The Elder Scrolls Online

ThunderCougarFalconBird_sl said:

As a bow-using nightblade, even with only 1 piece of green gear, I pretty much one-shot everything if I Shadow Cloaked, or just plain snuck. If I didn't one-shot, an instant Poison Arrow or Strife downed the mob before they could even take a few steps.

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How's the dispersion of classes? Pretty even or completely lop-sided?

Just in case anyone wondered the GMG 20% off code still works. I know they may have another 25 or 30 before early access but figured would post it in case anyone wanted the 20% off now.

Went ahead and just bought it on there , figure definitely worth it for a month or two of trying it out.

GMG code OQE4LG-WEQPSE-SMCME1

Muligan_sl said:

How's the dispersion of classes? Pretty even or completely lop-sided?

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Do you mean what people were playing? In the last beta, it was fairly evenly distributed between Dragon Knight, Sorcerer, and Nightblade from my experience. Didn't see too many Templars.

Rhinohelix_sl said:

I saw a number of folks stabbing mobs with lightning, so they were out there. It was a fair mix of archetypes that I saw in the starter zones, though.

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I was a templar but in PvP I did not really like it that much. I am going to give it another try but for some reason the healing was not real fun in keep battles.

Kreugen_sl said:

I haven't played any MMO that was as pathetically trivial as this 15 levels in, with everything of equal fucking level getting one or two shot and the downtime from fighting stupidly being so practically nonexistent. Not in beta, and sure as hell not at release. That's all I wanted to say.

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WoW set the standard for holding your hand thru the beginning levels. I played a warlock when it launched and didn't die until I went into the Deadmines the first time.

In ESO, what classes have you been playing and what weapons are you using? Bow + sneak attack is OP right now so if you have been using a bow in the early levels I can see where you are coming from.

Dmitry_sl said:

I was a templar but in PvP I did not really like it that much. I am going to give it another try but for some reason the healing was not real fun in keep battles.

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I was a Bow Templar - Vamp Bane + Soul Trap + Poison Arrow and then on to the next mob, by the time I got to the next mob the previous one was dead, no damage taken.

Shokran jazeelan,
Vitality

I was doing a healer templar and obviously it was not as easy as people here say, it wasn't hard at all but shit wasn't dying in 2-3 spells and mobs could easily kill me. If I buy this will probably go templar healer again,depending how the respec works(for soloing vs dungeons/pvp).

Cinge_sl said:

I was doing a healer templar and obviously it was not as easy as people here say, it wasn't hard at all but shit wasn't dying in 2-3 spells and mobs could easily kill me. If I buy this will probably go templar healer again,depending how the respec works(for soloing vs dungeons/pvp).

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Try slotting Vampire Bane (Upgraded DoT+Snare) with soul trap and/or the mage guild DoT skill - I was healing just fine with the cheap group heal (with delayed healing upgrade) and the ultimate.

Just my preference,
Vitality

Tuco_sl said:

This community has gone over the impact of ONLY/primarily having difficult, group requiring content for leveling and I think there's positives and negatives to it. But if you're going to have easy and difficult content the difficult content should be rewarding enough that most people will do it. The problem is that if you make it such that working to single pull and kill a difficult redcon mob that leaves your group out of mana and low on health worth more than continually pulling and killing hordes of easy mobs you create ways for overly powerful characters /setups / powerleveling to blow through your content faster than you can nerf..

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I found several caves with nasties inside that were far more difficult than the normal NPCs. Those critters dropped the only really good items I saw in my first 15 levels that I didn't purchase...

I like the idea of having content too difficult for players, but I also don't think an EQ like design where early level mobs take a while to kill and require a ton of downtime is at all relevant, valid, or fun for me any more. Fuck that noise.

I'm hoping gearing up and leveling in this game will be a nice change of pace after the bullshit of visiting Timeless Isle and idiot raids I've done in WOW recently.

