[Uteunayr]

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The idea is that each character class has three different trees that are magic only. These trees are generally divided into three different properties, one being really unique to a class and the other two having a little overlap from what I have seen. For instance, Dragon Knight gets a tree that probably makes it better tanks than the other three, but you could probably build a different kind of tank type without too much difficulty. But yeah, they're not identical.

And in that way, each class has a forced, distinct playstyle, rather than one that grows organically through your choices in a progression system, as is the case in every TES game. That's a bad TES system.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You ignored the fact that a lot of important and potentially character defining skills are actually found in game rather than given to you in the beginning. Because of the limited skill slots, and because the passives sometimes work for out of class skills, the ones that you start with might not even be potentially important. This means that there are builds out there that might be some from the Mages Guild, your weapon, and maybe one from the werewolf as well, and you might have a completely different playstyle with a Destruction Staff than say someone that is a Sorcerer, uses a couple skills from the dark magic line, a couple from lightning etc.

I do not ignore this, but it is irrelevant to the point. The point remains that there are talent trees that are exclusive to specific classes, which will force general playstyles upon a character, rather than making it an organic experience as is traditional in TES, and what TES fans are used to. You don't get that in ESO, and you will have to reroll your character entirely if you ever want to shift that core play style.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The builds for the first few weeks are going to be unique and deep and you might not even know what your group mates or pvp enemies are doing even from their gear/weapon. That is unlike WoW where if you are a Druid, and you meet a Paladin in battle you already know within about two minutes what each is capable of.

Until the min-max builds come out, which always happens anytime you have extremely limited options. What is the min-max in WoW in which you have classes with three unique builds? It will not be made different if you have extra talent trees that are shared (armor/weapons/quest ones, etc), because the class system will encourage a very specific style of leveling up, with specific armor/weapon/quest talents taken to maximize the output of the core class abilities. But that didn't happen in Skyrim. Sure, everyone can agree Blacksmithing and Enchanting are OP as fuck... But One Handed versus Archery? Destruction versus Sneak? Which is better? Which is the minmax? Or for a MMO comparison, Commando/BH vs Commando/Teras Kasi (SWG), or how about Elemental/Pistols vs Elemental/Shotguns (TSW)? Neither ended up the minmax in the end, because no one was restricted, and no one character had core, fundamental uniqueness that could not be changed after creation.

Sure, in the first few weeks of WoW, people had "unique and deep" builds, but they quickly melted away into a minmax. You'll learn what others have, and you'll know within two minutes going against a sorcerer what they are capable of, as a minmax will always come out when you have rigid structures like class.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So there are two different major quest lines in TESO, and if you wanted to you could just go straight down them and progress too fast, this is especially apparent depending on which faction you choose because I only noticed this for the first time when I went Aldmeri Dominion and was level 7 in a level 12 area because I didn't explore enough. Anyway one questline is your main story quest which is the "Epic" quest of the Elder Scrolls branch, it doesn't end whenever you leave the beginning area, the Prophet keeps talking to you for a long time, and eventually I'm sure you take the fight to Molag Bal as they've talked about it being the first multi-group instance.

The second long story-line quest is the intrigue within your capital city, both of the factions that I tried had really long quest lines that while they did give you rewards from quests in the middle of them, they were really part of the same line.

So there's that, you were talking about how quests were just short do this and do that, but I think that those quests have really long and enduring storylines and are pretty memorable.

You mean that 30 quests have a really long and enduring storyline. Quests in ESO are the effective equivalent to a task in pretty much any game, or stages on a quest in Skyrim, but they are treated as distinct quests. Sure, the game has a "main questline" and "secondary questline", but this isn't something unique from World of Warcraft. In Cataclysm (the start of a new story arc), you get to choose your starting position (Hyjal vs Vash'jir), and the story that progresses from that leads directly into going to Deepholm, which builds upon the story of Hyjal or Vash'jir, depending on which you did. Upon finishing the Deepholm "quest line" of around 120 quests, the events that take place there necessarily lead you to Uldum, which in turn leads you to Twilight Highlands, culminating in the rise of the Bastion of Twilight, one of the main raids.

So, I see no difference between what you describe, and what WoW does. There is a vast difference between that, and quests the way EverQuest handles it, and in which TES handles it, in which you are not given thousands of micro-quests along the way, but are given general goals, and left to go about it your own way. You're not lead by the hand through areas, which is the feeling ESO gives through their questlines.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As far as normal questing being different from what is in World of Warcraft, I quit WoW when Cataclysm came out, so they might have changed their design philosophy, but the way that I remember it in WoW is that you literally went to a quest hub and gathered 5-6 quests and went out and started doing them. Sometimes, and only in the areas that the quests sent you, you might find another quest or an item that gave you a quest. If you were really lucky and they felt like doing something interesting you might find something silly you could do for an achievement.

The quest structure I describe above for Cataclysm was still true in Lich King, in which you selected your entry point (Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra). You gather a bunch of quests in the main hub there, your base, which guides you through a story which brings you around that area, which guides you to Dragonblight, which leads you to meeting the dragons, uncovering the truth of the infinite dragonflight, and seeing the betrayal of the undead when you try to break into Icecrown. With that defeat, you are given options to help others around the area, in the other zones of Northrend, which lead you into Icecrown. Once broken into Icecrown, you begin the assault, and the questline ends with the beginning of the raids.

