The Elder Scrolls Megathread XV: A Song of Ice and Draugr - Games

[QUOTE=GoldenBullet;43840288]Interesting, me and a friend played this and really liked it, decided to give it a go and pre-ordered, then looked at opinions afterwards. I'm trying games out a lot more whilst shielding myself from community-impressions because if I had read this thread first then played with my friend the likelihood of me enjoying it would be lessened severely Not defending the game in any way, it definitely has flaws, just interesting I guess.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I've been having some fun solo, going to be playing with a friend tonight. But reading through this thread and threads on other forums has made me second guess whether I want to buy it for $45 or not.

[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;43838103]I hate Serana, a lot, and she's a constant reminder of the things that make me sick. So I don't like being saddled with her. Again, you can't kill her for the Elder Scroll at the beginning of the questline and stop a whole bunch of bullshit at the beginning[/QUOTE] That was my main problem with the DLC too. I guess she used Charm 100pts spell on the player.

Now I have played TESO enough to make a judgement, when I play games I never think about games that came before it and pretend it's a standalone game that has no connection to anything released before it. I found that the comments that "it doesn't feel like elder scrolls" were true IMO to my surprise, it laked an atmosphere and felt pretty bland. Gameplay wise it was, well... Not bad but not that great either, kinda fun but just kind of. Storywise it felt wierd for some reason, something was out of place but I can't put my finger on it. Graphic wise wasn't bad, good for a MMO I guess. I was expecting more from the character creation despite several additions from skyrim but many things were lacking too. I've been playing SWTOR for quite some time since it became F2P, mostly for the story, dialogue and characters. Something TESO has lacked in quality for all three as far as I've played. The voice acting is something I usually enjoy most about games, I enjoyed listening to dialogue in skyrim. Here it was pretty boring, the way the dialogue system worked, the writing, the lipsync, oh god... So in a nutshell it was better than I feared but worse then I hoped I guess if that makes sense. Still not worth all the hate but it could be a hell of a lot better. Not bad, but not good either. But nah, it does not live up to the expectations an elder scrolls game deserves that I can agree on. Lots of potential but that's it. I could have seen myself continuing playing though if not for monthly fucking subscription bullshit.

[QUOTE=Cor Angars;43840884]Now I have played TESO enough to make a judgement, when I play games I never think about games that came before it and pretend it's a standalone game that has no connection to anything released before it. I found that the comments that "it doesn't feel like elder scrolls" were true IMO to my surprise, it laked an atmosphere and felt pretty bland. Gameplay wise it was, well... Not bad but not that great either, kinda fun but just kind of. Storywise it felt wierd for some reason, something was out of place but I can't put my finger on it. Graphic wise wasn't bad, good for a MMO I guess. I was expecting more from the character creation despite several additions from skyrim but many things were lacking too. I've been playing SWTOR for quite some time since it became F2P, mostly for the story, dialogue and characters. Something TESO has lacked in quality for all three as far as I've played. The voice acting is something I usually enjoy most about games, I enjoyed listening to dialogue in skyrim. Here it was pretty boring, the way the dialogue system worked, the writing, the lipsync, oh god... So in a nutshell it was better than I feared but worse then I hoped I guess if that makes sense. Still not worth all the hate but it could be a hell of a lot better. Not bad, but not good either. But nah, it does not live up to the expectations an elder scrolls game deserves that I can agree on. Lots of potential but that's it. I could have seen myself continuing playing though if not for monthly fucking subscription bullshit.[/QUOTE] The biggest problem I had with the opening of ESO's story is [sp]the sacrifice of lyris meant very little to us because we just met her, and all she'd done otherwise was follow us around for a while. TES players often do much crueler things to people who have been a lot more significant[/sp] :v:

I'm till downloading the damn game because the download keeps dropping down to 30kb/s. On top of that, my internet went down for five hours today. Mind you, I started downloading this thing on the 4th!

