ESO's character creation is not praiseworthy, it's lazy

[CloudAtlas]

but seeing that his game is an MMO inteded to be played in third person

What the hell gave you that idea? It defaults to first person when you first start the game. You're aware not all MMOs are played in third person, right?

Because Zenimax only implemented a first person view as reaction to fans complaining? Because many reviewers considered it inferior, if not outright unusable, because it offers too little spatial awareness? Because the animations seem to look even clunkier in first person view?

Also, ESO was released two and a half years later than Skyrim, so I don't think it is unreasonable to hope for some progress in temrs of visual fidelity at least where it does not negatively impact performance

MMOs are usually a bit strapped visually compared to their single player counterparts, due to resources (lots of people on screen at the same time) and development time. Generally speaking expect them to look anywhere from 2-5 years older than they are. I still don't excuse the game for rinky-dink animations, but if you were expecting next-gen 2014 graphics then it was a false hope from the get-go.

That's why I said "at least where it does not negatively impact performance". Distinct models and animations do not impact performance significantly. Animation quality is scalable so you can make high quality animations available for those with better PCs and/or scale it up/down dynamically with the number of players.
As much as I enjoy being wowed by some game's graphics, I'm aware aware of the limitations of the MMO genre, and did not expect ESO to look like a modded Skyrim. I believe they could have done a bit better, by providing optional HD textures for example, but anything beyond that would fall under the "art style" category and is mostly subjective. [footnote]Someone who might want to care a bit less about his MMO's graphics is Chris Roberts imho.[/footnote]

I'm agreeing with ONE thing from your OP, and strenuously disagreeing with others. I continue to maintain you chose a deliberately inflammatory title, and I'm curious why of all the things you could be talking about on a gaming forum you chose specifically to slam a game you've never actually played when your criticism applies to the entire series, which you're apparently quite familiar with.

The title was admittedly somewhat ranty, yes. Because I was disappointed. And I am talking about ESO now because it came out recently, while Skyrim, the last Elder Scrolls title, came out 2.5 years ago.

I would be more interested to talk about matters of more substance with regards to ESO (and MMOs in general), certain aspects of ESO that I find rather bizarre according to what I learned from reviews, but since I haven't actually played ESO myself I do not feel like I am qualified enough to open a thread about them. But this stuff right here, this basic, superficial stuff, that I felt at least somewhat qualified to talk about for the reasons provided before. You know, since it's just looks.

And in all honesty, I'm getting pretty sick and tired of people who have never played the fucking thing jumping on the groupthink circlejerk about what a catastrophe it is. The "Should I buy it" thread was full of total bullshit and misinformation, all of it issued by people who either never played it or played a few hours of beta half a year ago. So it's possible you caught some leftover irritation from that thread. My apologies.

Not needed. I didn't word everything I've said in the most neutral way, to put it this way, so I cannot claim to be entirely undeserving of any such reaction.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So really, ESO's Character Creator is what you should expect nowadays, but its nothing that would blow you away with options that havent been seen elsewhere before in some form or another. Though we shouldnt bash the game for having it, but we can fault it for not going the extra-mile and innovating a little more. That leaves us with a mediocre MMO rather than one which could be excellent.

The game has a lot of flaws, but I'm not sure "insufficiently varied skeletal meshes" is anywhere near the top of the list, let alone the difference between "mediocre" and "excellent". One's perception of the game will hinge entirely on how one chooses to approach it, and what you're looking for from it.

I think the problem with "beauty" is..well the Elves look too elvish, too "smooth and perfect" as it were. That doesnt mean they should all be ugly bastards, but rather that they shouldnt by default be able to look better than anyone else.

Humans can be made just as lovely (Bretons and Nords and Redguard, all). Whether or not you also find Argonians and Khajit attractive will depend entirely on ones..uh...proclivities.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Because Zenimax only implemented a first person view as reaction to fans complaining?

It's still there!

Because many reviewers considered it inferior, if not outright unusable, because it offers too little spatial awareness?

I've only ever heard that it can hinder you in PvP. It gives more than adequate spatial awareness in PvE, much as it did in all the other Elder Scrolls games. Who ARE these reviewers?! What a bizarre complaint.

Because the animations seem to look even clunkier in first person view?

Nah, they look the same. And unless you're in a stew of players, which is problematic in ways that go far beyond animation quality, you're just not seeing them.

That's why I said "at least where it does not negatively impact performance". Distinct models and animations do not impact performance significantly. Animation quality is scalable so you can make high quality animations available for those with better PCs and/or scale it up/down dynamically with the number of players.

