I played some more today after work, and I have figured out why I haven't really been enjoying it that much (other than character creation which was fun, I made a dude and then never played him).
One of the benefits to WoW is how the entire entry levels are set up so you learn what is going on as you do. One of the downsides to Skyrim is you're thrown in with the most basic instruction and left to go off on your own.
ESO is a weird mix of those two things. It helps with some things that aren't actually that helpful, but leaves you hanging with other things.
For example, I can't figure out if I need to aim my bow. You do in Skyrim, but do I in ESO? I don't know. It didn't tell me how to use a bow when I picked it up.
Choosing my skills? I don't know how that works.
Adding friends in social? I don't know how to see if someone sent me a request while I was offline, or even whether you can send requests when offline.
I couldn't figure out how to cook anything. I learned recipes in my inventory (which is not pretty - WoW's bags are, in one way, better for size, but they also don't have text which means hovering over everything to find one thing can get annoying, so I'm torn on how I feel about that), but I don't know where to find my skills, or whether I need a stove, or how to find what ingredients I need to cook that recipe I learned.
I'd also freeze when exiting dialogue with certain things, which is super annoying, and I realize that's probably just a beta thing but it was still annoying.
But I couldn't figure out how to report that either so they could fix it, because at no point did I notice something saying "as this is a beta, please report bugs using this option."
Overall, I think it has potential to be pretty fun, but I feel even more lost than I did when playing WoW the first time, so I think a little more time should be spent on coaxing players into the world and making sure they understand the systems.
I think that was similar to my first impressions as well. I felt rather lost, probably more so than any other MMO I've tried in the last few years. Been reading some other people's impressions, and they vary a lot, some liking the "bring thrown in and running around clueless", and some finding it just confusing.
ReplyDeleteI think some more tooltips and/or help/information on what to do would definitely be helpful. Like you, I just picked up a weapon at random, hoping it would work out for me.
The biggest caveat for me, is the movement. I'm really weird when it comes to movement in games - and I know that this is really an issue with me and not the game itself. I can't move with WASD. I'm just not able to do that and use skills at the same time. Couldn't tell you why, just never been able to.. 8 years of WoW, and still not able to.. So in WoW I move entirely with my mouse, my strafe buttons being the two side buttons on it. Which works for me, but sadly not an option in certain games - ESO being one of them.