I'll be nabbing Dark Souls 2 in three weeks. That'll tide my masochism over nicely. I'm not looking for the same mechanics in an MMO.

Rescorla_sl said:

What exactly do you mean by "some techie pushing a 'ruin it' button"?

Are you claiming someone from Zenimax purposely caused players to disconnect or are you claiming the players from the opposing force were doing something to cause the disconnects of players on your side?

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It wasn't only my alliance that had this happen, but let's examine the facts. Entire raids would disconnect in unison. I was in one during the battle of lore that waged between Aleswell and Chalman and members on Teamspeak in the raid group were playing in the U.S. on the East and West costs and in the South, Australia, and Britain. When this happened, it would only happen to people in one alliance at a time, and only people involved in certain pivotal battles (at crucial moments).

And why shouldn't that happen? During stress tests, an artificial load *should* be put on the server, so there's the artificial lag. If they can do that selectively, then they have a tool to step in if entire guilds or raids are caught using exploits later, so testing an ability to selectively apply "lag" makes sense. This also allowed them to prolong battles and otherwise manipulate the war to test scenarios that might not have occurred naturally for a long time. It makes perfect sense that they would do that during a beta stress test session.

It could be a coincidence that occurred several times over with each individual occurrence, but come on, coincidences repeated often enough start to be a pattern. A lot of people thought that was going on, and nobody particularly minded. Better to get the game working right. Besides, in some circumstances, battles would have ended sooner without that. We'll be telling stories about one battle now immortalized in lore at Chalman Keep, and that battle may have been over much more quickly without this happening (though I think it would have just widened the push and defend routes).

I do not think that the opposing teams were doing anything to cause it. Well, I'd certainly hope not! That would indicate one hell of a flaw at this point, considering that old school exploits like spamming corpses aren't really possible in ESO. Considering all the press to come out of the Covenant side of the last big session, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a little less often to them, but I wouldn't cite that for their success after sneaking around behind their lines and watching how they played. They earned their victories, even with this going on. My only point about that is that some of these epic battles might be more associated with a road than individual keeps had this not been happening, so to credit small groups of defenders under such circumstances seems dishonest.

But it IS possible for small groups to defend! Bleakers would have been a much better place to cite in regard to that. Outposts have that convenient spot to pour hot oil on enemy heads, and I saw them successfully defended against superior forces more than once. Keeps are a different matter. They're too big and defenders are too exposed for small teams of defenders to hold out for very long under natural conditions.

I want to post about the ESO<->EQ comparison, but still need to finish catching up.

Vitality_sl said:

Try slotting Vampire Bane (Upgraded DoT+Snare) with soul trap and/or the mage guild DoT skill - I was healing just fine with the cheap group heal (with delayed healing upgrade) and the ultimate.

Just my preference,
Vitality

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Yeah was probably my fault. I only used the one skill that makes the next one do more dmg and then the basic holy-ball looking skill that you first get + the healing spells.

Kreugen_sl said:

I hate that fucking argument so much. "derp just go find mobs higher level than you, there's your challenge!" Yeah, I could go fight the AOW naked and blindfolded at level 5 by slapping the keyboard with my dick, too. But that's obviously not what they intend.

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You just set your sights too high. Everyone knows, you could only do that to Vindi.

The EQ feel comes from something pointed out as a potential flaw on this board. It's not just the teamwork aspect because, let's face it, in the big beta sessions everybody is still a noob. Granted, you could get a decent group in Crushbone at level 7 sometimes, but it wasn't exactly the same as NToV, was it? The feeling comes from trying to figure out things like how to manage agro without knowing jack about what's going on under the hood. It's that feeling of not having the combat system mastered down to min-maxing numbers and still trying to work as a team.