As much as I enjoy being wowed by some game's graphics, I'm aware aware of the limitations of the MMO genre, and did not expect ESO to look like a modded Skyrim. I believe they could have done a bit better, by providing optional HD textures for example, but anything beyond that would fall under the "art style" category and is mostly subjective.

I think it's one of the better looking MMOs on the market, animations notwithstanding. It doesn't MOVE nearly as well as some, but some of the textures are good, and I appreciate the "low fantasy" aesthetic (being a long time fan of the series). Certainly there's room for critique, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to pillory the game for its graphical shortcomings.

The title was admittedly somewhat ranty, yes. Because I was disappointed. And I am talking about ESO now because it came out recently, while Skyrim, the last Elder Scrolls title, came out 2.5 years ago.

I would be more interested to talk about matters of more substance with regards to ESO (and MMOs in general), certain aspects of ESO that I find rather bizarre according to what I learned from reviews, but since I haven't actually played ESO myself I do not feel like I am qualified enough to open a thread about them. But this stuff right here, this basic, superficial stuff, that I felt at least somewhat qualified to talk about for the reasons provided before. You know, since it's just looks.

You might enjoy this review. I think it's pretty good at covering the ways in which you CAN enjoy the game, and the ways in which you can't.

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/04/24/can-the-elder-scrolls-online-be-played-like-a-single-player-rpg/?__lsa=6032-d97c

I actually think the game is a WAY bigger disaster for hardcore MMO fans than hardcore ES fans. That's not to say I don't wish it was just single player. I'd pay a lot of money to get all these other idiots out of my game. But it CAN be enjoyed as a "massively single player" Elder Scrolls adventure, and the scale of everything is quite impressive.

Not needed. I didn't word everything I've said in the most neutral way, to put it this way, so I cannot claim to be entirely undeserving of any such reaction.

I suggest we lightly touch fists, in a display of internet brosmanship, to seal this accord.

 

[RoonMian]

Besides technically, the orcs are elves as well. So much for "beautified".

OK, fine, if you want to get specific, the Bosmer, Altmer and Dunmer have been beautified. Happy?
You could have gone a step further and cited the Falmer, but I think you understand what I'm really trying to say.

My only point was that they changed some of the Mer races into more Tolkienesque elves (i.e., beautiful humans with pointed ears) in what I assume is an attempt to balance population numbers. Bosmer, Altmer and Dunmer have traditionally been strikingly different in appearance to the Human races (like in the screenshots I posted) but they have closed the gap a lot in ESO.

Whatever the case may be, I didn't think ESO's character creator was bad or lazy. I also didn't think it was very much above what we should expect from this generation. Like everything else in ESO, I personally found it to be mediocre.

I only quipped, please bury the hatchet. I didn't even read your post, just poking fun. Besides, as BloatedGuppy said, your screenshot is one end of a spectrum. My Altmer's face is a straight up triangle... Not to mention the unhealthy teint of someone having a severe liver disease. He looks like an inverted Triforce. Or the unhealthy teint of someone being violently seasick for the Bosmer. I don't even know what disease would cause something like the Dunmer.

Again... Only joking...

Besides technically, the orcs are elves as well. So much for "beautified".

Well, they're Mer. They're not exactly "Elves", per se. Actually scratch that, according to this Mer basically means "Elf". Orcs ARE Elves. Huh.

Also Orcs can be beautiful too! Poor Orcs.

Wildstar is buggy as hell, btw. Not sure how you got the impression there were "no bugs". You must have been very fortunate. Probably the 2nd buggiest MMO beta I've ever been involved in, behind only Vanguard.

Well, I only played for one beta weekend. The last one if I'm not mistaken. I can't remember writing a single bug report and usually I'm pretty anal when I'm beta testing. Other than that though I don't remember too much from it other than thinking "WoW, this feels a lot like WoW"... I think there might be a connection between that and not remembering anything, though.

As for Orcs being beautiful... Only after wearing some heavy duty braces for a couple of decades... :-] (That's supposed to be a smily with tusks)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I think you need to re-read my post, I said that they aren't trying to kill WoW.. I actually said it is not a WoW killer (there is no such thing).

And coming from a person who's been in the closed beta for nearly a year, and played WoW in a top 250 US guild from Vanilla to Cataclysm - Wildstar DOES feel like WoW, in some ways, specifically the engine and therefore the mechanics feel similar; The difference comes in the telegraph system which adds a layer of depth that WoW doesn't have.

Feeling like WoW is a good thing, if you read my post properly instead of skimming it and somehow extrapolating that I called Wildstar a WoW killer, you would know why it is a good thing.

