon" or "group dungeon", i mean those places that haw quest in them and you can find them all over the place in Skyrim and Oblivion, by the time i enter said place and try to get to qeust location every enemy mob is dead... the path is opened free from any challenge and most of times you complete qeust's without doing any work... that made me sad, they should limit on how many people can enter in said places.

- World bosses should haw more HP! 4-5 people just nuke them down really fast, at least give them buff or somthin that increases there max hp depending on how many people are in combat with said boss...


Oh well this is just a small portion i wanted to point out, and i bet most of it will be fixed by the time of Open Beta.

This is normal, every game reviewer thinks the worst and always are aiming to think this game (like any game) wont make it the first month release and it will be always free to play. Honestly I hope ESO proved them wrong. I even couldn't get to a pvp experience, but the game is great and a lot of work needs to be done but whatever happen from now on with reviews I don't even care anymore, because this type of bad reviews has became normal and expected.

@Ewan hopefully the server functions better during release. These last few tests are stress tests, so they should be fixing those problems. Also, zenimax is putting stress on the servers on purpose so that could account for some of the lag.

I agree with you on the open dungeon quests. Hopefully there's a choice in instancing to limit the people in your immediate world. I know that after everyone levels and moves on it won't be so bad, but the start of the game is going to be so jammed packed at first that it's going to take away from the fun.

All you say in your opening "rant" is pretty much bang on the nail but if the potential audience do not see it then that is their loss.

I have spent the last few days studying many of the (p)reviews - I am on holiday and this is my way of relaxing lol - and there is good, bad and ugly out there.
Bad press is better than no press. Needless to say getting the word out to 2 very different styled communities - console Skyrim fanbois & the very varied mmorpg market - is the name of the game.
Different reviewers are representing different attitudes and whilst they may present a negative perspective it is kind of their "job" (I say job because I doubt they get paid too much for their limited journalistic skills).

My main concern is that if the many reviews actually tell people how good the game is it may get over hyped resulting in too greater an expectation from the audience (Wow for example was a pile of shite when it was released and look how well that has done) so I imagine there is an element of string pulling (if Zenimax are as smart as they seem to be).

(February 11th 2014, 07:12 AM)Ewan Wrote: - Combat was not fluid enuf, especially spell casting (if you are full mage) they really need to work on that, no mather how good the stroy/qeusts/mechanics is the feel of the combat makes or unmakes games, i mean look at The Secret World, if not for the crappy combat i would love that MMO.

This.

(February 11th 2014, 01:59 AM)Avidus Wrote: I felt the need to make a thread regarding the amount of negative reviews about TESO there are on the internet, and the extremely large bashing its getting from randoms.

First thing id like to say is that anybody who reads a review online and makes a decision based off that is bound to have a hard time playing games they truly enjoy, they will have a limited experience and strange expectations.

Another point I keep seeing people saying over and over, they say the graphics are bad...
On this alone I have decided these people are not playing the same game I have played. Anybody who has been in BETA, and played around with graphics settings should know, on maximum settings, they game is on par if not better than Skyrim. (Skyrim because thats what its commonly compared to, never mind anything else in the MMO market).
The scenery is on a whole new level, in which no MMO has been able to provide, whether it be the volcano's spewing down mountains into the ocean, or ice covered tree's to rolling hills, its beautiful.

Next thing I see are people complaining about what there is to do, Some people say its just the same quest after quest monotony.
To put simply, they are unable to find things to do, and must be told to do them.
I had finished every quest in the zones available to play. (excluding cyrodiil).
I then spent and entire day trying my heart out to do the rest of the stuff, and I just couldn't do it.
And it isnt boring things like 'Kill 1000 chickens'. Its things like taking out strong semi-boss encounters that you cannot easily solo. Its hunting for not just materials for professions but a massive amount of other stuff you need for them.
If you even pay attention to details you would be amazed at the little details, like in the top of an inn there was a guy lying on a bed with a topless girl dancing on the end of the bed...
He told me I was ruining the show.

Now if anybody says there is anything bad about PvP, I am not sure they should be entitled to an opinion, its an unrivaled experience, I literally had to go to work to stop myself playing PvP.
Every aspect you enjoy about PvP is in the game.
Whether is Siege battles, Large group battles, small group battles, technical battles using terrain, ambushing, you can even gank people doing quests in the towns.
There really isn't much I can say about PvP, but when you experience, you will know for yourself just how amazing it is.

When I was asked about crafting, I was asked: Is it as good as in Skyrim?
My honest answer?
I said it was significant better, it felt more rewarding, and it remains relevant no matter what level you are or what equipment you have.

And to save this getting too long, last off I will say a word about the payment model..
It receives more complains than anything I have seen,
A common one is "its not worth it"
Well unless you are Richard Branson, I'm not sure you have to best idea of what is worth it or not.
"its too much"
It might be for some people, but that's why there are plenty of F2P games, this is just one you don't get to enjoy.
On the other hand during 4 days of playing I spent so much time playing that instead of spending money on other things I actually saved myself $50-$60... (in 4 days).
Also from experience, there are no Pay to Win aspects, I have personally experienced the benefits of Imperial collectors edition, and I was not advantaged.

Thanks for reading however much you did.
End Rant.

Yea.. I dont even understand why different races in different factions would not be lore friendly.. In any case there has been always people from different backround for surprising goals.

I've been watching a lot of the new video reviews, and I have been seeing some different complaints that fall into the category that I call the WOW syndrome.

"I've been in the game a few hours, and I don't have any uber gear yet, and the uber gear that I want costs more money than I have."

"I'm level 3 and I don't have many interesting skills yet."

"I'm only getting 1 gold per kill! This sucks."

Everyone seems to want immediate rewards. No one seems to think that it is perfectly appropriate to have just escaped from prison, and to have NOTHING.

I remember the first days and even weeks of SWG, which was a real sandbox game in which almost everything you needed was player made. And there was nothing there. The machines needed to create the components that were needed to make the armor of the droids were invented yet. And we felt like real pioneers, transforming a world.

A lot of gear and whatnot in ESO is going to be player made. And I'm guessing that as crafters are grinding lower level stuff, it will probably be available cheap.

In terms of skill acquisition, it is exciting to EARN a new skill, which lets you do something that you could not do before. Sure, it is kind of stifling if you are coming to a new game after having end-game skills in some other MMO. And I've never played WOW, so I don't know how easy it really was. But in other games, like EQ2, I know that you had to put out effort. And there were consequences for your decisions. But you felt great satisfaction at having accomplished a goal. I'm hoping that this is the case in ESO.

(February 11th 2014, 11:09 AM)Quesi Wrote: And I've never played WOW, so I don't know how easy it really was. But in other games, like EQ2, I know that you had to put out effort. And there were consequences for your decisions. But you felt great satisfaction at having accomplished a goal. I'm hoping that this is the case in ESO.

To start I will say, WoW was great in Vanilla, sure it had its fault, but it was hard to earn things, and people would recognize who those people who got them were, but each expansion that came out, it slowly got easier and easier, to the present day WoW where you can buy the game, and within a week you can experience all of the content..

So by that standard people expect to be able to be and feel really awesome about their character instantly.

However in games such as TESO, leveling up is just as much part of character creation as the actual character creation is, I felt a sense of achievement in fully crafting my own set of iron armor, in which I had to replace it in 2 levels anyway, but It just felt good, and it kept my crafting valid.
Its just a much more refined and caring game to play.