But by and large, people became very disinterested because the quests are shit out upon you. It's the same thing ESO does, and with their current system, the same exact outcome is going to happen, in which people want to click quickly through any quest chat and rush to quest objectives to level up a new character, because their first character (a sorcerer) couldn't be what they wanted, so they had to reroll a fighter.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is the same design that Aion took, the same that Rift took, the same that Tera took, the same that TSW took for the most part, the same that GW2 took with the exception of their public quests, the same that... do you see what I'm saying? The idea is that they have areas already planned for you to go to and your content is along those areas.

Yes, and these are all WoW clones as far as game design is concerned. TSW innovated only insofar as their progression system is concerned, but it remained an entirely run of the mill MMO experience founded in the WoW model. And it was boring as shit.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Since you've only played the beginning area of TESO I will try to keep my knowledge limited to that to put some perspective in it for you. If you decide in the Skyrim area not to save all the people that are moving on to the next area with you, you can do that. You can actually advance at a very quick pace out of the tutorial/noob island. This is because the main story quest does not take you to the spider caves, it does not take you to many of the off path areas in the lands of Skyrim. You can advance to the next area (presumably to never come back) without ever doing 90% of the content on the noob island.

That's fine, but this isn't much different, again. You can skip a healthy amount of content in WoW, which is what most people end up doing when faced with doing the same quest line over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, any time they want a different play style experience. The gameplay remains rigid, it remains unchanging. Heck, at least in EverQuest, doing a camp two different times will come out with two very different experiences on the grounds that there is randomization in your play style. Sure, you may have wrecked Charasis basement last time you were there, but this time you go, your charms break a toon, roots are getting broken, etc. The dynamic experience is built based on the random chances of play style in EverQuest. The dynamic experience in TES has always been the adventure of doing each part of the quest, and interacting with unscripted things (random giant attacks, random dragon assaults, random patrols, random stuff that doesn't happen twice in a row the same way). The dynamic experience in EQN (presuming we take what they say as absolutely true) is that the mobs do not settle in the same place twice, they act in different ways based on the dynamically changing environment based on the ways players interact with it. This is what WoW, TSW, WoW, ESO, GW2, and pretty much every MMO since WoW that has been too cowardly to try and innovate has lost. Two characters along the same path will have a significantly similar experience, as quests grant you a scripted, singular experience that does not vary along the same lines. When these quests are short, and quickly delivered as part of grander storylines, rather than being steps upon a greater quest, each step is delivered as a scripted follow up to the last to hold your hand and guide you from area to area. It is pathetic and patronizing. There's a reason TSW's only major feature many people took away from it was the Investigation quests, which make you go above and beyond this handholding in today's games.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The further you move on, the more apparent it gets that you need to start exploring and instead of only sticking to the main path where the game sends you, you need to start going off the paths and into the mountains to explore. If you did this in WoW or Rift, you MIGHT get an achievement for getting to some high place and jumping off, if you do this in TESO you get rewarded with experience, gear, sometimes skill points, etc.

Exploration rewards achievements, experience, loot, and side-quest that you would not otherwise find in WoW. This isn't different than a themepark in which you're brought area to area to explore that area, consume all the content, and then move on never to return.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anyway I already explained why I feel their system is different. We can agree to disagree if you'd like though, you're really combative and I don't really feel like making this a fight or whatever.

Do not mistake being very outspoken and opinionated for combative. I am not emotionally invested in this conversation in the least.

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you don't play the game I don't really care, but comparing it to WoW is really just wrong, it's about as far as it gets from the WoW quest system and it is about as close as you can get to making a Elder Scroll MMO without making it a gigantic sandbox like a lot of people would enjoy. I think that a sandbox would be good too, and yes it is a theme park MMO and I am sure I'll get bored with that eventually, but at least it has some promising systems in place to hopefully keep my interest for longer than the other games you listed up there.

To say it is "as far as it gets from WoW quest system" makes me question how you're on a classic EQ forum, given that EQ is *significantly* further away from WoW than ESO is. Classic EQ is as far away from WoW's quest system as you get today. Lets see...

EQ is furthest away. EQ Live doesn't grind quests, but it does grind kill tasks to put a cherry on the top of the creature grind that is traditional to EQ camping, so I'd say Live is probably the next furthest away, tied with DAoC and SWG, both of which offered the "task grind" style of creature grinding. After that, I'd put ESO, TSW, TOR, and other quest grinding main-storyline games, and then put WoW, as there isn't one unified story, but broken up between expansion packs.

I will not be playing the game, and anyone who reads what I have written, and can identify with my position in regards to other games, they will heed my warning, and avoid the game as well. Others who identify better with your position, and believe that there is a difference between the quest-grind, themepark style in WoW and other games listed, and therefore ESO is also distinct, they will heed your advice. You encourage those like you to get into the game, and I discourage those like me from buying the game so that we can get beyond having the same damn MMO published year after year to continue the stagnation in innovation that has hit MMOs. Stagnation from WoW really is the only explanation as to how you have EQ, and then DAoC, and then SWG, and City of Heroes, and then hit WoW, and for the next decade, have nothing but rehashed ideas. I am amazed when people talk about how great and innovative WoW is with the new "Garrisons", meanwhile I just sit here and say that SWG did this a decade ago, EQ and DAoC both instituted guild halls. And that pretty much all the new "innovations" we see are rehashes of the same exact stuff, rather than steps forward. That's why my only hope is for the dynamic creature system and non-quest grind structure EQN is proposing.