And just because you're rushing to the defence of ESO doesn't mean you have to put down another game, and besides, ESO will NEVER be anything that the hardcore PvE community will want to touch with a 50ft pole and that's not a bad thing, it just isn't ESO's focus, ESO is more about large-scale PvP plus their engine and combat style doesn't lend itself to challenging raid content.

No I know what you said. I was snarking about the raggedy state of Wildstar.

I was in closed beta for about 3/4ths the time you were. I generally agree with you on the quality of the group content. It's everything else I think is in various states of "broken" to "meh", and it's going to get the game slammed on release. For a new developer with a neophyte IP, I worry about that sort of launch being a calamity.

I'm also very fussy about MMO comparisons to WoW, including the use of the term "WoW Clone" (not saying you did this, but my word is it ever bandied around a lot). WoW was a pop culture sensation that redefined the genre. If any of these games had "cloned" it they wouldn't be languishing in its 800lb shadow a decade later.

Well, I only played for one beta weekend. The last one if I'm not mistaken. I can't remember writing a single bug report and usually I'm pretty anal when I'm beta testing. Other than that though I don't remember too much from it other than thinking "WoW, this feels a lot like WoW"... I think there might be a connection between that and not remembering anything, though.

I might pop on this weekend to see if they've addressed some of the hilarious cavalcade of bugs that were in place the last time I played. I got tired of LUA errors every 23 seconds.

The games definitely share an aesthetic. I'll give them that much. They play very differently though.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Also to the OP, you should play a game before ripping into it, sure you watched a person on youtube scroll a bar to the left or right but that deost qualify you to post on the internet about it.

I watched a bit more than one video, and I'm talking about something purely visual precisely because that's one thing you can judge fairly well (not perfectly, but to a degree) by just watching instead of playing yourself. Like that Khajiit don't have backward jointed legs.

I think the problem with "beauty" is..well the Elves look too elvish, too "smooth and perfect" as it were. That doesnt mean they should all be ugly bastards, but rather that they shouldnt by default be able to look better than anyone else.

Humans can be made just as lovely (Bretons and Nords and Redguard, all). Whether or not you also find Argonians and Khajit attractive will depend entirely on ones..uh...proclivities.

Well, as much as I might find the design of ESO's Khajits and Argonians wanting, I will at least admit that I'm happy, on behalf of (I hope) most ESO players, that Zenimax designed them themselves and did not relegate this task to rule 34 artists.
Maybe we can leave it at that?

Edit: As always my writing is too slow.

I suggest we lightly touch fists, in a display of internet brosmanship, to seal this accord.

Of course.

 

[JayRPG]

I think you need to re-read my post, I said that they aren't trying to kill WoW.. I actually said it is not a WoW killer (there is no such thing).

And coming from a person who's been in the closed beta for nearly a year, and played WoW in a top 250 US guild from Vanilla to Cataclysm - Wildstar DOES feel like WoW, in some ways, specifically the engine and therefore the mechanics feel similar; The difference comes in the telegraph system which adds a layer of depth that WoW doesn't have.

Feeling like WoW is a good thing, if you read my post properly instead of skimming it and somehow extrapolating that I called Wildstar a WoW killer, you would know why it is a good thing.

And just because you're rushing to the defence of ESO doesn't mean you have to put down another game, and besides, ESO will NEVER be anything that the hardcore PvE community will want to touch with a 50ft pole and that's not a bad thing, it just isn't ESO's focus, ESO is more about large-scale PvP plus their engine and combat style doesn't lend itself to challenging raid content.

No I know what you said. I was snarking about the raggedy state of Wildstar.

Exactly how long ago did you last play the beta?

Wildstar is far from "in a raggedy state".

The UI was overhauled, which was always the plan, the UI for the closed beta (roughly 2 years) was a placeholder. Apart from very minor bugs like a few AMPs not working like they should, and a quest log bug, the game is in really good shape.

I would go as far as to say that it would be ready for launch tomorrow if they had those bugs fixed. Everything else is fine. PvE is excellent (especially for the audience they are trying to appeal to), the PvP is good, the path system is good, the maps are 100% complete and exploration with the double jump and super jump items is fun, the player housing is an extremely smart way to put a time sink into the game it is VERY well done at this point - people from my guild have created skate parks and 3D mazes on their plot of land so far, the engine and gameplay feels smooth, ping and FPS have evened out and remain constant.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the game being in a raggedy state, I fail to see exactly what would get them slammed on release.

