I'd watch it. I actually bought the game back at Launch (pretty sure I have some preorder bonuses, too), got a couple of hours in, and went back to The Old Republic instead. Wouldn't mind seeing what I missed!
Fun fact: Waking up in the prison in Coldharbour used to be how the game started when it came out. It wasn't a repeat when the game came out, and it's also why it's so highly detailed compared to the rest - it was the hook. To this day I do not understand what the hell is up with the new intro.
Mmos seem to think the reason no new people want to join the game is because they don't understand it, so they go and revamp the tutorials. But the tutorials don't cover all the confusing annoying shit that's actually stopping people
@@Hemostat yeah. eso especially has a problem with not explaining things to the player. like new players are supposed to know that tanks have to slot a taunt to keep aggro on the enemy.
I actually enjoy the new intros, they change with different chapters that come out.. Keeps it a little more fresh for the recurring players (which make up most of the player base).
I started playing Elder Scrolls: Online when Elsweyr released, and this game has the worst new player experience I've ever seen in a game. I actually enjoyed myself until I hit 50 (max level) and realized that I had to grind to CP160 in order for any gear I farmed to actually matter. I stuck it out, geared up and eventually farmed vMA (staff never dropped) and later decided to attempt getting the remaining gear I was after from dungeons (I had reached CP400~ at this point). I ended up quitting because of how prevalent (and easy) vote kick abuse was. I'd often sit through a 20-30 min queue only to get kicked the moment I zoned into the dungeon, presumably because I hadn't played the game long enough to be deemed worthy of playing through outdated (non-DLC) content. I've never before (or since) encountered a more toxic group of players.
oh damn. your video hit just right. im playing that behemoth of rng infested game 500+hrs or so over the course of the past fey years and oh boy... the timegating drives me nuts. invisible walls are horrendous. the world is not as open as they claim. many of the ingame activities feel like a chore due to the timegating and Fomo crap. but let me give you one advice for the main quest, i learned yesteryear: you can fasttravel zu the prophets cave free of charge as far as i know. so no stupid walking. Awwww speaking of walking. the horsetraining is nuts also.... you have to wait 20 + hrs for the speed training to complete.
I used to be big into ESO PVP is 2017. It was so much fun. I put a lot of time in ESO...and money...tried playing it recently and just couldnt get back into it.
It's the epitome of the "It's Fixed now" game. Where the only thing fixed or changed were the surface level complaints about the game while the core gameplay and mechanics are still rotten and broken.
As someone who was a beta tester for Ultima Online when I was a teen and experienced the endless potential of the genre at its very beginning… it’s wild how constricted and railroaded the genre has become thanks to the dark arts sales psychology that consumed mmos during the 00’s. Dunno that there’s a more abused genre fanbase than this one
My impression after playing this game for a couple of hours was: This is not an Elder Scrolls game that happens to be an MMO, it is an MMO that happens to be set in Tamriel.
What most ppl dont get is that they took away almost every key aspect of an elder scrolls game and expect it to work. Best example is fucking classes. The whole point of every eso game was always, build you character how you like it. But here nonono ppl defend their class system like its the best thing in the game.
@@markusgame3 Not to mention how stupidly scuffed the mechanics are compared to the actual games. Go into stealth -> attack an enemy with a bow -> your character stands up and makes himself visible to the enemy for some fucking reason. This is the point where I said "fuck that" and dropped out of the free trial.
My thought exactly. Got it for free on Epic, played something like 5 hrs, found it lacking on so many levels, took a peak at the shop and noped the f*ck out.
It's a really funny bit of irony: I WAS a master blacksmith back in the day. Even had many of the rarest styles that were in heavy demand. Was In a guild with people who could basically get emperor title in pvp on demand. Was super addicted. However I stopped paying the monthly fee for a while cause of money constraints at the time. This was a handful of years ago. Being a crafter my inventory is FULL FULL. So every time I considered going back to the game because it's "free to play" I remember that my inventory is so screwed and I'm endlessly encumbered and that makes me not want to play. Lol They created their own perfect storm of not wanting to play despite liking most of the game. That said I heard they kinda revamped the style system since then idk if it's better or worse than it was.
Im on the same boat as you, I eventually turned my bank to my crafting mats storage cause i didnt care enough to pay for ESO+ again after years of playing
@@ramy9450 I had so many things in my inventory left even though I was also using my bank that it would take an impossibly long time to transfer anything, that's partly why I didn't go back too lol
@@baddragonite I get you lol. It's really daunting having to deal with that storage.. I recently only got back after really enjoying the new class, so the inventory management was worth it eventually
@@ramy9450 yeah, like I said I was a no life master blacksmith with basically no money put in the game except for the monthly sub and a couple MTs, (and buying the initial disk before it was ftp and expansions and stuff) so for the inventory to be daunting to me you know it was really bad hahaha
The prophet immediately messaging you right after you leave him was originally gated behind level. So originally, you wouldn't be contacted until you were X levels higher the next time you were in a major settlement. It's only because they removed the level blocks that now he just contacts you the moment you set foot near town lol.
How annoying and immersion breaking. It's like how in Days Gone to get the next story mission / camp mission you have to exit a camp via a gate and THEN will you be contacted to come back to said camp to talk to associated NPC😅😅
Doubt you’ll ever read this but having watched the channel from almost the start to now, and remembering how gut wrenching your just incase goodbye during your outerworlds video was, it has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to have taken this ride with you Strat. I watched you from when I was in the army, to when I was a husband, and all the way to my days as a widower; your videos have stood as great comfort to my life during the best and darkest days. You’re a real one Strat, don’t forget that brother, love you man 😎🤝
The problem is many have tried to create something new and utterly failed. Either because they didnt understand the genre enough, they turned it into a cashgrab at some point, couldnt provide content, or just constant technical issues that never got fixed. The hardest part of making a mmo today is that you pretty much need every well recieved qol thing all the other mmo have, an engaging story preferably in an already established universe, fluid gameplay, pve and pvp content, constant updates ect. ect. ect. and more to really set it above the big 3 or 4. And i highly doubt that this is possible nowadays just from a financial standpoint alone.
Well I mean for a time they did in the early 2000s. The Matrix Online, City of Heroes, there was that post apocalyptic one where you drove cars. Not really sure how you can make an mmo without having it be a certain type of rpg.
They just moved “leveled zones” behind dlc content “veteran and hardmodes” and left open world to the casuals. That challenge still exists, just do a no death hardmode speed run of a trial.
Honestly, love the review. Fills out most of my main complaints while still providing praise towards the care and effort they put into the quests and lore. I think my biggest gripe, aside from things like Backpack space and Mount levels being character specific; would be how One Tamriel straight up MURDERED my ability as a master crafter to go to low level zones, stock up on low-level resources, and help new players get gear that would not only help them level, but look great. Since materials were scaled just as much as enemies, I could no longer go to starter zones for starter materials; I'd only end up getting rubedite no matter where I went. I genuinely had to adapt my strategy to offer my services as a crafter where they had to provide their own crafting mats, which just felt wrong. Like, at that point, I should just encourage them to level crafting (even if they didnt' want to).
if you have less skills point in a specific skill line you will find that material so if you have 0/10 in that skill youll find the mats for that skill lol youll also find the max level mat but youll still find the material equal to your skill
@@velidreth9856 True, but I also don't like the idea of having to respect just to help out some new players. Honestly I ended up just buying stacks of mats from guild shops.
@@Buttonmasher50 honestly you get so many of the starting resources by doing writs. but that skill 0/10 skill trick is useful for getting lower level alchemy solvents which everyone needs to level up their alchemy.
The only thing I disagree with here is how ESO handled the lore of the Elder Scrolls--It's been completely fucked, with so many holes ripped into it due to ESO having to fish for content. Who in their right mind thought that House Dagoth should be fully functional faction that far back? Or that atronachs just come in all animal shapes now? Why did they have to ruin the mystique about the Yokudan pantheon by throwing them at the wall and saying "Yep, they work exactly like Daedra. No, it's not unique." or show that the Imperial City just hasn't changed at all in a thousand years? How come Mehrunes Dagon has to look a fool by trying a grand total of three times to invade Tamriel, why couldn't we just stick with the two? Or the one, if you don't count battlespire. Molag Bal, anyone? What about the dragon-priests that are now up and kicking, along with dragons, just so they could sell a shitload of diet Skyrim DLC? Even the small things, included purely for meme value, show no respect. The Lusty Argonian Maid existed 800 years before it was ever written? That might seem like a really trite thing to point out or complain about, but if you can't keep your timeline straight and do even a bare amount of research into the little things, how are you going to handle the big things? tl;dr care was taken to include lore that would sell well and get laughs out of nerds finding meta-jokes funny. It was not taken to lore consistency.
@@TheReuleaux You're absolutely correct! I should have specified that the lore of ESO is designed to work within its closed system, and it works well for that. The quests, journals, and self-contained stories within each zone are for the most part well written and consistent. It's a non-canon entry, and takes place in a time period that had not yet been explored by the main series.
Thank god for this. I just got back into the game , and by god is it really a minefield of manipulative real-life money sinks. So, so predatory. Thank goodness I am an adult with self control and realistic desires. Otherwise, I can see it in every fiber of the game how in one day , I could probably spend $1000 and still not even make a dent in the mountain of purchasable/monetized systems.
55:18 I just have to say that I'm kind of into the idea of the prince of domination making a prison that will always without exception hold ONE prisoner. For every one of those prisons he will always have a plaything, regardless of it being a valuable soul or not.
How come more people have complained about Fallout 76 & Starfield but are completely silent when it comes to ESO's micro-transaction system? This is the first video I've ever seen that says anything negative about it.
They did when ESO first came out, and since then most main stream audiences believe the game died back when it launched and therefore don't care to look into what its been up to since. Also probably the fact it's an MMO, and its practices are very very common
I'm gonna be completely honest here. I see people making the same complaints as you in every other "review" I have seen by people who aren't a part of the regular player base. People who aren't MMO players, for the most part. And that's where most of your complaints come from. You aren't MMO players. So the design choices that are made are alien to you. Because they're vastly different than what you're used to. Such as the differences between the mainline ES games and ESO. One prioritizes exploration and single player experiences. The other prioritizes player retention and engagement as well as making money due to the lack of required subscription. WoW and FF14 don't have such invasive cash shops, because they're games that require a sub. So they have a constant revenue stream without needing to add loopholes to the cash shop. ESO doesn't have that luxury... This isn't to say you're wrong however. It's just that you're critiquing the game from a perspective that doesn't represent the game the way it should be viewed. This is initially what caused confusion on release. People expected skyrim but with multi-player. It was never intended to be that and wasn't even advertised as that. But people saw "the elder scrolls" and ignored literally everything after that. The same applies today. This isn't an ES game first. It's an MMO first. And if people go into it with that mindset, they're more likely to enjoy their experience than they are if they latch onto the ES label. That's how I have enjoyed my 8k hours played so far... You're crafting system rant isn't even reasonable either. I got every single trait researched in less than 8 months without spending a cent. Gold isn't hard to come by either. I don't even use the trader system in the game and I have 8 million gold... If you don't like grinding, then just say so. Because a lot of what I got from this is just "it takes too long to do stuff and I don't do well with deferred gratification and want all the shinnies now as aposed to later."
Oh bro I remember when I pre-ordered this as a kid after playing Skyrim and Oblivion expecting it to be similar not really knowing what an MMO is, haven't played since it released
Same here, I revisited it years later and actually had a pretty good time with it, but not being an MMO player meant playing strictly solo and I always felt like I couldn't experience half of the game
Man, hearing cyrodil pvp is dead is a huge bummer, since it was my favorite part of the game I have fond memories of organizing armies of players across 1 to sometimes 3 raid groups for my faction, and leading them like a general.
Cyrodill is dead in all but CP modes at 50. There its pretty back and forth, but its only one instance. Imperial city is dead all around though. Good way to make gold though as the runes from imperial city sell for 100k each.
It has been around ten years and they still can't figured out how to keep the Cyrodiil servers stable. In fact, over time Cyrodiil has become more unstable. It's a damn shame because you used to be able to run around with hundreds of players fighting it out in multiple spots all over the map.