Is it just me or does ESO have [I]too many[/i] quests? I can't walk 10 feet without bumping into another area full of quests. During the beta, I had one goal in what I considered the sort of other main questline for my group, that didn't have to do with the actual main questline. Basically, where the quests I was doing from the start of the game were leading me to. I had one goal. Go find this guy, and then talk to him. It was a short distance away, and if I had just ran straight there I would've gotten to him in 5 minutes. I bumped across [I]three[/I] separate areas chock full of quests. And I just had to sigh, accept it, and then do 30 minutes to an hour of questing before going on my way. Eventually after one quest was absolute impossible bullshit, I had to just say fuck this, and force myself to leave. I then got to the dude I was supposed to talk to, and it turns out, I'm too low a level to do his quests. Fucking [I]HOOOOOOOW[/I]

[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;43841287]Is it just me or does ESO have [I]too many[/i] quests? I can't walk 10 feet without bumping into another area full of quests. During the beta, I had one goal in what I considered the sort of other main questline for my group, that didn't have to do with the actual main questline. Basically, where the quests I was doing from the start of the game were leading me to. I had one goal. Go find this guy, and then talk to him. It was a short distance away, and if I had just ran straight there I would've gotten to him in 5 minutes. I bumped across [I]three[/I] separate areas chock full of quests. And I just had to sigh, accept it, and then do 30 minutes to an hour of questing before going on my way. Eventually after one quest was absolute impossible bullshit, I had to just say fuck this, and force myself to leave. I then got to the dude I was supposed to talk to, and it turns out, I'm too low a level to do his quests. Fucking [I]HOOOOOOOW[/I][/QUOTE] Bad design, team inexperienced with making mmos perhaps? The hole they've dug themselves into with this game is hilarious though. Zenimax will probably blame its failure as lack of interest in a new TES game, considering how much they've marketed it. Then we won't have another for 10 more years...

After finishing the starting island for the Ebonheart pact, I decided that I've played enough of this game for the duration of the Beta. The starter zone of any MMO is enough to build up a decent first impression of said MMO, and in my opinion, ESO is... meh. There are a lot of interesting things about it (I liked the crafting system, personally), but it was all standard MMO stuff, nothing screamed "Elder Scrolls" to me. I mean, I liked what I played, and that's part of the reason I stopped early (I didn't want to go through too much of it in case I decided to get it later). Still, I don't think I'll be getting the game until it goes F2P (which it most definitely will, considering how all the professional game journalists have been saying "it's not worth $15/month". Zenimax would be retarded if they didn't change their minds after seeing a backlash like that). When it does, though, I'll be back and ready to adventure some more. For now, though, I gotta get back to Skyrim. My self-imposed-challenge to play through all 5 games is still going on, last I checked.

[QUOTE=Usernameztaken;43841416]Bad design, team inexperienced with making mmos perhaps? The hole they've dug themselves into with this game is hilarious though. Zenimax will probably blame its failure as lack of interest in a new TES game, considering how much they've marketed it. Then we won't have another for 10 more years...[/QUOTE] 1) Why is having a lot of quests bad MMO design? That is like a level of ridiculous I could never imagine, it was one of my favourite parts of the beta 2) This isn't going to hurt single player TES games, fuck off :v:. I have not a single doubt in my mind that Bethesda game studios is working away on the next proper TES game and ESO won't affect them in the slightest

Can someone explain why skyrim's autosave is so fucking broken it's sad? I take out a bandit outpost because... it's in the way to my objective and I could use some coin and loot. So I work to take it out, lots of archers and while I'm an archer skyrim's archery sucks unless it's overpowered. So while trying to take out these snipers effectively I'm getting hit with iron arrows that take out like half my health with my 550 armor level. I work my way through for like 15-20 minutes. Finally I get out and start smelting down some weapons and armor, I craft some jewelry, enchant some stuff then I walk out of the outpost and some random mage fires something like 500 nuclear fireballs at me and I explode. And some how in that entire time it never made a save. Only before the initial attack. But I had been going into menu's constantly plenty of times for it to use autosave which it normally does. But some how it didn't do it in that 20 minute period. I'd have saved myself but we cleared the outpost so I didn't think to save until I had finished looting and crafting. It pisses me off since this happens so much. I already consider myself a compulsive saver. Been playing only perhaps 2 weeks on this character so far and have like 800 save files.

I'm actually enjoying this beta weekend more than the last couple. My main complaint (weak combat) seems to have been solved either by a patch or by rolling as an Argonian Templar because I actually feel like I'm doing decent damage. It's still not particularly amazing in any one aspect but the novelty of rolling around Tamriel fighting Tamriel-things with a friend is neat. Not neat enough to carry a $60 purchase and a $15 a month fee, but perhaps later on sale or when the fee has been reduced or removed, which is a given at this point.

[QUOTE=Xenomoose;43841809]For now, though, I gotta get back to Skyrim. My self-imposed-challenge to play through all 5 games is still going on, last I checked.[/QUOTE] This reminds me that soon I'll get the Metal Gear legacy collection and I'll have to play through all 7 games that are in it, plus the MGS1 VR missions, making for a total of 8 games. This is gonna take a while.