 

[INVALIDUSERNAME]

I think we need more in-depth reviews from people slamming games they've never played. They're super informative.

I absolutely loathe people who do that. Such a travesty.

To the point, I'd actually say ESO has one of the more robust character creation systems that I've seen in MMO's. It blew TOR's out of the God damn water, WoW's is a joke, GW2's was mainly small adjustments and nothing amazing. I think the closest thing it comes to is Aion and Rift, closer to Rift's than anything.

I was also a fan that you could go out and make a chubby marauder if you really wanted to instead of some sacred Adonis god-tier character even with the smallest build.

I think one of the issues, though, is that it suffers through the same problems TOR had: all the races are humanoid and so it looks more like a box of crayons than it does a diverse race selection. I don't really see what ESO could have done to avoid that, outside of a more exaggerated artstyle like Wildstar's, but that would have probably garnered them an even huger shitstorm of controversy, so it's a catch 22 no matter which way you look at it.

I agree, though, that the animations are balls. Their upper bodies function independently from their legs and all the characters run like they have a stick lodged up their ass.

But to say that it's not praiseworthy? I mean, MMO character customization is usually pretty shit. Give credit where it's due, ESO's is pretty good.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Exactly how long ago did you last play the beta?

Wildstar is far from "in a raggedy state".

The UI was overhauled, which was always the plan, the UI for the closed beta (roughly 2 years) was a placeholder. Apart from very minor bugs like a few AMPs not working like they should, and a quest log bug, the game is in really good shape.

I would go as far as to say that it would be ready for launch tomorrow if they had those bugs fixed. Everything else is fine. PvE is excellent (especially for the audience they are trying to appeal to), the PvP is good, the path system is good, the maps are 100% complete and exploration with the double jump and super jump items is fun, the player housing is an extremely smart way to put a time sink into the game it is VERY well done at this point - people from guild have created skate parks and 3D mazes on their plot of land so far, the engine and gameplay feels smooth, ping and FPS have evened out and remain constant.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the game being in a raggedy state.

It's been a couple of weeks.

I'm aware of UI 2.0. It's not finished yet, and is a bit plonky besides.

You and I are distaff counterparts as far as WS goes. I can try and summarize problems, but based on your position you're not going to like what I have to say. I'll cut and paste from a Reddit post I made a while back on the subject to save time.

Spoiler

Quests. This won't matter to some people, because it'll be all about the dungeons and raids, and they will argue that even the best done quests in MMOs have a whiff of crap about them, and they would have an argument there. But the questing in Wildstar is bad enough to cost it review scores and word of mouth on launch day. It's not that they're broken (although some are) or that the rewards suck (although some do) or that they're "too hard" or "too easy" or too anything really. It's that they're so...bleh. Every now and then you'll trip across one that is imaginative or clever, and it casts a harsh glare on the rest of the chore list you've been checking off. Click on those rocks. Now kill 50 of those guys over there in that field. Why? Because I said so, and you'll get XP and loot. Now go! It's all horribly perfunctory and meta-gamey, and very little of the game that was marketed as a personality tour de force comes through in them.

Paths. Paths sound great as a bullet point feature, and are woeful in practice. I've heard some people say "I like paths!". Well, if you like paths, it means you like some of the activities you're doing in that path, which would mean you'd have liked it just fine if it were a regular quest, the way it would be in every other MMO. It's cute to identify that there are different "archetypes" of activity in MMOs, but I've never met anyone who likes to do only one of those things. They've segmented away a substantial portion of their unique questing content into paths, ostensibly for the purpose of encouraging alting, only it's left the rest of the quest lineup so drab, linear and repetitive that it's made alting a punishment. Paths themselves impart only Path XP, which is only useful for acquiring Path rewards, which almost without exception are entirely worthless. Much like GW2's decision to strip out the Holy Trinity eventually turned out to be a net negative, Paths actively hurt the game.