The dungeons seems similar to the ones in Kingdoms of Amalur, but those were way more complicated, some had puzzles, most of them had bosses, because they were quest dungeons, even the castles never had a clear path to reach to the end, you needed to explore, and of course, not Skyrim door to go back to the beginning, meaning that you need to run back to the entrance of the dungeon.
I mean... It's a fun popcorn RPG, and there's enough hinted-at lore that you're left wanting to know more. But the gameplay loop is repetitive, it's absurdly easy to make a busted character, area levelling makes full exploration pointless, and unpatched quest bugs mean the game is impossible to 100%. All in all? A half baked game that could have been great with more time and better management, but as such is only just pretty alright.
People these days feel a need to be constantly stimulated. To be constantly satisfied and happy. That's not how anything works. That's what MMO engagement preys upon. It's not a good thing for you or the industry. Less fun, more engagement. Because it lasts longer, even if it's more miserable. No self-control makes an MMO fan out of anyone.
I played that game for like 5 hours and just couldn’t get into the groove of it… …to be fair though, that’s exactly what happened with Morrowwind too. I’ll pick it up in 5 years, try again, do better, and kick myself for not trying harder sooner… I’ve been on this radiant quest once before! 😂
After the next gen update and how visual update, it’s been fun and it almost scratched the icy morrow wind have with the hidden weapons and armor you’d have to find just by looking around a corner or a random body in some dungeon.
Strat would like Outward. He'd bang his head on it for the first playthrough, then zoom through a second with all of the meta knowledge then get hooked on build creation. As long as he avoids the brothers DLC.
Small reminder, In morrowind it was suppose to be living world. So nothing scaled with the players expect couple monster spawns. This made the world feel more alive and player just exploring it. It didn't felt like "game" in that way.
It's one of my favorite games tbh and the one with the most hours played on steam. I love just walking around and enjoying the environment while questing.. simple, but enjoyable. I hope they go out of Tamriel and visit other continents on Nirn!
That's some pure hopium, we both know that's never happening and even if it does it's gonna be dog ass just like everything else Bethesda makes (I know Bethesda didn't make ESO but they swinging for the fences to make bad games like them)
300 hours played and not attack weaving hurts me to watch. ;) But seriously good video. Many valid criticisms. The way I view it is it's just more elder scrolls fun if you're interested, and you can take it piece by piece over as long as you want. Fun game, good stories if you pay attention, and nice enough dlc's. I don't think it's the best mmo ever, but I'd be very sad if it went away.
Honestly, these monetization practices are the reason I stick with mainly single player games. I feel like I keep getting held back by the devs for the purpose of a quick buck. : (
Another ppint regarding elden ring for atats wise is just to look at tropies/achievements and realise just how small the amount of people that get to the end of these games are
Your commentary is very weird sometimes. You say the quests are "actually kind of good in this game", but then you claim in the same sentence that the writing is so boring, you can't remember a single plot point from the entire game, and that the enemies are placed in that generic fashion which makes them seem like they solely exist to be fought by the player, as opposed to being actual inhabitants of the world. You make decent videos, but I think you should work on your coherency, or don't. Kind regards.
I think it's hilarious how ESO was initially dismissive and even hated by some members of the Elder Scrolls fandom, but now you can easily find people praising ESO and saying it's the proof that other studios would be better at handling the Elder Scrolls IP than modern Bethesda... especially after Starfield.
@@LostHorizons0not in any echo chsmber but from the little bit of lore i found in eso. They somehow contradicted and retconned alot of lore. Or tried to justify other retcons bethsada made like why cyrondii isnt a tropical jungle (hint real reason is cuz they saw the lord of the rinfs movies). Idc cuz elder scrolls lore has always been kinda stupid since oblivion after they fired the only guy who knew the lore. I just dont like badly written stories.
As a big Elder Scrolls fan (playing all of the main series games, except only a little bit of Arena), I finally dipped into ESO. At first, I was a bit shocked by how different it was, as I had never played an MMO either before. I enjoyed the world, the destinations, the little connections of lore to places and people only mentioned in the lore of the other games, and to an extent, interacting with other players was kinda novel and cool to me. HOWEVER, I kinda fizzled out after a while, because ultimately the game just kinda felt like busy work. Also, every other damn player seems so much more skilled than you, and they've already played every location a hundred times, so when you quest in groups, everyone is just sprinting through dungeons- no stopping to admire the sights, take in the lore/story, etc. It's like all they do is compulsively do busy work to max level a character as quickly as possible. I even had an idea to start and promote a guild that would cater to players who want to SLOW DOWN and suck in the exploration of places and lore a bit more, take their time, smell the flowers, etc. I keep thinking to dip back in from time to time, but it's a real OCD time waster, so I kinda stick to regular single player games most of the time.
In ESO, dungeons ARE a chore for high-level players. I'm a medium-skill player, and even to me, normal dungeons are a cakewalk with my main character. I even soloed some when I got bored of waiting for 40 mins in the dungeon finder. Imagine people to whom even veteran dungeons are easy and boring, but are forced to do daily dungeon runs of specific dungeons to get those armor styles from the Undaunted. I did it for a few weeks, and then took months off of the game as a result. It's mind-numbingly boring. This, of course doesn't only apply to skilled players, because everyone can get the daily rewards, but for those people running normals, the reward is halved, so they have to run MORE of them.
its because MMO players have this weird thing about efficiency to the point of taking the fun of the game, they will rush through everything to get to the end, and then complain that theres nothing to do. so devs are kind of forced to design their games around these weird systems that are only meant to waste time, it sucks because the genre has so much potential
A lot of MMO players have that "Rocket in the Ass Style" of play,that is why i Don't come near mmos 😹😹😹 if TESO was a singleplayer game,even a 500gb game,i definitely would played it.
As one of those that flat out sprints thru dungeons, I’d like to say….”knees to chest” I got pvping to do, and I wanna try out that set and see how I like it. Not sit around looking at scenery while you read every damn bookcase in a dungeon.
Do you switch pvp sets from dungeons daily? If not, this doesn't really apply to you. As far as I know, the pvp meta changes mostly at major patches, and the set collection makes revisiting the dungeon after it's complete moot, if you just pvp.
I remember dreaming about exploring Tamriel. Unity Daggerfall did it just fine. Sure, hey, not multiplayer, not very modern, repetitive - but complete and without the need to purchase tokens. /shrug
Regarding the Style and Motif point, I agree with you completely with only one small observation. You had insanely bad luck. I played a couple of years ago and I remember getting 5 or 6 blue books with motifs and 2 purple books in only a couple of days. All on the same character. It was a nord warrior and I did not play for more than 2 leveling zones.
Those are considered "racial styles" now, and are pretty common, they sell for less that 500g a pop. The real time and money sink is in the over 100 OTHER motifs, which all drops from individual sources and in one of thirteen PAGES, not whole books. Complete a group boss quest in, say, Vvardenfell, and you have a chance to get one of 13 pages for one specific motif style which you may of may not already have.
@@profdracko I didn't even know the crown store existed before I knew how to do research of traits and train daily at the staples. The fact this guy says jt would cost $2000 of actual money to get upgrade inventory space is absurd. How about playing the game BEFORE going into the crown store? If anything the crown store is confusing. I didn't know how to get crowns for the longest time. Maybe because I already knew how to do daily horse training and wasn't going to spend actual money to speed up the process that cost me 250 gold per day. Or maybe because I wasn't so ADHD that I demanded instant inventory max space for all characters at once. I am cp 3600. In reality I am WAY higher than that if ESO allowed it. This guy has no idea how to play an RPG. I don't believe e for a second he ever played Final Fantasy or Skyrim. Grinding things out is kinda an RPG thing. If you don't like it YOU DONT LIKE RPGS. And jts clear this guy hates to the very essence what an RPG is. Much less an MMORPG.
Games are made for toddlers today. If you lose, the developer fears you will quit. When I see this gameplay, all I can think of is Conan Exiles and how much more fun that is.
I think that it was moronic of you to make fun of story at 1:05:00 as it was pretty nice to get to know people that matter for story. SPOILER ALERT. You have to choose who dies later and so it is important to know who are those people to make you feel something before you choose.
"This game charges you for simple quality of life improvements every chance it gets, so the game has all these design decisions which are stupid, time consuming and annoying for the player to deal with and in order to get around those deficiencies you have to pay your way around them, so in a way the developers are encouraged to make their game worse to play in order to encourage you to spend money" Oh wait, I thought I was watching a 100% accurate description of Guild Wars 2 for a second.
True, and WoW... and FFXIV... and Runescape... and... yeah, MMOs are predatory by nature. I dont think there's even one that isn't predatory. People should stop playing them as a whole and stop being slaves to these shit "games"
Both these games are same cash grab but defended by long-time players are that are balls deep into Sunk Cost Falacy and Buyers Remorse so they can't stop becasue that would be like wasting hundreds/thousands $ at that point. I just tried ESO this week and immideitly quit when I saw that most of stuff that is good/QOL is behind paywall/RNG/FOMO. And I immidietly thought - yup, just like GW2. Games like that basically make slaves from playerbase, making them invest so much money and time that they just can't quit to not feel like losers.
2:14:00 as a hardcore pvp player, I left because of poor server performance, and they couldn't figure out that their main pvp mode (of the time) Cyrodiil played right into their servers crashing: to catch a castle, you need a big group, but too many big groups in one place caused heavy server lag to the point where it would crash. That and the gear grind and low build variation.
And I still think that stupid spawning hammer was freaking unimaginative and took away from the PvP. Instead of fixing issues, they stuck that dumbness in. Gear grind. Low build variation. Gear and mechanics getting balanced to PvE standards. The intentionally breaking of the game by making every new class OP for a bit so everyone would rush to buy it. One Tamerial. Battlegrounds.
@@jesperburns Yeah, it was a meant to be Zenimax’s solution to how one faction regularly outnumbered the others. A super hammer occasionally spawns at certain locations, typically in areas controlled by the losing factions. A player can pick it up and pretty much destroy multiple teams of players and crush keep walls. So it basically makes the person who grabs it OP. Personally I hated the very idea of it. But to make it worse, the dominating faction can also pick the hammer up. Even if another faction picks it up, the dominating one would eventually overwhelm the person and pick the hammer up upon their death. There was also a problem with the people “spying” on behalf of the main faction. They’d keep characters logged into the opposing factions and use those characters to grab the hammer when it spawned and then either run it to the winning faction or jump into a river full off slaughter fish with it, which prevents anyone from retrieving it. It sort of took the concepts of strategy and skill and tossed it out the window.
As an old Elder Scrolls fan, I was really into ESO, despite it's disregard of lore. Fallout 4 had already taught me that Bethesda doesn't care anymore, so, I ended up liking ESO quite a lot. Then I discovered Final Fantasy XIV. Impossible to go back. Eat fuck, Bethesda.
Am I the only one for whom ESO never really clicked? I tried to like this game and spent quite a lot of time on it, and I must admit it's by no means a low-quality product, but I also cannot pinpoint at least one area where the game shines for me. It just was a very flat experience
I have to agree. I have plenty of games I like and play, but for some reason I've put a lot of hours in ESO. I don't feel my time was exactly wasted, but I'm not sure what I got out of it.
So, I first played ESO somewhat near-ish to launch, and the Coldharbour stuff used to be the intro. Which makes sense, because the two big characters you mentioned there are clearly voiced by Michael Gambon (of Dumbledore fame) and John Cleese (of Monty Python fame.) Which like, yeah, that's pretty Bethesda-y. Oblivion's opening features Patrick Stewart pretty heavily, and then transitions quickly to escorting Sean Bean around. Fallout 3' intro also features Sean Bean. Skyrim and FO4 don't really have much in the way of celebrity VA's, but I know where they'd be if they had em.
how you can get wrong 75% of all you say, if you played the game so much as you say? i get it, daddy need money and drama get the subs going, but damn...