There has been an argument going on in this thread that has been amusing to watch because it's an exercise in missing the point. Dungeon crawls in ESO aren't reminiscent of EQ due to similar dungeons (of course not, in this era), but due to that feeling of, "We got this, team! Good job... OMG WTF just happened?!?" Wipes happen. They come out of nowhere. When you think that you have it down, you don't. That's not *all* dungeons; there's one in Cyrodiil with decent drops that I nearly cleared solo. Then there's also the fact that I completed two instanced dungeons of the three in the newbie zones for each alliance, but that third wiped group after group after group at the boss, no matter the level. We tried so many strategies and approaches to take on that goblin king that it wasn't even funny, each of us trying to apply lessons from EQ that didn't actually apply; "How the hell do I keep losing/getting agro?"

Personally, I just let it go when I could have explained after the second wipe that agro isn't controlled that way with this one and everybody has to react to telegraphs, but meh. Sometimes it's fun to just support people trying to figure it out themselves.

Bear in mind that as EQ became a totally different game sometime between GoD and LDoN, many people left and haven't played MMOs since. WoW doesn't have the same artistic style to it, and TES became a favorite among that crowd. Of course they're going to compare EQ and ESO in that case because they have no other frame of reference! Too bad they didn't hear about Vanguard.

In ESO the "go find higher mobs" rule does apply. It has to. Think about ZMO's market diversity. You got your old school MMO players (ie, FoH) who will come in and look for the greatest challenge that requires the best mastery, PvP junkies who will live in Cyrodiil, Elder Scrolls players who have never touched a MMO before and are used to running around one-shotting everything as a practical demigod, and then we can just call the rest your standard MMO market. The only way a game can attempt to be "all things to all people" is to provide diversity of content. In turn, the only way to do that is to think about where to put what.

It would be awesome for the world to have that dangerous feeling, and it will in adventure zones. In the meantime, the lowest common denominator are the Elder Scrolls fans who don't know what they're doing yet. As a result, the open overworld -- especially at the beginning of the game -- is catered to them. You can push outward from the last quest you received and encounter more challenging content. It takes holding down 'w' for three to five minutes if you watch the map to keep from being stopped by some chasm or lavaflow. And there will be quests there when you arrive, probably a new town to start operating from, and other players doing the same thing whose playstyle is probably closer to your own.


On the other hand, you could just stand outside Davon's Watch and tell the new players to get off your lawn.

The difference is adventure zones exist purely in the realm of fantasy where some regular zones will be complete and functional at launch

kudos_sl said:

Can someone explain what the difference between a regular zone and an adventure zone is?

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Adventure zones are 24 man raid style PVE content that you do once you get to the veteran levels. None have been released yet so no one knows how they will work.

A regular zone is level 1-50 PVE content.

Vitality_sl said:

I was a Bow Templar - Vamp Bane + Soul Trap + Poison Arrow and then on to the next mob, by the time I got to the next mob the previous one was dead, no damage taken.

Shokran jazeelan,
Vitality

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Sorry for the noob question but can you be a Templar and still use a bow without it negatively impacting your healing? (To the point that you are not an effective healer.)

Muligan_sl said:

Sorry for the noob question but can you be a Templar and still use a bow without it negatively impacting your healing? (To the point that you are not an effective healer.)

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You only have 5 skill slots and an ultimate. If you put bow skills into any of those five then that is a slot you cannot put a healing skill. It's not a big deal for most content probably but later you will find you might need all 5 for healing skills. Also, some of the best healing skills are on your restoration staff skill line which you give up if you wield a bow.

Muligan_sl said:

Sorry for the noob question but can you be a Templar and still use a bow without it negatively impacting your healing? (To the point that you are not an effective healer.)

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If you want to maximize your healing abilities and use a bow, then train the bow and a resto staff. You'll be able to switch between them with a keypress at level 15. Templars have the best class abilities for healing, so in those early levels you can probably be an effective-enough PvE healer while training bow (if you want to work on it first). I'd recommend keeping the resto staff in group and switching to bow while solo until you get that second hotbar.

edit: That second hotbar helps a lot for custom builds. In this case, you can fill one out with healing abilities and the other with bow abilities.