LAS/AMPS/TIERS. I was one of the biggest advocates for a LAS, as I'm tired of ability creep and needing 45 hotkeys on my board, 41 of which are highly situational. "There is no reason," I would say. "That a LAS can't be just as tactically complex and interesting as a more expansive suite of abilities. It all comes down to ability design and balance." Well, they're not there yet. Not even close. Some abilities are flashy and look good, but the more you play of different classes and different roles/specs within a class, the more everything starts to feel kind of exactly the same. Even core class mechanics don't differ all that much, with most of them employing very slight variations on a builder/spender system. When you only have 6 classes, it's essential to create vibrant distinction between them, and Carbine has achieved quite the opposite. That virtually all attacks and heals are AoEs with broad telegraphs does not help either...there are no "AoE specialists" or "high single target damage" specs or classes here, everyone is an AoE specialist. AMPS are the most lifeless interpretation of a talent tree you'll ever see, with middling copy/paste stat bumps at lower tiers and middling ability adds at higher tiers. Tiering of abilities is equally low impact and feels like a missed opportunity. You'll never fundamentally change the way an ability works and make it your own, you'll just give it mild stat and efficiency bumps. For a game with so much artistic flair and such an "over the top" aesthetic and vibe, such a staid and conservative system is surprising, and highly disappointing. At the end of the day you have short, medium and long range, and tank, DPS and healer. Those are your choices. In a lot of ways this has the potential to be the most damning thing about Wildstar. You'd like to think with more time this could be fixed, but not without a major overhaul, and they've been at this game for almost a decade already.

Crafting is really not what it could be. It seems like there's the bones of a complicated/interesting system there, but it's overlaid with humdrum bog standard MMO crafting. The end result is something that is at once both overly familiar and obnoxiously convoluted. The exception is cooking, which is batshit stupid.

Bugs/UI/errata. I put these last even though the game is extremely buggy and the UI is an abomination, because the UI is a placeholder that SHOULD be fully fleshed out for launch and bugs eventually go away (although Carbine has been lamentably drag-assy about getting some of them fixed).

Now this is all pretty negative, so I'll cover some strong points...

Dungeon/Raid content is really surprisingly strong. Aesthetic design is only so-so...this game doesn't have a rich history of lore and established characters to draw on to punch things up. But the combat choreography is spectacular. Even the first boss in the first dungeon can be breathlessly entertaining. One wonders if all fights won't devolve into the same spatial awareness dance, but it's hard not to smile at the quality on offer there.

Graphics/art. This is a contentious topic, but the game really does have a gorgeous Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic (particularly nice now that the headache inducing watermark is gone). It can be a bit busy in places, but when you've got a big open area to gaze upon it's lovely. Game also has a fantastic view distance, and does "vistas" extremely well.

Movement. I'd say "combat" but due to complaints above and a concern that the game is a bit too "Don't Stand In The Fire - The MMO", I'm hesitant to do so. While the game's freedom of movement can't compare to something like Saints Row IV, it shines above most of the other entries in the genre. It's crisp and responsive, double jumping is fun, and sprinting is a nice addition. VERY important to nail movement...it can't feel rubbery or non-responsive, and they've done so here.

Housing isn't all one might have hoped, but it's still a cut WAY above the rest of the field. There's a lot of room to grow it too. Some exciting potential there. I do wish they'd kept the Viva Pinata style lot maintenance though.

Mining. This might sound like a stupid also-ran prize, but I've never seen such an entertaining version of something as bland as resource gathering in an MMO before. From nodes attacking you to wormholes full of riches, Mining is a mini-game in and of itself. It's just...fun. Whoever spear-headed that particular game element deserves a round of applause.

So...yeah. I think it's a fine game for a VERY specific niche. But I am not remotely convinced that niche is enough to keep the lights on, OR make the notoriously demanding NCSoft happy with the income of a game that's been in development for 10 years.

I will, however, be happy to be proved wrong. I didn't join beta early because I hated the game or wanted it to fail.

 

[JayRPG]

snip

I agree with a few things.

Quests are, as you put it earlier, "meh" but I don't think anyone expected a fully re-imagined MMO questing system. They did however make questing fairly convenient, with the datachron and turn ins without having to run back to the quest giver.

Crafting is also kind of "meh" but then again I haven't played an MMO yet that has an exciting crafting system.

I think paths are fine, they did make huge adjustments to them, all of them are fun to level except maybe settler which is just of kind leveled without you thinking about it (but they get the best rewards so it's a trade-off). It's not some crazy extra layer of character customization, it just adds a little something to break up your standard MMO quest leveling process depending on which path you take.

I highly disagree with your AMPs and ability tiers conclusion. Ability tiers do fundamentally change the ability in a lot of cases (just look at T0 concussive kicks vs. T4) and the AMP system is far from just middling ability adds - The Ability tier and AMP system has created a huge amount of versatility and a lot of frustration for us theorycrafters; We still do not, to this day, have a perfectly clear and solid winner for the best Stalker DPS build.. we in fact have 5 different builds that all may well be equal to each other and at least 3 of those builds play differently and have different rotations.
We've only just started work on how many different possibilities there are once you start playing end-game and getting more AMPs and ability tiers.
So far it has proven to be one of the more in-depth and interesting character building systems I've ever theorycrafted and played with.