I also remember another time in the faction war where we had a huge group together all turning into werewolves hopping around the map lol It was a really fun mode, too bad it fell off
Yknow, ESO is literally the only MMO to ever hold my attention for more than about 2 weeks. I got sucked in pretty hard a couple times. I think it was purely the fashion- I wasn't playing ESO to be an unstoppable vet dungeon soloing badass (although I was eventually), I was playing it to style on mfs with my sick drip. Nobody had style like me, and they knew it. I would stand around town, /leanbackcoin, and just let everyone bask in envy of how swag I looked. (You can get all the good stuff from guild traders, I actually really like the in game economy in this game. I never bought a single thing from the crown store, besides wasting my free subscription crowns on mount upgrades or whatever.)
Sad to hear this in past tense :P I may not be as advanced in the drip game myself, as I collect the houses instead... Been playing off and on since the game's early release, yet still never finished the main story.
i have about 4k hours in the game and just thinking about getting back into it. Never bought eso+, never spent money on the store. The drip was always the main point for me too, got into harder content just to unlock skins and therefore more fashion lol. And yeah guild traders are the thing that saves from some of the negatives like grinding motifs, gear and you can actually buy research scrolls aswell with ingame money.
I've been playing ESO and Oblivion a lot lately. It really got me thinking. One of the funnest parts of Oblivion for me is running through Oblivion gates and shutting them down. I also love the deadric quest where you have to enter an Oblivion gate to face off in an arena against a bunch of other champions. Imagine if they added an Oblivion gate PvPvE dungeon to the game, through a new quest or instanced area, where players would enter into some kind of arena, where they might face off against another player in a duel, or multiple players in a battle. But there's also mobs and traps you need to watch out for. I think this idea could be so fucking sick if they added it to the game, and also if they modeled a version of it to be sort of like the Corrupted Dungeons in Albion online. The nostalgia of running through Oblivion gates like the good old days, combined with the excitement of a new dungeon with the threat of PvP. It would be so awesome, but it's unlikely to happen unless we all demand it right the fuck now.
I got back to the game after almost 8 years during the New Year's Eve and been playing for almost 4 days now. I think the greatest issue of the game is that it is so heavily monetized. I bought a dlc pack from steam thinking that was all I needed to do, and I saw 500 more dlcs I needed /full of content/ and at high prices, including stuff that looks like it could be fun - like the dark brotherhood and thieves guild stuff - and all of this wasn't even mentioned anywhere before purchase. On top of that, the ESO PLUS they want you to buy is bloody expensive for not granting you anything permanent. Everything in the game, even though they may be fun, is designed to empty your wallet... which makes me really tired just thinking about.
bro you’re getting into an mmo that releases 2-3 dlcs a year if you come back after 8 years it’s gonna have a lot of content that you “need” to buy. as someone who has over 8k hours and 2 accounts at max lvl with over 35 characters between the two you absolutely DONT need any dlc to perform well in pvp or pve. Also ESO plus gives you every dlc that isn’t an expansion plus crowns worth the money you already spent and bag space…
ya i'm not sure why people act like its rocket science. play f2p for a couple days and if you like it buy a 1 month sub to see whats available. once you realize about 5k hours is available to you, you don't need to spend another cent with your sub active. I never wasted money on this game wondering what was happening with the docs and expansions
I love ESO but it has deprived me of more money faster than most MMO's have ever, and yeah, to MAKE it fun, if I hadn't I would have quit a while ago. You legit pay to have fun, becuase it's amazing with the sub or bought content. But it's so totally wrong that it demands that to be so.
My boy Strat is one of the very few channels I'll sit down and watch a 2.5 hour video for. I love his writing. I'm a bit of a writer myself so I appreciate the skill quite a bit.
Great review, I was about to give it a try again and then you helped me remember all of the scummy business practices that are packed into the gameplay loop of this game. Back to Morrowind I go.
Eso is like any other mmo you either hate or love it. I agree it needs work especially for a 10 year old game and hopefully they start listening to the community and bring some balance to it.
I quit before U35. I had been playing ESO since it released on consoles, in fact, it's the reason I went with xbox instead of playstation (the PS imperial edition was sold out, and I was on the verge of moving to next gen, so I picked the console for the game). It had a lot of flaws, then it started to get better, I always played the game because of the potential it had to be one of the best MMO's... unfortunately, everything the devs do just pisses me off to no extent, and it's VERY hard for me to get pissed off at a game. This game angers me beyond like none else. It's the game that adds systems that would make a fun dynamic, but then boil it down to numbers for the sake of "balance" It's the game that spits on support roles as they take their potentially fun skills and rework them for the only type of build that matters in this god-forsaken game: DPS. You CAN steal, but what's the point, since it's very limited and there are better ways to make money with a lot less risks, and a lot more involved in the game. You CAN min/max builds, grind for the special weapon or armor you wanted, but what's the stupid point of it if the enemies are still morons that take over 3 minutes to kill you anyway (I can attest to that, my DPS build against one enemy, 3 minutes before I got below 10% hp, then I killed that enemy within 2 seconds... on my tank build, grouped up against 5 enemies, they never managed to lower my health below 90% because my HP regen was higher than the damage I was taking... not only that, THEY ALL DIED because they would also take damage just for hitting me). It's a game that will make you grind your ass off for far too long to get some of the best perks, weapons, armors.... but offers you nothing to actually enjoy them. It's a game where you start running dungeons to get better gear, but the only motivator to use that better gear is so you can run other dungeons to get other gear. The story is the most bland can of corporate dialogues with a very stupid, pathetic, amnesiac protagonist. There are dialogue choices in the game engine, but the devs completely forgot about it, your dialogue choices are now "this is the only answer" or "goodbye". FFS, you can't even tell Eveli that she looks bad in the fancy dress, since your only available answer is "you look great"... It changes nothing, but why can't we even give our characters a personality during story missions? I can't say I hate the game... but I really absolutely hate everything the devs have done to it. The prophet telling you to F off only to reappear and say he's ready is the best example of how ZOS broke their own game. He would tell you go away and until you reached a certain level, he'd tell you to come back (usually every 10 levels). But since they ruined the level up system with a balanced gameplay, he no longer waits. It's stupid, and it shows how short-sighted the devs are, and how lazy they are to even bother fixing it.
I've tried to play this game at least 7 times and only lasted a weekend every time. Then tried once again recently just last year, decided to see as much of the content as I could, even bought the dlc to make sure I stay. Tried to rope myself in sunken cost style. Even got the subscription so that crafting materials don't shit up my inventory like they always do. I couldn't last 2 weeks. It's so fucking boring and repetitive. Some of the quests aren't bad at all, but they're not enough to delude the absolute monotony. If only the combat was fun. God fucking damn it.
I like the free exploration (and especially being able to do other factions' zones) but I do think the totally flat scaling is a problem because it makes every quest feel identical and every boss/quest anti-climactic. And you also lose the sense of progression from levelling pretty quickly because you can slot so few abilities (10 if you're sweaty; 5 if you're lazy). I do think the openness is worth it but I wish they'd made a few small changes to their approach: 1) Scale players down to the zone (like SWTOR) instead of scaling everything up to 50 (makes no mechanical difference but makes progression feel better to the player) 2) Allow more abilities on your bar (like 8-10) so players are more excited about trying new abilities 3) Allow story content to have a difficulty curve, _even if_ it's all still easy. It's fine to cater narrative content to narrative players but the last boss of an epic questline being identical to the first and dying in 5 seconds *hurts the narrative experience*
@@joshhobson2340 yep just add an optional difficult like LOTRO did in the form of a debuff to the player. its not a perfect solution but when a game run by a skeleton crew can do it I'm sure ESO can pull it off if they actually cared to
I absolutely love Elder Scrolls and being able to share it with my friends, primarily through RP. There's a lot in ESO that allows me to do that. I'm happy to spend a decent bit of money on the game to enhance my experience through cool thematic stuff like housing and cosmetics. But I can never bring myself to feel invested in anything because it's all so dull and grindy, and there's barely any support for RPers. These days I just like painting Call to Arms miniatures to play with my friends.
Thanks for PERFECTLY matching my energy and language on these subjects. This game could be SO much better with the simplest of QoL changes, but they just DON'T fuckin' do it. (Or put it behind a paywall like they do all the time) And a few additions to that armor styles section and Zen's braindead GREED. - You're incorrect about the deconstruct/sell unlocking for motifs, you HAVE to find/buy the motif pages in order to unlock them to wear or craft. (+Some of those 'helpful' notes saying where you can find some styles, are there for styles that can't even DROP YET, so it tells you where, but you literally can't because they haven't added it to the loot pools.) - Alot of the crown store motifs are severely overpriced in comparison to purchasing them with gold through guild stores, there's a few that are that $40+ price tag, when you can just buy them for gold at a pretty cheap price of gold. [If you bought gold, you'd ONLY pay $2, get that motif, and several other motifs for your money in gold.] - They REMASTERED all the low-res base race motif styles, and instead of just updating the old versions like they should have, they put them behind a paid content wall of Greymoors antiquities, and left the old low-res motifs in. Just amazing this game and it's developers, a m a z i n g.
The scaling is ridic. The purpose is to enable you to play with friends, regardless of the level difference. What it really does it prevent you from feeling like you are making any progress.
Meanwhile for endgame trials some classes are so bad, they straight up absent from team compositions. And there is kinda no build variety either, because there is meta build per role and then everything else that can't clear vet trial on hard mode. Also difference in healers exists in ESO, but instead of having special abilities and stuff, main difference is between bad healer (only heals) and good healer (heals, restores resources, uses buff sets, deals damage to enemies, debuffs enemies).
Elden ring is a joke compared to the difficulty of some of the 4/12 dlc content of ESO :D :D :D For a player with more than 10k hours its sad to see some new players perspective acting like they know the game even tho they only did some questing and basic dungeons/trials :D
I played this for about 4 months straight. I got a max lvl character and started doing end-game content but quickly lost interest when I realized the only reason I was playing was to unlock higher difficulty modes of the same content. I think MMOs just aren't my thing. I like games with a beginning, middle and end. MMOs are designed to be endless and I just can't do that for very long
My biggest gripe with this game when I tried it, was how AWFUL and floating/airey everything felt game play wise... The lack of punch/impact when you hit and got attacked felt like a glorified larping session with expensive CGI...
198 is barely even early game lets be real. At 198 you're not even fully comfortable with the combat system and are nowhere near exploring it's intricacies
yes with 198cp you played this game A LOT :D :D :D ofc some of the crown store things are not very noob friendly but if you have a brain you shouldnt buy stuff with crowns as a noob in general
The part where you were sacrificed and woke up in Coldharbour was the original intro in the game. You started in the prison and broke out, and when you escaped back into the real world. You would then go to Stross M'kai if you were a Daggerfall Covenant character. The thing where the prophet shows up right after leaving never happened since you were required to do other quests in order to level up, and only upon reaching a higher level would he show up and tell you to find him. I never went past rescuing Lyris though. The game was just too boring, so I just went back to modded Skyrim and never came back.
ESO has the worst MTX in any big MMO, next to Neverwinter. New World is egregious in some places, but they couldn't hold a candle to charging $80 for one of the houses in ESO. Also the combat lacks weight, which is part of why I stopped. It felt mediocre AF. The level scaling of ESO is completely shit in an game like this when they don't make any effort to still provide challenge. Secret World comes to mind when it comes to good difficulty progression
I have soooo many fond memories of this game, playing it with everything from friends to family members to now-estranged lovers. If you want an open world with endless okayish content, adventuring and thieving or decorating a house together, you could go worse.
ya, ESO straight up has one of the worst cash shops of any western MMO, especially with how they monetise so much of their game :/ Honestly, you could argue pay for convenience is worse than P2W cause the devs are literally creating a problem/grind/barrier/restriction then selling you the solution. It's beyond scummy and ESO is filled with that.
While I think critique is a good thing, you have to take into consideration what you're critiquing for it to make any sense. A lot of this video is "this MMO has made this feature like this because it's an MMO, so I don't like it!", which is like saying that you don't like a racing game because the car wheels don't shoot lasers. It's okay to not like something, but it makes absolutely no sense to compare an MMO to a single player game and critique it based on that comparison.
that bit about veteran players being annoyed with newer players is interesting. admittedly i do get aggravated with newer players because they can make the dungeons take a looot longer. but i always know that it isn't really their fault because zos doesn't teach new players. new players have to seek out resources to find out what they should be doing.