I kind of see where you're going with the every class feels the same, I don't 100% disagree, there are similarities but I do not find your comment about there "not being an AoE class" or "high single target class" to be a bad thing because I don't think that should be a thing, in a world of hardcore raiding where everyone wants to compete for top DPS or top Heals why make classes have distinct advantages over one another depending on the type of encounter? why would you ever want to be in a scenario where a raid needs to have 8 of this specific class because it's the best AoE class and we are about to do an AoE heavy fight.

And the builds and rotations for single target are completely different from AoE, especially for Stalkers.

I'm not exactly sure what you were expecting in this regard from a game that was developed predominantly by ex-WoW developers who did not like the direction WoW was heading, I think the LAS, Ability tier and AMP system has plenty of choice, not all those choices are interesting, but it is certainly in depth.

The UI and bugginess problems have all but disappeared, the only bugs left are minor and the UI feels fine, even if it isn't to your liking Wildstar of course has full addon support which is a big pro.

I'm not exactly sure why you think the hardcore PvE community is a VERY specific niche (that you also imply is very small). WoW had over 7 million subscribers before it even began making the game more accessible to casuals. I'm not even beginning to say that all 7 million were hardcore players and that Wildstar will have 7 million players because they weren't and it won't but the hardcore community is far from a small, very specific niche.

An MMO doesn't need 10 million subscribers to be profitable, even at 250,000 subs the game is making more than 3 million dollars a month which I believe Wildstar will easily maintain, quick estimates of just the guilds I personally know of are around 20,000 active subs just on their own, I think Wildstar will find it's niche rather quickly and I think that this deceptively large niche community will find their home in Wildstar fairly quickly as well.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'm not exactly sure why you think the hardcore PvE community is a VERY specific niche (that you also imply is very small). WoW had over 7 million subscribers before it even began making the game more accessible to casuals. I'm not even beginning to say that all 7 million were hardcore players and that Wildstar will have 7 million players because they weren't and it won't but the hardcore community is far from a small, very specific niche.

An MMO doesn't need 10 million subscribers to be profitable, even at 250,000 subs the game is making more than 3 million dollars a month which I believe Wildstar will easily maintain, quick estimates of just the guilds I personally know of are around 20,000 active subs just on their own, I think Wildstar will find it's niche rather quickly and I think that this deceptively large niche community will find their home in Wildstar fairly quickly as well.

It's a thoughtful and in-depth reply and I appreciate it. I'm not going to go through answering "NO U" to points I disagree on, because...well...we just disagree. One of the responses I got to that post was similar to yours, pointing out that some abilities DO tier well. It's just as easy to pick ones that don't. I really wish they'd allowed you to split or morph abilities, ala Diablo 3.

And the single target/AoE thing was ultimately just a tossed off example of role diversification. I wasn't specifically calling for specific specs to become "the best", simply that...in an ideal circumstance...you could kit a class a myriad of different ways and get a myriad of different play experiences. And it wasn't something I was seeing from the game. The longer I played, the more all the classes started to melt together.

I wanted to attend to these last two paragraphs though...

1. Wut? WoW was "accessible to casuals" from the second it launched. It was DEFINED by how accessible it was, and how it lowered barrier to entry for a traditionally opaque and hostile genre. EQ players transitioning to WoW derided it as the "Fischer Price" of MMOs for its ease of use, gentle death penalties, and rampant hand holding. I always find it curious when WoW is held up as some bastion of "hardcore" play. Heck, it wasn't even until well after release that it started developing a raid scene, or even GOT RAIDS. This is not to shit on WoW, either. I love WoW, and consider it a high water mark for the genre (at least through BC/WOTLK).

2. Of course it doesn't, but even 250K subs is a LOT. Wildstar reminds me a lot of TSW...not in game play (I'm not retarded), but in that they're both unique IPs aimed at a niche that don't show well to "casuals", and have a bit of pong around their leveling content. TSW's projected sales were 1 million. They sold 200,000 copies off the bat, and it almost killed the developer. In order to keep a base of 250K subs with standard MMO retention numbers past the first month, they'd need to hit around 1 million copies, and I'm HIGHLY skeptical of their ability to do that.

 

[Nimzabaat]

I think we need more in-depth reviews from people slamming games they've never played. They're super informative.

This post seems to sum up a lot of review slamming in the past 12 months.

I can't even count how many people said Aliens Colonial Marines was an utter turd without ever actually playing the game at all.

So much truth...