On the other hand, you get "pros" who claim they can tank veterans in DPS gear just fine, and refuse to suit up for UG, and such. I often saw them with like 19k hp, and the life expectancy of a blind, dehydrated mayfly, blindly running into red circles, then giving shit to the others before leaving.
@@remiss6355 *some* people can manage it, like for a veteran base game dungeon hardmode, you'll get someone with like 20k hp and they never die while holding the main bosses taunt (they don't hold elites/enemies that can cc the team). i had that happen with a pvper in coa2 hm, pleasantly surprised when i saw he wasn't dying. granted that story is very different if it's vet dlc, it just won't be possible for most people. also what is UG, unhallowed grave?
@@colonian83 Yes, UG is Unhallowed Grave. I don't know what server/platform you've played on, but there was a LOT of overconfident people on Europe PC when I last played, who watched a single youtuber/clanmate who could actually play the game solo a dungeon, then tried to emulate them, and got slapped in the face hard. Sure, I myself played with someone who helped us in CoA2, when me and my friend wanted to do vet on that for the first time, but that is the exception. I think the circle goes like this: Newbies are annoyed with skilled players, skilled players are annoyed with everyone not "efficient" and medium skill people are annoyed with both, but mostly shut up, because they realise if they say something, it's another 50 mins in the finder.
@@remiss6355 i agree with your assessment of the community's feelings depending on their skill level. and sheesh 50 minutes, hoping that's hyperbole. in xb na it takes like 15 minutes for stuff like rnd and daily pledges. but haven't queued into a specific dungeon that wasn't a pledge for a while now. idk about EU. maybe they saw their boy alcast do it and got inspired lol.
Having 6 Vet level characters of all types and not a single one from an online build I can tell you that if you can think of something you can build it and you can beat Vet dungeons. And yes you do need healers to do Vet dungeons. My only real complaint about this game is about every Vet Dungeon boss has insta-death mechanics. That means all the work you put into your character and gear mean nothing. That is the only real frustrating part. Otherwise you can do a home grown build and with a decent group you will be fine.
Aside from the fact I no longer play with or speak to the people I used to. I used to love ESO. But as soon as they homogenised resources and damage and nerfed everything into the ground. I quickly began to hate it. Not only that but the supposed quality of life improvements cost an arm and a leg. For example; 1000 crowns buys you a pack of 10 riding lessons one of three types. This is roughtly £8.99 real world money. Now consider that default cost per character for 6 packs of each, is 6 x £8.99 x 3 which is then further multiplied by x 8 due to the default amount of character slots being 8. It roughly translates to £900+ if you do that for every character up to default max slots. When you do it without paying, you can pay 250 in game gold, for a 1% increase up to 60% for each type of lesson which has a 24hr cool down. IT. IS. ABSURD. You should be able to upgrade your mount with gold whenever you want, you shouldn't have to pay an absurd amount of money to do it all in one go. Making matters worse is if you are used to a max speed and stamina mount, starting a new character is painful as hell especially in cyrodil or the bigger zones. Even worse than that. THIS IS JUST A SMALL ARBITRARY PART OF THE GAME. Like Jesus christ zenimax. I played from 2014 to 2023 and not once did they ever make the effort to make players lives better, only exploit them further and the writing has gone down hill by miles as well.
My main character in ESO is a master crafter, with a stupid amount of real-world money sunk into unlocking styles... and I barely play that character anymore. I started a fresh character, and vowed to never grind again. I now have actual fun when playing ESO, because I play it like a first-person RPG adventure.
@devangoad I bought the game when the EoD expansion was released, my first few weeks was learning the game and then instantly went on a journey to get the skyscale. The game is absolutely awesome
Any game that takes advantage of players financially with microtransactions its a bad game. No if. No ands. No buts. Regardless of gameplay. Period. no exceptions.
"This game is endlessly frustrating and predatory, but I play it anyway, and I spend money on it anyway" Congratulations, you're part of the problem. The only thing worse than these games is the cognitive dissonance of the people who still pay for them, expecting something to magically change. Wanna stop being a victim? That's your choice.
"This game is endlessly frustrating and predatory, but I play it anyway, and I spend money on it anyway" Never said this so I don't know why it's in quotes. If you want to misrepresent my work, at least be more subtle about it. "Congratulations, you're part of the problem." By spending 2 and a half hours talking about the problem, I am part of the problem? You realize that these videos are a way to inform the public about a product before they buy it. If anything, I am part of the solution. A small part, granted, but a part nonetheless. "The only thing worse than these games is the cognitive dissonance of the people who still pay for them," It's literally my job to pay for the game and review it. It's the entire reason you are here typing your comment. Without one, we do not have the other. "Wanna stop being a victim? That's your choice." So if you put out a video explaining why someone shouldn't pay for a game unless you are okay with the following things, you are a part of the problem, and also a willing victim. Bro... Wut?
@@StratEdgyProductions You think I'm attacking you directly? Get over yourself, or don't, I don't care. I'm attacking what the modern gamer has become. Paying through the nose like an idiot, then turning around and pointing out all the bad things they've paid for, as if that is ever going to change anything. The only direct thing I have for you is that you, just like everyone else, cast your vote in the only way that makes any difference, you paid for garbage, and garbage is what you got.
yo guys, get into speedrunning retro, diablo ii, doom ii slaughter maps.. trying to do starting gear only runs of souls games... anything besides PLAYING MMO games... I listened to this while playing a real game and everything from every mmo is always all these things x10. Play ANY OTHER GAME! Try and 1cc a SHMUP, try and beat a game you like Hard Core Deathless and record the run with obs/ stream it on twitch.. move on with your life you sad men!
The rant about styles was kind of misinformative. All of them can be earned in-game, and all of them can be bought and sold between players. Even the time-gated event styles drop in such high numbers that it's trivial to buy the entire set from another player. The only ones that are slightly more difficult are the ones that drop from trials and vet dungeons, and even those have no restrictions on being traded. Also playing for three years and haven't got all the base-game racial styles? They sell for less than 100g a book. I started a new character last month and found five of them within a few hours. just loot a few urns or backpacks.
Alright video overall, but I feel like you lost the plot at the end with the queue discussions. The reasons you dont instaqueue into dungeons you're looking for isn't because no one is running them, but because people that are running them do so in 4man groups. On PCEU at least people search for people in guild chat and zone chat. That's why you have people in zones like grathwood and deshaan and craglorn typing out "LFM 1T1H" or "DD LFG pledges" or whatever. You just don't see people queuing up for vet dungeons because you don't want to be queued up with randoms in vet DLC dungeons, cuz they're difficult so knowing the people you're grouping with is pretty important. I personally have no issues finding trial or dungeon groups, cuz I go and ask people to join me. If I wanna farm gear from a dungeon I get 3 guildies and we trade the items we need with each other. When I farm sets I get the items I need in about 3 or 4 hours. And yeah I know that this is from the perspective of a sweaty nerd that runs things with an optimized group, but there are lots of casual groups that run dungeon gear farms. Casual guilds do that too and random people in zone chat also do it, it doesn't take that long to form a group, you just have to... you know... use the chat and ask people (on PCEU at least). Same for motifs (the transmog part of the game), they're not rare drops, they are a 100% drop if you do the dungeon on veteran hardmode, and like a 70% on veteran, the game actually rewards you for being good. You can cut on research time with research scrolls that don't cost real money, but yeah even so the grind is tedious, and I'm saying this as someone that has every research trait unlocked, I am a master crafter, but even so I got it done without actively seeking it out. I understand the gripes you have with the game, and these are some gripes I also have with it. The monetization is scummy, but less in the way of "you HAVE to pay for convenience" and more in the way of the game punishes you if you lack the information. Everything, aside from fancy mounts and big ass expensive houses, can be done purely by playing the game and not paying an extra dime, you just need to have the info, cuz the game is indeed VERY BAD at giving you crucial info. I feel like a lot of pain points people have with the game can be avoided by looking up a new player guide or a guide on the specific thing that you're doing (combat, crafting, trading etc.) Also off topic kinda, you can find some banger items if you pickpocket. Some of the most expensive furnishings can be found by pickpocketing or stealing from safeboxes, but they are zone and NPC type specific, so it's not entirely intuitive. You can even find motifs from pickpocketing in Vvardenfel! Anyhow, I hope you or people scrolling can find some of this info helpful and as an added gift since it was Christmas not too long ago the first 5 people on PCEU to reply can have a 60k gold house on me 😆
Would anyone like to see my thoughts on the DLC of ESO? Comment below and let me know.
I think some of the expansions are even better than the base game, please do this
Yeah but lock it behind some form of payment like Patreon sub to keep the overall ESO vibe
Thank you Sir, may we have another! 😎👍
Yes, please. I would love to see that.
I'd watch it. I actually bought the game back at Launch (pretty sure I have some preorder bonuses, too), got a couple of hours in, and went back to The Old Republic instead. Wouldn't mind seeing what I missed!
Fun fact: Waking up in the prison in Coldharbour used to be how the game started when it came out. It wasn't a repeat when the game came out, and it's also why it's so highly detailed compared to the rest - it was the hook. To this day I do not understand what the hell is up with the new intro.
Mmos seem to think the reason no new people want to join the game is because they don't understand it, so they go and revamp the tutorials. But the tutorials don't cover all the confusing annoying shit that's actually stopping people
@@Hemostat yeah. eso especially has a problem with not explaining things to the player. like new players are supposed to know that tanks have to slot a taunt to keep aggro on the enemy.
@@colonian83 that should be obvious i guess, but i see your point
I actually enjoy the new intros, they change with different chapters that come out.. Keeps it a little more fresh for the recurring players (which make up most of the player base).
@@anublsunder kinda sad some of the intros are just lost now. The morrowind one was pretty cool
I started playing Elder Scrolls: Online when Elsweyr released, and this game has the worst new player experience I've ever seen in a game. I actually enjoyed myself until I hit 50 (max level) and realized that I had to grind to CP160 in order for any gear I farmed to actually matter. I stuck it out, geared up and eventually farmed vMA (staff never dropped) and later decided to attempt getting the remaining gear I was after from dungeons (I had reached CP400~ at this point).
I ended up quitting because of how prevalent (and easy) vote kick abuse was. I'd often sit through a 20-30 min queue only to get kicked the moment I zoned into the dungeon, presumably because I hadn't played the game long enough to be deemed worthy of playing through outdated (non-DLC) content. I've never before (or since) encountered a more toxic group of players.
oh damn. your video hit just right. im playing that behemoth of rng infested game 500+hrs or so over the course of the past fey years and oh boy... the timegating drives me nuts. invisible walls are horrendous. the world is not as open as they claim. many of the ingame activities feel like a chore due to the timegating and Fomo crap.
but let me give you one advice for the main quest, i learned yesteryear: you can fasttravel zu the prophets cave free of charge as far as i know. so no stupid walking. Awwww speaking of walking. the horsetraining is nuts also.... you have to wait 20 + hrs for the speed training to complete.
This review is so entertaining, I've watched it twice. I can't even remember the last time I've rewatched a movie.
I used to be big into ESO PVP is 2017. It was so much fun. I put a lot of time in ESO...and money...tried playing it recently and just couldnt get back into it.
It's the epitome of the "It's Fixed now" game. Where the only thing fixed or changed were the surface level complaints about the game while the core gameplay and mechanics are still rotten and broken.
As someone who was a beta tester for Ultima Online when I was a teen and experienced the endless potential of the genre at its very beginning… it’s wild how constricted and railroaded the genre has become thanks to the dark arts sales psychology that consumed mmos during the 00’s. Dunno that there’s a more abused genre fanbase than this one
God damn I miss old, old UO
The customer has always been a sucker
The Customer: "I'll buy it.... But you better not screw me over again"
Futbol Games.
brother i long for it every day. UO Alive is the best thing to come out since the OG Client went to open source @@GoodnightMoon4
My impression after playing this game for a couple of hours was:
This is not an Elder Scrolls game that happens to be an MMO, it is an MMO that happens to be set in Tamriel.
What most ppl dont get is that they took away almost every key aspect of an elder scrolls game and expect it to work. Best example is fucking classes. The whole point of every eso game was always, build you character how you like it. But here nonono ppl defend their class system like its the best thing in the game.
and not a very good MMO at that.
@@markusgame3 Not to mention how stupidly scuffed the mechanics are compared to the actual games.
Go into stealth -> attack an enemy with a bow -> your character stands up and makes himself visible to the enemy for some fucking reason.
This is the point where I said "fuck that" and dropped out of the free trial.
My thought exactly. Got it for free on Epic, played something like 5 hrs, found it lacking on so many levels, took a peak at the shop and noped the f*ck out.
@@Caydiemactual elder scrolls games combat sucks ass and always has.
It's a really funny bit of irony: I WAS a master blacksmith back in the day. Even had many of the rarest styles that were in heavy demand. Was In a guild with people who could basically get emperor title in pvp on demand. Was super addicted.
However I stopped paying the monthly fee for a while cause of money constraints at the time. This was a handful of years ago. Being a crafter my inventory is FULL FULL.
So every time I considered going back to the game because it's "free to play" I remember that my inventory is so screwed and I'm endlessly encumbered and that makes me not want to play. Lol
They created their own perfect storm of not wanting to play despite liking most of the game.
That said I heard they kinda revamped the style system since then idk if it's better or worse than it was.
Im on the same boat as you, I eventually turned my bank to my crafting mats storage cause i didnt care enough to pay for ESO+ again after years of playing
@@ramy9450 I had so many things in my inventory left even though I was also using my bank that it would take an impossibly long time to transfer anything, that's partly why I didn't go back too lol
@@baddragonite I get you lol. It's really daunting having to deal with that storage.. I recently only got back after really enjoying the new class, so the inventory management was worth it eventually
Personally I quit when the game hit me with 30 real days crafting timer.
...and was offering micro transactions to reduce it.
@@ramy9450 yeah, like I said I was a no life master blacksmith with basically no money put in the game except for the monthly sub and a couple MTs, (and buying the initial disk before it was ftp and expansions and stuff) so for the inventory to be daunting to me you know it was really bad hahaha
The prophet immediately messaging you right after you leave him was originally gated behind level. So originally, you wouldn't be contacted until you were X levels higher the next time you were in a major settlement. It's only because they removed the level blocks that now he just contacts you the moment you set foot near town lol.
Hes a massive troll with that shit 😂😂
How annoying and immersion breaking. It's like how in Days Gone to get the next story mission / camp mission you have to exit a camp via a gate and THEN will you be contacted to come back to said camp to talk to associated NPC😅😅
Doubt you’ll ever read this but having watched the channel from almost the start to now, and remembering how gut wrenching your just incase goodbye during your outerworlds video was, it has been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to have taken this ride with you Strat. I watched you from when I was in the army, to when I was a husband, and all the way to my days as a widower; your videos have stood as great comfort to my life during the best and darkest days. You’re a real one Strat, don’t forget that brother, love you man 😎🤝
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but I am glad to hear I could bring some comfort. Thank you for the kind words.
One thing I know about this game is that its cinematic trailers are awesome
Every MMO and Ubisoft trailer pretty much
Only thing I knew about this game was that it had worse UI than SkyUI.
These gray-brown trailers? Awesome?
Western society is fucking doomed yo
@@jesustyronechrist2330 skyui is better than what bethesda had going on
So much potential in the mmo genre untapped I feel, if developers could look past wow and do their own gameplay style.
Yes. Everything has to be a wow clone. Annoying.
Now that costs are even bigger, it will never happen, and at the same time MMOs are too complex for indies to do AND market so it's not a ghost town.
The problem is many have tried to create something new and utterly failed. Either because they didnt understand the genre enough, they turned it into a cashgrab at some point, couldnt provide content, or just constant technical issues that never got fixed. The hardest part of making a mmo today is that you pretty much need every well recieved qol thing all the other mmo have, an engaging story preferably in an already established universe, fluid gameplay, pve and pvp content, constant updates ect. ect. ect. and more to really set it above the big 3 or 4. And i highly doubt that this is possible nowadays just from a financial standpoint alone.
@@TheRogueJedii*laughs in ff14*
Well I mean for a time they did in the early 2000s. The Matrix Online, City of Heroes, there was that post apocalyptic one where you drove cars. Not really sure how you can make an mmo without having it be a certain type of rpg.
Hot take: One Tamriel was a mistake and leveled zones were good.
I agree
bad take*
Amen brother. One tamriel was the worst sht what happened to eso
They just moved “leveled zones” behind dlc content “veteran and hardmodes” and left open world to the casuals. That challenge still exists, just do a no death hardmode speed run of a trial.
NOOOOO that actually almost killed the game.
Honestly, love the review. Fills out most of my main complaints while still providing praise towards the care and effort they put into the quests and lore.
I think my biggest gripe, aside from things like Backpack space and Mount levels being character specific; would be how One Tamriel straight up MURDERED my ability as a master crafter to go to low level zones, stock up on low-level resources, and help new players get gear that would not only help them level, but look great. Since materials were scaled just as much as enemies, I could no longer go to starter zones for starter materials; I'd only end up getting rubedite no matter where I went.
I genuinely had to adapt my strategy to offer my services as a crafter where they had to provide their own crafting mats, which just felt wrong. Like, at that point, I should just encourage them to level crafting (even if they didnt' want to).
if you have less skills point in a specific skill line you will find that material so if you have 0/10 in that skill youll find the mats for that skill lol youll also find the max level mat but youll still find the material equal to your skill
@@velidreth9856 True, but I also don't like the idea of having to respect just to help out some new players. Honestly I ended up just buying stacks of mats from guild shops.
@@Buttonmasher50 honestly you get so many of the starting resources by doing writs. but that skill 0/10 skill trick is useful for getting lower level alchemy solvents which everyone needs to level up their alchemy.
The only thing I disagree with here is how ESO handled the lore of the Elder Scrolls--It's been completely fucked, with so many holes ripped into it due to ESO having to fish for content. Who in their right mind thought that House Dagoth should be fully functional faction that far back? Or that atronachs just come in all animal shapes now? Why did they have to ruin the mystique about the Yokudan pantheon by throwing them at the wall and saying "Yep, they work exactly like Daedra. No, it's not unique." or show that the Imperial City just hasn't changed at all in a thousand years? How come Mehrunes Dagon has to look a fool by trying a grand total of three times to invade Tamriel, why couldn't we just stick with the two? Or the one, if you don't count battlespire. Molag Bal, anyone? What about the dragon-priests that are now up and kicking, along with dragons, just so they could sell a shitload of diet Skyrim DLC?
Even the small things, included purely for meme value, show no respect. The Lusty Argonian Maid existed 800 years before it was ever written? That might seem like a really trite thing to point out or complain about, but if you can't keep your timeline straight and do even a bare amount of research into the little things, how are you going to handle the big things?
tl;dr care was taken to include lore that would sell well and get laughs out of nerds finding meta-jokes funny. It was not taken to lore consistency.
@@TheReuleaux You're absolutely correct!
I should have specified that the lore of ESO is designed to work within its closed system, and it works well for that. The quests, journals, and self-contained stories within each zone are for the most part well written and consistent.
It's a non-canon entry, and takes place in a time period that had not yet been explored by the main series.
First day back to work for the year and you bless me with a 2 and 1/2 hour video. You are the man! Cant wait to not get shit done today!
Man I felt so sorry for you before I realized we just entered into 2024. Thought you had been in work for a full solid year.
Thank god for this. I just got back into the game , and by god is it really a minefield of manipulative real-life money sinks. So, so predatory.
Thank goodness I am an adult with self control and realistic desires. Otherwise, I can see it in every fiber of the game how in one day , I could probably spend $1000 and still not even make a dent in the mountain of purchasable/monetized systems.
Buy eso plus and not spend another dime till they bring out another crown crate for you to gamble.
which make no difference in your experience....
55:18 I just have to say that I'm kind of into the idea of the prince of domination making a prison that will always without exception hold ONE prisoner. For every one of those prisons he will always have a plaything, regardless of it being a valuable soul or not.
How come more people have complained about Fallout 76 & Starfield but are completely silent when it comes to ESO's micro-transaction system? This is the first video I've ever seen that says anything negative about it.
They did when ESO first came out, and since then most main stream audiences believe the game died back when it launched and therefore don't care to look into what its been up to since. Also probably the fact it's an MMO, and its practices are very very common
I'm gonna be completely honest here. I see people making the same complaints as you in every other "review" I have seen by people who aren't a part of the regular player base. People who aren't MMO players, for the most part. And that's where most of your complaints come from. You aren't MMO players. So the design choices that are made are alien to you. Because they're vastly different than what you're used to. Such as the differences between the mainline ES games and ESO. One prioritizes exploration and single player experiences. The other prioritizes player retention and engagement as well as making money due to the lack of required subscription. WoW and FF14 don't have such invasive cash shops, because they're games that require a sub. So they have a constant revenue stream without needing to add loopholes to the cash shop. ESO doesn't have that luxury...
This isn't to say you're wrong however. It's just that you're critiquing the game from a perspective that doesn't represent the game the way it should be viewed. This is initially what caused confusion on release. People expected skyrim but with multi-player. It was never intended to be that and wasn't even advertised as that. But people saw "the elder scrolls" and ignored literally everything after that. The same applies today. This isn't an ES game first. It's an MMO first. And if people go into it with that mindset, they're more likely to enjoy their experience than they are if they latch onto the ES label. That's how I have enjoyed my 8k hours played so far...
You're crafting system rant isn't even reasonable either. I got every single trait researched in less than 8 months without spending a cent. Gold isn't hard to come by either. I don't even use the trader system in the game and I have 8 million gold...
If you don't like grinding, then just say so. Because a lot of what I got from this is just "it takes too long to do stuff and I don't do well with deferred gratification and want all the shinnies now as aposed to later."
Oh bro I remember when I pre-ordered this as a kid after playing Skyrim and Oblivion expecting it to be similar not really knowing what an MMO is, haven't played since it released
Same here, I revisited it years later and actually had a pretty good time with it, but not being an MMO player meant playing strictly solo and I always felt like I couldn't experience half of the game
Try it now you will not regret.
@@abettertomorrow5928 whats different now?
@@abettertomorrow5928did we watch the same video ?
@@DarthVictious 9 years of extra content and improvement 👍💯
Man, hearing cyrodil pvp is dead is a huge bummer, since it was my favorite part of the game
I have fond memories of organizing armies of players across 1 to sometimes 3 raid groups for my faction, and leading them like a general.
Cyrodill is dead in all but CP modes at 50. There its pretty back and forth, but its only one instance. Imperial city is dead all around though. Good way to make gold though as the runes from imperial city sell for 100k each.
@archmagemc3561 damn that's fucking depressing.
Aside from classic AV, cyrodil was always one of the best PVP experiences I had in an MMO
@@alexanderrahl7034 same but it is what it is. zos had one of the most unique pvp systems i've ever seen and just neglected it.
It has been around ten years and they still can't figured out how to keep the Cyrodiil servers stable. In fact, over time Cyrodiil has become more unstable. It's a damn shame because you used to be able to run around with hundreds of players fighting it out in multiple spots all over the map.
CP faction locked cyrodil pvp is not dead at all. there is a wait list to get in.
The dungeons seems similar to the ones in Kingdoms of Amalur, but those were way more complicated, some had puzzles, most of them had bosses, because they were quest dungeons, even the castles never had a clear path to reach to the end, you needed to explore, and of course, not Skyrim door to go back to the beginning, meaning that you need to run back to the entrance of the dungeon.
I loved Kingdoms of Amalur. I hope we get a sequel one day.
uhm no this game isnt good
A likeable but severely overrated game
@@Chumpskey I disagree with the overrated part. I think it's just rated. 😆
I mean... It's a fun popcorn RPG, and there's enough hinted-at lore that you're left wanting to know more. But the gameplay loop is repetitive, it's absurdly easy to make a busted character, area levelling makes full exploration pointless, and unpatched quest bugs mean the game is impossible to 100%.
All in all? A half baked game that could have been great with more time and better management, but as such is only just pretty alright.
This was my quarantine game. And I really enjoyed it I just felt like once I was bored with 1 class there was no incentive to start again.