On topic: I actually really liked the way the Khajit look in their armor (OP didn't play so doesn't know that each race can craft and wear their race specific armor) especially since it had to allow for their ears and tails. As for different animations for each race... how often does that happen? My main complaint was the lack of Khajit night vision. I always play them and have gotten used to the blue/grey screen

 

[JayRPG]

snip

I agree some things could have been done differently but I am not necessarily unhappy with the way they have ultimately been done.

1. I guess I could have been a lot clearer but the way WoW changed isn't really that clear in and of itself. I 100% agree that the selling point for the game was accessibility, but the game did shift it's direction as it began to pick up speed and didn't stop picking up speed when, at least what I felt to be, the entire game morphed into something it was never meant to be. It sort of suckered people in with being so accessible and then fairly abruptly changed it's tune to rather inaccessible as the focus shifted to end-game content. I still remember the complaints and 1% myth pretty vividly.

In my mind, and I'm not saying I am being 100% accurate here, but my feelings were that the game that was once for everyone at launch quickly shifted to only those that had enough time and dedication towards the end of vanilla and that focus continued on into BC, for the majority, they did make what had become completely casual gamer unfriendly raid content a little more friendly by lowering the number of people required to raid (though I am convinced this was more a development choice rather than a community choice) but overall unless you were raiding 3-6 nights a week, you weren't finishing the content, at least not in any timely fashion or quick enough to finish it before the the next patch came out.

Focus then pretty abruptly shifted again in WotLK, with the introduction of flexible raid sizes and then flexible raid difficulties and overall there was less raid content than there had ever been. WotLK, for me, was the first step Blizzard took to take the game back to the design focus it had at launch.

I guess what I was trying to say is that subscribers grew in the millions despite the rather unfriendly way it grew and I put that down to mainly people wanted to raid challenging content, it attracted players for one reason or another.

Of course now Blizzard seems to have a focus on making raiding for absolutely everyone, even brain-dead monkeys, with story mode, normal mode, hard mode, 10 man, 25 man, LFR, flexy 10, flexy 25. It's obviously good for Blizzard because they are now appealing to a much larger audience but they don't appeal that well anymore to the audience that was so predominant during most of BC and this is the audience Wildstar are trying to jump on.

2. Selling 1 million copies is most definitely pushing it, especially in the first month. I think 250,000 is doable but I'm certainly not without doubts or skepticism.
My feelings are that it will grow into around 250,000 once it starts gaining traction in the community.

It's obvious who Carbine are aiming for because advertising for Wildstar is virtually non-existent, it's sort of a only people who want a game like Wildstar know about Wildstar which I think will give it a completely different start to most MMOs, I think that Wildstar will start slower than other MMOs but remain steady rather than having a huge uptake of 1 million sales and seeing a sharp drop off of roughly half those players in the first month. Players buying Wildstar will generally know what they are getting themselves into, the sharp drop off that most MMOs see is because of the common complaint "there is nothing to do at level cap" but I don't feel this is a problem for Wildstar, the problem I see regarding a drop-off of players is the end-game content being too hard rather than non-existent which hopefully shouldn't be too prevalent given the market Wildstar is made for.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Did you pay attention when he was specifically talking about the clunky animations too? Not to mention that I couldn't possibly tell which race his character had alone by the way he looks and moves when clad in armor... which was my main point.

Bretons, Redguards, Nords and Imperials are just humans - no need for different body types there. The various elves are genetically similar enough to humans that they can interbreed (That's where Bretons come from) which means broad similarity in body structures. The two beast races are the exception but the Elder scrolls has fairly generally just treated them as humans with a tail. Why a reptilian female needs breasts I'll never know. Thus of the races, only two of them are actually significantly different than the rest. Given that the races are historically all more or less the same thing it stands to reason you wouldn't get a lot of hints about a person wrapped in a skin of steel. A nord, after all, is just a human who tends to be bigger than other humans and is resistant to cold thanks to living in a godforsaken frozen wasteland.

As far as how characters move in armor, I'd actually disagree entirely. They heavy armor I wear doesn't really stretch or skew with motion - armor plates instead move as you'd expect them to. Having never worn significant amounts of cloth or leather I can't speak to how those work.

That's why it's neither a review nor in-depth. I'm merely stating one particular aspect, and one that is in plain sight to everyone who does not choose to close his eyes. I do not need to have played the game myself in order to realise that everyone looks the same. It's obvious.

You're also slamming ESO when it offers fair customization that exceeds what the single player Elder Scrolls games offer largely on the basis that you think the various races should look different. That's a strange complaint given the nearly two decades of elder scrolls games that existed before this one that more or less established what each race looks like.

Not really. Tera comes to mind too and some other Korean stuff, and LOTR Online, Rift, Neverwinter, Everquest 2, the upcoming Wildstar and Everquest Next, and probably a number more offer more variety as well.

The only real difference in LOTR was body size scaling. Other games you note simply designed races that look and are built significantly differently than humans. Your argument is essentially invalid: ESO did not do this because they were lazy but rather because that convention has been established by the previous Elder Scrolls titles. Your complaint is with the art and world design of the franchise.

 

[A-D.]

So really, ESO's Character Creator is what you should expect nowadays, but its nothing that would blow you away with options that havent been seen elsewhere before in some form or another. Though we shouldnt bash the game for having it, but we can fault it for not going the extra-mile and innovating a little more. That leaves us with a mediocre MMO rather than one which could be excellent.

The game has a lot of flaws, but I'm not sure "insufficiently varied skeletal meshes" is anywhere near the top of the list, let alone the difference between "mediocre" and "excellent". One's perception of the game will hinge entirely on how one chooses to approach it, and what you're looking for from it.

I think the problem with "beauty" is..well the Elves look too elvish, too "smooth and perfect" as it were. That doesnt mean they should all be ugly bastards, but rather that they shouldnt by default be able to look better than anyone else.

Humans can be made just as lovely (Bretons and Nords and Redguard, all). Whether or not you also find Argonians and Khajit attractive will depend entirely on ones..uh...proclivities.

The Innovation part was more in regards to what else they could have changed to make the game a more distinct experience over what most MMOs are like. But given the Threadtitle i figured i shouldnt go into a long list of other things that could have been done instead since we were only on the character creation which is "pretty much the usual" so again, it kinda applies in the same sense there.

It is lazy in that, for the character creation alone, its not exactly much of a standout subject, its very much what we should expect at this point, so it is "only as much as necessary" in terms of what work went into it. So we cant really fault it in that it is somehow worse other than "its not better than what we had before" as it were.

As for the "lovely" part, well it comes back to the meshes, Mer arent really distinct from Men other than they got pointy ears which makes it a bit lackluster. They arent so much different races but rather "humans with pointy ears" which is the only real difference between Men and Mer. Argonians and Khajit at least have a different head, although they also dont really have a unique mesh made for their respective species alone, let alone animations which vary based on proportions.

 

[faefrost]

I think the OP's point is the characters don't seem or feel distinct. They use the same core model. They ALL use the same skeletal animations. The color and design differences tend towards subtle and subdued. Everyone has a kind of steel, grey and earth tones thing going on. The end result is the characters, hence your avatar and every other person you interact with, just feel bland. You have trouble telling your toon from another player from an NPC. Is it a major failing? By and of itself no. But it contributes to that overall feeling of mediocrity. There are tons of things you can adjust in your character model. But what's the point? None of them really adjust things that either you or your fellow players are intuitively and subconsciously looking at. They are differences that nobody actually sees unless they concentrate and force themselves to notice them. They don't grab the casual eye. It's mediocre art design. Good detailed designs used to poor effect because little thought was given to actual visual impact. They sought to mimic the look and feel of a 10 year old single player game engine that was known for bland art and horrid character models on its best day. Why would they do that?

And yes, unlike the OP I played TESO. Beta and Live. Angry Joe's review says everything needed about it. It's not a bad game. It's just a bland soulless mediocre rookie effort.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

And yes, unlike the OP I played TESO. Beta and Live. Angry Joe's review says everything needed about it. It's not a bad game. It's just a bland soulless mediocre rookie effort.

I actually quite like Angry Joe, but his review does NOT say "everything needed" about it. The guy was slamming levels, in a duo, in order to get high level enough for Angry Army PvP. He basically rode the crest with all the power levellers and bots, and got the absolute worst possible experience it's possible to get from the game. Does that mean it's not informative to a certain type of player, looking to play the game the same way? Absolutely not. Does it mean it's not a black mark on the game that the MULTIPLAYER aspects of its MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER GAME are so broken? Absolutely not. It hardly tells the whole story, though.

Additionally, I'm DEEPLY disappointed in his stupid rant about the horse and how it's "pay to win", and how much time he spent losing his mind about the poor mob loot as though it were part of a conspiracy to promote horse purchases. I'm HIGHLY critical of "triple dipping" MMOs or pay to win schemes, and this is about as far from that as you can get without selling anything at all. The community ASKED for that fucking horse. Which is rubbish. And which can be purchased with the proceeds from about 15 levels of questing. Which is about standard for MMO mount introduction.