Yup, a new class just means spamming a new set of hot keys.
I play PC now but i played it on console mainly and i felt like the community was so cool almost took me back to 360 golden age.@@chrisbfreelance
Go for godslayer
the intro of " I play this game a lot so I'll chat shit about it" it literally me with Destiny 2 , I have over 2.5k hours in the game and I hate it ❤
People these days feel a need to be constantly stimulated. To be constantly satisfied and happy. That's not how anything works.
That's what MMO engagement preys upon. It's not a good thing for you or the industry.
Less fun, more engagement. Because it lasts longer, even if it's more miserable.
No self-control makes an MMO fan out of anyone.
Should give Outward a try. Been wanting to hear your views on how it compares to the feeling of adventure and secrets that Morrow wind gave off.
Praise Elatt, someone mentioned Outward.
I played that game for like 5 hours and just couldn’t get into the groove of it…
…to be fair though, that’s exactly what happened with Morrowwind too.
I’ll pick it up in 5 years, try again, do better, and kick myself for not trying harder sooner… I’ve been on this radiant quest once before! 😂
After the next gen update and how visual update, it’s been fun and it almost scratched the icy morrow wind have with the hidden weapons and armor you’d have to find just by looking around a corner or a random body in some dungeon.
@@Saviorselves
Hey, my dude, you @ed the wrong guy.
Strat would like Outward. He'd bang his head on it for the first playthrough, then zoom through a second with all of the meta knowledge then get hooked on build creation. As long as he avoids the brothers DLC.
Small reminder, In morrowind it was suppose to be living world. So nothing scaled with the players expect couple monster spawns. This made the world feel more alive and player just exploring it. It didn't felt like "game" in that way.
It's one of my favorite games tbh and the one with the most hours played on steam. I love just walking around and enjoying the environment while questing.. simple, but enjoyable. I hope they go out of Tamriel and visit other continents on Nirn!
That's some pure hopium, we both know that's never happening and even if it does it's gonna be dog ass just like everything else Bethesda makes (I know Bethesda didn't make ESO but they swinging for the fences to make bad games like them)
That would be great!
300 hours played and not attack weaving hurts me to watch. ;)
But seriously good video. Many valid criticisms. The way I view it is it's just more elder scrolls fun if you're interested, and you can take it piece by piece over as long as you want. Fun game, good stories if you pay attention, and nice enough dlc's. I don't think it's the best mmo ever, but I'd be very sad if it went away.
I agree about the attack weaving lol I've played about the same time as he has and I couldn't play without it.
Honestly, these monetization practices are the reason I stick with mainly single player games. I feel like I keep getting held back by the devs for the purpose of a quick buck. : (
The elder scam online
Another ppint regarding elden ring for atats wise is just to look at tropies/achievements and realise just how small the amount of people that get to the end of these games are
Your commentary is very weird sometimes. You say the quests are "actually kind of good in this game", but then you claim in the same sentence that the writing is so boring, you can't remember a single plot point from the entire game, and that the enemies are placed in that generic fashion which makes them seem like they solely exist to be fought by the player, as opposed to being actual inhabitants of the world.
You make decent videos, but I think you should work on your coherency, or don't.
Kind regards.
Story is not the same as gameplay. The gameplay of a story mission can be good while the story can be shit.
I think it's hilarious how ESO was initially dismissive and even hated by some members of the Elder Scrolls fandom, but now you can easily find people praising ESO and saying it's the proof that other studios would be better at handling the Elder Scrolls IP than modern Bethesda... especially after Starfield.
I’m not in your echo chamber so I don’t know what you’re talking about but elder scrolls lore died decades ago
Sounds like your in a worse echo chamber ^
@@LostHorizons0 gottem
I’m talking about you ^ clown 🤡
@@LostHorizons0not in any echo chsmber but from the little bit of lore i found in eso. They somehow contradicted and retconned alot of lore. Or tried to justify other retcons bethsada made like why cyrondii isnt a tropical jungle (hint real reason is cuz they saw the lord of the rinfs movies). Idc cuz elder scrolls lore has always been kinda stupid since oblivion after they fired the only guy who knew the lore. I just dont like badly written stories.
As a big Elder Scrolls fan (playing all of the main series games, except only a little bit of Arena), I finally dipped into ESO. At first, I was a bit shocked by how different it was, as I had never played an MMO either before. I enjoyed the world, the destinations, the little connections of lore to places and people only mentioned in the lore of the other games, and to an extent, interacting with other players was kinda novel and cool to me. HOWEVER, I kinda fizzled out after a while, because ultimately the game just kinda felt like busy work. Also, every other damn player seems so much more skilled than you, and they've already played every location a hundred times, so when you quest in groups, everyone is just sprinting through dungeons- no stopping to admire the sights, take in the lore/story, etc. It's like all they do is compulsively do busy work to max level a character as quickly as possible. I even had an idea to start and promote a guild that would cater to players who want to SLOW DOWN and suck in the exploration of places and lore a bit more, take their time, smell the flowers, etc. I keep thinking to dip back in from time to time, but it's a real OCD time waster, so I kinda stick to regular single player games most of the time.
In ESO, dungeons ARE a chore for high-level players. I'm a medium-skill player, and even to me, normal dungeons are a cakewalk with my main character. I even soloed some when I got bored of waiting for 40 mins in the dungeon finder. Imagine people to whom even veteran dungeons are easy and boring, but are forced to do daily dungeon runs of specific dungeons to get those armor styles from the Undaunted. I did it for a few weeks, and then took months off of the game as a result. It's mind-numbingly boring. This, of course doesn't only apply to skilled players, because everyone can get the daily rewards, but for those people running normals, the reward is halved, so they have to run MORE of them.
its because MMO players have this weird thing about efficiency to the point of taking the fun of the game, they will rush through everything to get to the end, and then complain that theres nothing to do.
so devs are kind of forced to design their games around these weird systems that are only meant to waste time, it sucks because the genre has so much potential
A lot of MMO players have that "Rocket in the Ass Style" of play,that is why i Don't come near mmos 😹😹😹 if TESO was a singleplayer game,even a 500gb game,i definitely would played it.
As one of those that flat out sprints thru dungeons, I’d like to say….”knees to chest” I got pvping to do, and I wanna try out that set and see how I like it. Not sit around looking at scenery while you read every damn bookcase in a dungeon.
Do you switch pvp sets from dungeons daily? If not, this doesn't really apply to you. As far as I know, the pvp meta changes mostly at major patches, and the set collection makes revisiting the dungeon after it's complete moot, if you just pvp.
I remember dreaming about exploring Tamriel.
Unity Daggerfall did it just fine. Sure, hey, not multiplayer, not very modern, repetitive -
but complete and without the need to purchase tokens. /shrug
Dude i f'ing love your delivery. "The Anus is only so elastic" had me burst out laughing. Content always on point as well. True yt gem
TES3MP with an mmo mod server is a better MMO than elder scrolls online
Regarding the Style and Motif point, I agree with you completely with only one small observation. You had insanely bad luck. I played a couple of years ago and I remember getting 5 or 6 blue books with motifs and 2 purple books in only a couple of days. All on the same character. It was a nord warrior and I did not play for more than 2 leveling zones.
Those are considered "racial styles" now, and are pretty common, they sell for less that 500g a pop. The real time and money sink is in the over 100 OTHER motifs, which all drops from individual sources and in one of thirteen PAGES, not whole books. Complete a group boss quest in, say, Vvardenfell, and you have a chance to get one of 13 pages for one specific motif style which you may of may not already have.
They are free.
@@profdrackojust buy crowns from another player to get the whole set at once.
Geez.
It isn't this hard to do.
@@DS94everXev I mean you can buy them with gold in game. Or just do the quests and trade away extras. Crowns don't need to factor in at all.
@@profdracko I didn't even know the crown store existed before I knew how to do research of traits and train daily at the staples.
The fact this guy says jt would cost $2000 of actual money to get upgrade inventory space is absurd.
How about playing the game BEFORE going into the crown store?
If anything the crown store is confusing. I didn't know how to get crowns for the longest time. Maybe because I already knew how to do daily horse training and wasn't going to spend actual money to speed up the process that cost me 250 gold per day.
Or maybe because I wasn't so ADHD that I demanded instant inventory max space for all characters at once.
I am cp 3600. In reality I am WAY higher than that if ESO allowed it.
This guy has no idea how to play an RPG. I don't believe e for a second he ever played Final Fantasy or Skyrim. Grinding things out is kinda an RPG thing. If you don't like it YOU DONT LIKE RPGS.
And jts clear this guy hates to the very essence what an RPG is. Much less an MMORPG.
Games are made for toddlers today. If you lose, the developer fears you will quit.
When I see this gameplay, all I can think of is Conan Exiles and how much more fun that is.
Brooo i love conan exiles. Combat in that game is so fun. Also i love slaves
This game used to have harder content like normal dungeons and world bosses but they nerfed everything when they released it for consoles.
@@jesperburns what made it harder. Like higher boss health and damage? What about it got nerfed jw
I think that it was moronic of you to make fun of story at 1:05:00 as it was pretty nice to get to know people that matter for story. SPOILER ALERT. You have to choose who dies later and so it is important to know who are those people to make you feel something before you choose.
"This game charges you for simple quality of life improvements every chance it gets, so the game has all these design decisions which are stupid, time consuming and annoying for the player to deal with and in order to get around those deficiencies you have to pay your way around them, so in a way the developers are encouraged to make their game worse to play in order to encourage you to spend money"
Oh wait, I thought I was watching a 100% accurate description of Guild Wars 2 for a second.
@Smewthtell me you don't play eso without telling me so
True, and WoW... and FFXIV... and Runescape... and... yeah, MMOs are predatory by nature. I dont think there's even one that isn't predatory. People should stop playing them as a whole and stop being slaves to these shit "games"
Both these games are same cash grab but defended by long-time players are that are balls deep into Sunk Cost Falacy and Buyers Remorse so they can't stop becasue that would be like wasting hundreds/thousands $ at that point. I just tried ESO this week and immideitly quit when I saw that most of stuff that is good/QOL is behind paywall/RNG/FOMO. And I immidietly thought - yup, just like GW2.
Games like that basically make slaves from playerbase, making them invest so much money and time that they just can't quit to not feel like losers.
2:14:00 as a hardcore pvp player, I left because of poor server performance, and they couldn't figure out that their main pvp mode (of the time) Cyrodiil played right into their servers crashing: to catch a castle, you need a big group, but too many big groups in one place caused heavy server lag to the point where it would crash.
That and the gear grind and low build variation.
And I still think that stupid spawning hammer was freaking unimaginative and took away from the PvP. Instead of fixing issues, they stuck that dumbness in.
Gear grind. Low build variation. Gear and mechanics getting balanced to PvE standards. The intentionally breaking of the game by making every new class OP for a bit so everyone would rush to buy it. One Tamerial. Battlegrounds.
@@jippy8976 spawning hammer? I may have missed that
@@jesperburns Yeah, it was a meant to be Zenimax’s solution to how one faction regularly outnumbered the others. A super hammer occasionally spawns at certain locations, typically in areas controlled by the losing factions. A player can pick it up and pretty much destroy multiple teams of players and crush keep walls. So it basically makes the person who grabs it OP.
Personally I hated the very idea of it. But to make it worse, the dominating faction can also pick the hammer up. Even if another faction picks it up, the dominating one would eventually overwhelm the person and pick the hammer up upon their death. There was also a problem with the people “spying” on behalf of the main faction. They’d keep characters logged into the opposing factions and use those characters to grab the hammer when it spawned and then either run it to the winning faction or jump into a river full off slaughter fish with it, which prevents anyone from retrieving it.
It sort of took the concepts of strategy and skill and tossed it out the window.
I play on xbox and i never crash 6 hours straight catching and defending keeps
2 minutes in and I already love this review.
As an old Elder Scrolls fan, I was really into ESO, despite it's disregard of lore. Fallout 4 had already taught me that Bethesda doesn't care anymore, so, I ended up liking ESO quite a lot.
Then I discovered Final Fantasy XIV. Impossible to go back.
Eat fuck, Bethesda.
The second prison you break out of was originally the tutorial back in the beta, I felt it was a cool intro.
Yeah the way they've integrated that with the new tutorial is... pretty awkward.
Am I the only one for whom ESO never really clicked? I tried to like this game and spent quite a lot of time on it, and I must admit it's by no means a low-quality product, but I also cannot pinpoint at least one area where the game shines for me. It just was a very flat experience
I have to agree. I have plenty of games I like and play, but for some reason I've put a lot of hours in ESO. I don't feel my time was exactly wasted, but I'm not sure what I got out of it.
TL;DW: "it's mid"
I'll be honest, if a game made me scream at the top of my lungs I'd quit it.
So, I first played ESO somewhat near-ish to launch, and the Coldharbour stuff used to be the intro. Which makes sense, because the two big characters you mentioned there are clearly voiced by Michael Gambon (of Dumbledore fame) and John Cleese (of Monty Python fame.) Which like, yeah, that's pretty Bethesda-y. Oblivion's opening features Patrick Stewart pretty heavily, and then transitions quickly to escorting Sean Bean around. Fallout 3' intro also features Sean Bean. Skyrim and FO4 don't really have much in the way of celebrity VA's, but I know where they'd be if they had em.
how you can get wrong 75% of all you say, if you played the game so much as you say?
i get it, daddy need money and drama get the subs going, but damn...
I love TES and I want to love ESO but the monetization just takes me out of the game. I can't play for too long before I have to uninstall it.
Its not like TES has ever had good combat and it hasn't had difficult (for the right reasons) combat in 20+ years
I also remember another time in the faction war where we had a huge group together all turning into werewolves hopping around the map lol
It was a really fun mode, too bad it fell off
Yknow, ESO is literally the only MMO to ever hold my attention for more than about 2 weeks. I got sucked in pretty hard a couple times. I think it was purely the fashion- I wasn't playing ESO to be an unstoppable vet dungeon soloing badass (although I was eventually), I was playing it to style on mfs with my sick drip. Nobody had style like me, and they knew it. I would stand around town, /leanbackcoin, and just let everyone bask in envy of how swag I looked.
(You can get all the good stuff from guild traders, I actually really like the in game economy in this game. I never bought a single thing from the crown store, besides wasting my free subscription crowns on mount upgrades or whatever.)
Sad to hear this in past tense :P
I may not be as advanced in the drip game myself, as I collect the houses instead... Been playing off and on since the game's early release, yet still never finished the main story.
Bruh the /leanbackcoin made me laugh
The endgame will always and forever be looking cute. A true patrician.
i have about 4k hours in the game and just thinking about getting back into it. Never bought eso+, never spent money on the store. The drip was always the main point for me too, got into harder content just to unlock skins and therefore more fashion lol. And yeah guild traders are the thing that saves from some of the negatives like grinding motifs, gear and you can actually buy research scrolls aswell with ingame money.
I've been playing ESO and Oblivion a lot lately. It really got me thinking. One of the funnest parts of Oblivion for me is running through Oblivion gates and shutting them down. I also love the deadric quest where you have to enter an Oblivion gate to face off in an arena against a bunch of other champions. Imagine if they added an Oblivion gate PvPvE dungeon to the game, through a new quest or instanced area, where players would enter into some kind of arena, where they might face off against another player in a duel, or multiple players in a battle. But there's also mobs and traps you need to watch out for. I think this idea could be so fucking sick if they added it to the game, and also if they modeled a version of it to be sort of like the Corrupted Dungeons in Albion online. The nostalgia of running through Oblivion gates like the good old days, combined with the excitement of a new dungeon with the threat of PvP. It would be so awesome, but it's unlikely to happen unless we all demand it right the fuck now.
I got back to the game after almost 8 years during the New Year's Eve and been playing for almost 4 days now. I think the greatest issue of the game is that it is so heavily monetized. I bought a dlc pack from steam thinking that was all I needed to do, and I saw 500 more dlcs I needed /full of content/ and at high prices, including stuff that looks like it could be fun - like the dark brotherhood and thieves guild stuff - and all of this wasn't even mentioned anywhere before purchase.
On top of that, the ESO PLUS they want you to buy is bloody expensive for not granting you anything permanent. Everything in the game, even though they may be fun, is designed to empty your wallet... which makes me really tired just thinking about.
bro you’re getting into an mmo that releases 2-3 dlcs a year if you come back after 8 years it’s gonna have a lot of content that you “need” to buy. as someone who has over 8k hours and 2 accounts at max lvl with over 35 characters between the two you absolutely DONT need any dlc to perform well in pvp or pve. Also ESO plus gives you every dlc that isn’t an expansion plus crowns worth the money you already spent and bag space…
ya i'm not sure why people act like its rocket science. play f2p for a couple days and if you like it buy a 1 month sub to see whats available. once you realize about 5k hours is available to you, you don't need to spend another cent with your sub active. I never wasted money on this game wondering what was happening with the docs and expansions
The best part of ESO+ is that it gives more Crowns than actually buying the Crowns for a better price 😂😂😂
I love ESO but it has deprived me of more money faster than most MMO's have ever, and yeah, to MAKE it fun, if I hadn't I would have quit a while ago. You legit pay to have fun, becuase it's amazing with the sub or bought content. But it's so totally wrong that it demands that to be so.
My boy Strat is one of the very few channels I'll sit down and watch a 2.5 hour video for. I love his writing. I'm a bit of a writer myself so I appreciate the skill quite a bit.
Great review, I was about to give it a try again and then you helped me remember all of the scummy business practices that are packed into the gameplay loop of this game. Back to Morrowind I go.
Eso is like any other mmo you either hate or love it. I agree it needs work especially for a 10 year old game and hopefully they start listening to the community and bring some balance to it.
It has problems but its one of the best out there still. If it was cross platform it would rank way higher
I quit before U35.
I had been playing ESO since it released on consoles, in fact, it's the reason I went with xbox instead of playstation (the PS imperial edition was sold out, and I was on the verge of moving to next gen, so I picked the console for the game).
It had a lot of flaws, then it started to get better, I always played the game because of the potential it had to be one of the best MMO's... unfortunately, everything the devs do just pisses me off to no extent, and it's VERY hard for me to get pissed off at a game. This game angers me beyond like none else.
It's the game that adds systems that would make a fun dynamic, but then boil it down to numbers for the sake of "balance"
It's the game that spits on support roles as they take their potentially fun skills and rework them for the only type of build that matters in this god-forsaken game: DPS.
You CAN steal, but what's the point, since it's very limited and there are better ways to make money with a lot less risks, and a lot more involved in the game.
You CAN min/max builds, grind for the special weapon or armor you wanted, but what's the stupid point of it if the enemies are still morons that take over 3 minutes to kill you anyway (I can attest to that, my DPS build against one enemy, 3 minutes before I got below 10% hp, then I killed that enemy within 2 seconds... on my tank build, grouped up against 5 enemies, they never managed to lower my health below 90% because my HP regen was higher than the damage I was taking... not only that, THEY ALL DIED because they would also take damage just for hitting me).
It's a game that will make you grind your ass off for far too long to get some of the best perks, weapons, armors.... but offers you nothing to actually enjoy them.
It's a game where you start running dungeons to get better gear, but the only motivator to use that better gear is so you can run other dungeons to get other gear.
The story is the most bland can of corporate dialogues with a very stupid, pathetic, amnesiac protagonist. There are dialogue choices in the game engine, but the devs completely forgot about it, your dialogue choices are now "this is the only answer" or "goodbye". FFS, you can't even tell Eveli that she looks bad in the fancy dress, since your only available answer is "you look great"... It changes nothing, but why can't we even give our characters a personality during story missions?
I can't say I hate the game... but I really absolutely hate everything the devs have done to it.
The prophet telling you to F off only to reappear and say he's ready is the best example of how ZOS broke their own game. He would tell you go away and until you reached a certain level, he'd tell you to come back (usually every 10 levels). But since they ruined the level up system with a balanced gameplay, he no longer waits. It's stupid, and it shows how short-sighted the devs are, and how lazy they are to even bother fixing it.
Kids never had good games in their life
Huh?
Agreed, most of modern games are bad shit for kids consumption
I've tried to play this game at least 7 times and only lasted a weekend every time.
Then tried once again recently just last year, decided to see as much of the content as I could, even bought the dlc to make sure I stay. Tried to rope myself in sunken cost style. Even got the subscription so that crafting materials don't shit up my inventory like they always do.
I couldn't last 2 weeks. It's so fucking boring and repetitive. Some of the quests aren't bad at all, but they're not enough to delude the absolute monotony.
If only the combat was fun. God fucking damn it.
I like the free exploration (and especially being able to do other factions' zones) but I do think the totally flat scaling is a problem because it makes every quest feel identical and every boss/quest anti-climactic. And you also lose the sense of progression from levelling pretty quickly because you can slot so few abilities (10 if you're sweaty; 5 if you're lazy). I do think the openness is worth it but I wish they'd made a few small changes to their approach:
1) Scale players down to the zone (like SWTOR) instead of scaling everything up to 50 (makes no mechanical difference but makes progression feel better to the player)
2) Allow more abilities on your bar (like 8-10) so players are more excited about trying new abilities
3) Allow story content to have a difficulty curve, _even if_ it's all still easy. It's fine to cater narrative content to narrative players but the last boss of an epic questline being identical to the first and dying in 5 seconds *hurts the narrative experience*
The way to fix overland scaling is to add optional veteran overland.
@@joshhobson2340 yep just add an optional difficult like LOTRO did in the form of a debuff to the player. its not a perfect solution but when a game run by a skeleton crew can do it I'm sure ESO can pull it off if they actually cared to
9:49 F*ck Skyrim for taking this feature out. And they had the gall to make spells unviable late game in vanilla.
I absolutely love Elder Scrolls and being able to share it with my friends, primarily through RP. There's a lot in ESO that allows me to do that. I'm happy to spend a decent bit of money on the game to enhance my experience through cool thematic stuff like housing and cosmetics. But I can never bring myself to feel invested in anything because it's all so dull and grindy, and there's barely any support for RPers. These days I just like painting Call to Arms miniatures to play with my friends.
Good lord the people in charge of the art in this game need to go back to school. The animations and models look so bad.
Absolutely stoked to see this review.
Thanks for PERFECTLY matching my energy and language on these subjects.
This game could be SO much better with the simplest of QoL changes, but they just DON'T fuckin' do it. (Or put it behind a paywall like they do all the time)
And a few additions to that armor styles section and Zen's braindead GREED.
- You're incorrect about the deconstruct/sell unlocking for motifs, you HAVE to find/buy the motif pages in order to unlock them to wear or craft. (+Some of those 'helpful' notes saying where you can find some styles, are there for styles that can't even DROP YET, so it tells you where, but you literally can't because they haven't added it to the loot pools.)
- Alot of the crown store motifs are severely overpriced in comparison to purchasing them with gold through guild stores, there's a few that are that $40+ price tag, when you can just buy them for gold at a pretty cheap price of gold. [If you bought gold, you'd ONLY pay $2, get that motif, and several other motifs for your money in gold.]
- They REMASTERED all the low-res base race motif styles, and instead of just updating the old versions like they should have, they put them behind a paid content wall of Greymoors antiquities, and left the old low-res motifs in.
Just amazing this game and it's developers, a m a z i n g.
The scaling is ridic. The purpose is to enable you to play with friends, regardless of the level difference.
What it really does it prevent you from feeling like you are making any progress.
Meanwhile for endgame trials some classes are so bad, they straight up absent from team compositions. And there is kinda no build variety either, because there is meta build per role and then everything else that can't clear vet trial on hard mode. Also difference in healers exists in ESO, but instead of having special abilities and stuff, main difference is between bad healer (only heals) and good healer (heals, restores resources, uses buff sets, deals damage to enemies, debuffs enemies).
Elden ring is a joke compared to the difficulty of some of the 4/12 dlc content of ESO :D :D :D
For a player with more than 10k hours its sad to see some new players perspective acting like they know the game even tho they only did some questing and basic dungeons/trials :D
I played this for about 4 months straight. I got a max lvl character and started doing end-game content but quickly lost interest when I realized the only reason I was playing was to unlock higher difficulty modes of the same content. I think MMOs just aren't my thing. I like games with a beginning, middle and end. MMOs are designed to be endless and I just can't do that for very long
My biggest gripe with this game when I tried it, was how AWFUL and floating/airey everything felt game play wise... The lack of punch/impact when you hit and got attacked felt like a glorified larping session with expensive CGI...
1 lvl 50 character and CP 198 is not "I've played this game A LOT", that's "i've reached mid-game"
198 is barely even early game lets be real. At 198 you're not even fully comfortable with the combat system and are nowhere near exploring it's intricacies
Meanwhile I'm level 30 and just doing quests and exploring the map... ^^
yes with 198cp you played this game A LOT :D :D :D ofc some of the crown store things are not very noob friendly but if you have a brain you shouldnt buy stuff with crowns as a noob in general
I love hearing balding middle aged men talk about games i will never play.
The part where you were sacrificed and woke up in Coldharbour was the original intro in the game. You started in the prison and broke out, and when you escaped back into the real world. You would then go to Stross M'kai if you were a Daggerfall Covenant character.
The thing where the prophet shows up right after leaving never happened since you were required to do other quests in order to level up, and only upon reaching a higher level would he show up and tell you to find him.
I never went past rescuing Lyris though. The game was just too boring, so I just went back to modded Skyrim and never came back.
ESO's a good time eater, but I never got a real challenge out of it until I started soloing group dungeons.
Finish vma without death and then you can say that
ESO has the worst MTX in any big MMO, next to Neverwinter. New World is egregious in some places, but they couldn't hold a candle to charging $80 for one of the houses in ESO.
Also the combat lacks weight, which is part of why I stopped. It felt mediocre AF.
The level scaling of ESO is completely shit in an game like this when they don't make any effort to still provide challenge. Secret World comes to mind when it comes to good difficulty progression
I have soooo many fond memories of this game, playing it with everything from friends to family members to now-estranged lovers. If you want an open world with endless okayish content, adventuring and thieving or decorating a house together, you could go worse.
ya, ESO straight up has one of the worst cash shops of any western MMO, especially with how they monetise so much of their game :/ Honestly, you could argue pay for convenience is worse than P2W cause the devs are literally creating a problem/grind/barrier/restriction then selling you the solution. It's beyond scummy and ESO is filled with that.
I've been pushed to my limit today while trying to keep a strong face; I'm so happy to see you upload! Your videos are great, helps me unwind ❤
Sorry but 95% what is said here is totally wrong. Very bad reputation is created here without any knowledge of the game.
I agree with you. Best time i had in this game was just listening to music and exploring the world randomly. If that your jam it's worth trying.
While I think critique is a good thing, you have to take into consideration what you're critiquing for it to make any sense. A lot of this video is "this MMO has made this feature like this because it's an MMO, so I don't like it!", which is like saying that you don't like a racing game because the car wheels don't shoot lasers. It's okay to not like something, but it makes absolutely no sense to compare an MMO to a single player game and critique it based on that comparison.
that bit about veteran players being annoyed with newer players is interesting. admittedly i do get aggravated with newer players because they can make the dungeons take a looot longer. but i always know that it isn't really their fault because zos doesn't teach new players. new players have to seek out resources to find out what they should be doing.
On the other hand, you get "pros" who claim they can tank veterans in DPS gear just fine, and refuse to suit up for UG, and such. I often saw them with like 19k hp, and the life expectancy of a blind, dehydrated mayfly, blindly running into red circles, then giving shit to the others before leaving.
@@remiss6355 *some* people can manage it, like for a veteran base game dungeon hardmode, you'll get someone with like 20k hp and they never die while holding the main bosses taunt (they don't hold elites/enemies that can cc the team). i had that happen with a pvper in coa2 hm, pleasantly surprised when i saw he wasn't dying.
granted that story is very different if it's vet dlc, it just won't be possible for most people. also what is UG, unhallowed grave?
@@colonian83 Yes, UG is Unhallowed Grave. I don't know what server/platform you've played on, but there was a LOT of overconfident people on Europe PC when I last played, who watched a single youtuber/clanmate who could actually play the game solo a dungeon, then tried to emulate them, and got slapped in the face hard. Sure, I myself played with someone who helped us in CoA2, when me and my friend wanted to do vet on that for the first time, but that is the exception. I think the circle goes like this: Newbies are annoyed with skilled players, skilled players are annoyed with everyone not "efficient" and medium skill people are annoyed with both, but mostly shut up, because they realise if they say something, it's another 50 mins in the finder.
@@remiss6355 i agree with your assessment of the community's feelings depending on their skill level. and sheesh 50 minutes, hoping that's hyperbole. in xb na it takes like 15 minutes for stuff like rnd and daily pledges. but haven't queued into a specific dungeon that wasn't a pledge for a while now.
idk about EU. maybe they saw their boy alcast do it and got inspired lol.
Having 6 Vet level characters of all types and not a single one from an online build I can tell you that if you can think of something you can build it and you can beat Vet dungeons. And yes you do need healers to do Vet dungeons. My only real complaint about this game is about every Vet Dungeon boss has insta-death mechanics. That means all the work you put into your character and gear mean nothing. That is the only real frustrating part. Otherwise you can do a home grown build and with a decent group you will be fine.
One thing I love about ESO is shared CP, I have 7 700+ CP toons just because my main is 700+. Makes farming gear for different builds super easy.
one of the many things that should be shared like mount speed.
"Toons"? Whut
@@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus it's old-school mmo head speak for alt characters
Aside from the fact I no longer play with or speak to the people I used to. I used to love ESO. But as soon as they homogenised resources and damage and nerfed everything into the ground. I quickly began to hate it. Not only that but the supposed quality of life improvements cost an arm and a leg. For example; 1000 crowns buys you a pack of 10 riding lessons one of three types. This is roughtly £8.99 real world money. Now consider that default cost per character for 6 packs of each, is 6 x £8.99 x 3 which is then further multiplied by x 8 due to the default amount of character slots being 8. It roughly translates to £900+ if you do that for every character up to default max slots.
When you do it without paying, you can pay 250 in game gold, for a 1% increase up to 60% for each type of lesson which has a 24hr cool down.
IT. IS. ABSURD. You should be able to upgrade your mount with gold whenever you want, you shouldn't have to pay an absurd amount of money to do it all in one go. Making matters worse is if you are used to a max speed and stamina mount, starting a new character is painful as hell especially in cyrodil or the bigger zones. Even worse than that. THIS IS JUST A SMALL ARBITRARY PART OF THE GAME. Like Jesus christ zenimax. I played from 2014 to 2023 and not once did they ever make the effort to make players lives better, only exploit them further and the writing has gone down hill by miles as well.
I remember one day a video of yours popped up back when you had only a few subs and I've been here ever since. Very well put video.
My main character in ESO is a master crafter, with a stupid amount of real-world money sunk into unlocking styles... and I barely play that character anymore. I started a fresh character, and vowed to never grind again. I now have actual fun when playing ESO, because I play it like a first-person RPG adventure.
I played a lot of this game, and I did enjoy it. After watching this though I just want to play more GW2
GW2 still the best
@@vpaul4374 for real, the wow killer that did it
@devangoad I bought the game when the EoD expansion was released, my first few weeks was learning the game and then instantly went on a journey to get the skyscale. The game is absolutely awesome
Any game that takes advantage of players financially with microtransactions its a bad game.
No if.
No ands.
No buts.
Regardless of gameplay.
Period. no exceptions.
"This game is endlessly frustrating and predatory, but I play it anyway, and I spend money on it anyway"
Congratulations, you're part of the problem.
The only thing worse than these games is the cognitive dissonance of the people who still pay for them, expecting something to magically change.
Wanna stop being a victim? That's your choice.
"This game is endlessly frustrating and predatory, but I play it anyway, and I spend money on it anyway"
Never said this so I don't know why it's in quotes. If you want to misrepresent my work, at least be more subtle about it.
"Congratulations, you're part of the problem."
By spending 2 and a half hours talking about the problem, I am part of the problem? You realize that these videos are a way to inform the public about a product before they buy it. If anything, I am part of the solution. A small part, granted, but a part nonetheless.
"The only thing worse than these games is the cognitive dissonance of the people who still pay for them,"
It's literally my job to pay for the game and review it. It's the entire reason you are here typing your comment. Without one, we do not have the other.
"Wanna stop being a victim? That's your choice."
So if you put out a video explaining why someone shouldn't pay for a game unless you are okay with the following things, you are a part of the problem, and also a willing victim. Bro... Wut?
@@StratEdgyProductions You think I'm attacking you directly? Get over yourself, or don't, I don't care.
I'm attacking what the modern gamer has become. Paying through the nose like an idiot, then turning around and pointing out all the bad things they've paid for, as if that is ever going to change anything.
The only direct thing I have for you is that you, just like everyone else, cast your vote in the only way that makes any difference, you paid for garbage, and garbage is what you got.
yo guys, get into speedrunning retro, diablo ii, doom ii slaughter maps.. trying to do starting gear only runs of souls games... anything besides PLAYING MMO games... I listened to this while playing a real game and everything from every mmo is always all these things x10. Play ANY OTHER GAME! Try and 1cc a SHMUP, try and beat a game you like Hard Core Deathless and record the run with obs/ stream it on twitch.. move on with your life you sad men!
The rant about styles was kind of misinformative. All of them can be earned in-game, and all of them can be bought and sold between players. Even the time-gated event styles drop in such high numbers that it's trivial to buy the entire set from another player. The only ones that are slightly more difficult are the ones that drop from trials and vet dungeons, and even those have no restrictions on being traded.
Also playing for three years and haven't got all the base-game racial styles? They sell for less than 100g a book. I started a new character last month and found five of them within a few hours. just loot a few urns or backpacks.
Alright video overall, but I feel like you lost the plot at the end with the queue discussions. The reasons you dont instaqueue into dungeons you're looking for isn't because no one is running them, but because people that are running them do so in 4man groups. On PCEU at least people search for people in guild chat and zone chat. That's why you have people in zones like grathwood and deshaan and craglorn typing out "LFM 1T1H" or "DD LFG pledges" or whatever.
You just don't see people queuing up for vet dungeons because you don't want to be queued up with randoms in vet DLC dungeons, cuz they're difficult so knowing the people you're grouping with is pretty important.
I personally have no issues finding trial or dungeon groups, cuz I go and ask people to join me.
If I wanna farm gear from a dungeon I get 3 guildies and we trade the items we need with each other. When I farm sets I get the items I need in about 3 or 4 hours. And yeah I know that this is from the perspective of a sweaty nerd that runs things with an optimized group, but there are lots of casual groups that run dungeon gear farms. Casual guilds do that too and random people in zone chat also do it, it doesn't take that long to form a group, you just have to... you know... use the chat and ask people (on PCEU at least).
Same for motifs (the transmog part of the game), they're not rare drops, they are a 100% drop if you do the dungeon on veteran hardmode, and like a 70% on veteran, the game actually rewards you for being good.
You can cut on research time with research scrolls that don't cost real money, but yeah even so the grind is tedious, and I'm saying this as someone that has every research trait unlocked, I am a master crafter, but even so I got it done without actively seeking it out.
I understand the gripes you have with the game, and these are some gripes I also have with it. The monetization is scummy, but less in the way of "you HAVE to pay for convenience" and more in the way of the game punishes you if you lack the information.
Everything, aside from fancy mounts and big ass expensive houses, can be done purely by playing the game and not paying an extra dime, you just need to have the info, cuz the game is indeed VERY BAD at giving you crucial info.
I feel like a lot of pain points people have with the game can be avoided by looking up a new player guide or a guide on the specific thing that you're doing (combat, crafting, trading etc.)
Also off topic kinda, you can find some banger items if you pickpocket. Some of the most expensive furnishings can be found by pickpocketing or stealing from safeboxes, but they are zone and NPC type specific, so it's not entirely intuitive. You can even find motifs from pickpocketing in Vvardenfel!
Anyhow, I hope you or people scrolling can find some of this info helpful and as an added gift since it was Christmas not too long ago the first 5 people on PCEU to reply can have a 60k gold house on me 😆