[del]I remember a few days/weeks ago, someone posted some mist settings for ENB .250. Does anyone still have those, because I can't find them and I'd really rather not trudge through 15+ more pages of this thread. I remember them saying to add UseMist=true or EnableMist=true or something to enbseries.ini, and then some [Mist] settings for the bottom of the file.[/del] [QUOTE=#antic;43795194]Open up enbseries.ini and under [EFFECT] change EnableMist=false to true. Then scroll to the very bottom, and add [URL="http://pastebin.com/v5RGThEp"]this[/URL] (or replace the [MIST] section if it already exists). Those are my settings, you may need to tweak them to look right with your config. You can tweak the settings in game by pressing shift+enter to open up the editor, then saving and applying the config.[/QUOTE] I found it, never mind. :downs:

There's a new Mod reviewer using a series titled: Skyrim Mods Watch. He's got an interesting accent (my guess is Swedish) and the latest one he did... Well, just look and see. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFynWOjbAgI[/media]

Amazing thumbnail preview.

Elder scrolls online is just occupying my day. Like I just wanna play this game. I know there's a lot of hate for it, but its like exactly how I expected it to be and didn't get over-hyped to imagine it would be the leveling part that would be the worse but it really isn't that bad.

[QUOTE=DrVivi;43843521]Elder scrolls online is just occupying my day. Like I just wanna play this game. I know there's a lot of hate for it, but its like exactly how I expected it to be and didn't get over-hyped to imagine it would be the leveling part that would be the worse but it really isn't that bad.[/QUOTE] This. I didn't even look at ESO till the beta came out and I'm enjoying it so far. It's what I realistically expected.

I kinda like ESO so far and I'd like to play it but I'm already playing WoW and I don't feel like paying 15 more bucks a month to play a game. Also 90% of the fun in MMOs comes from playing with friends and none of my friends play ESO.

[QUOTE=Daemon White;43843476]There's a new Mod reviewer using a series titled: Skyrim Mods Watch. He's got an interesting accent (my guess is Swedish) and the latest one he did... Well, just look and see. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFynWOjbAgI[/media][/QUOTE] Why did this remind me of that old Lionhead game, The Movies?

Wow I stand corrected. The world is fucking huge. No wonder they didn't fit all of tamriel in

[QUOTE=Elspin;43842355]1) Why is having a lot of quests bad MMO design? That is like a level of ridiculous I could never imagine, it was one of my favourite parts of the beta 2) This isn't going to hurt single player TES games, fuck off :v:. I have not a single doubt in my mind that Bethesda game studios is working away on the next proper TES game and ESO won't affect them in the slightest[/QUOTE] For the same reason that using an entire can of hairspray isn't good hair styling. Maybe some people enjoyed it, but the sidequests drove me insane. I felt like I was under an obligation to do them, not just doing them because it was fun. I'd then be told that I must run to 3 seperate locations, each five miles across from each other, and I'd spend about 5 seconds at each. Seriously, I think they were really god damn proud of their world design, because countless quests had the objectives be placed on opposite sides of the map for no apparent reason. As for the other thing, I don't think this will hurt TES. The failure of TOR killed Knights of the Old Republic forever, but I don't think TES will suffer that fate. Skyrim, thank God, made all the fucking money in the world and three years later people are still actively playing it, modding it, and buying it, and Bethesda is waiting for the arrival of their fourth yacht right now. Even if the MMO was a dog shit sandwich on levels never seen before and gives rise to Mecha-Satan, no investor in their right mind would ever turn down another Elder Scrolls game.

Why is it that every set of ENB settings I find ends up making it impossible to see anything in the snow because it's all whited out? And then makes it so dark that I can't see shit at night. It's like they only ever work in Solstheim or plains areas.

[QUOTE=biodude94566;43843997]Why is it that every set of ENB settings I find ends up making it impossible to see anything in the snow because it's all whited out? And then makes it so dark that I can't see shit at night. It's like they only ever work in Solstheim or plains areas.[/QUOTE] Try Skyrim Enhanced Shaders, or SkyREAL ENB? They're more low-key than most, and are designed to mainly add effects and make minimal changes to the way the light is by default.

[QUOTE=Daemon White;43844016]Try Skyrim Enhanced Shaders, or SkyREAL ENB? They're more low-key than most, and are designed to mainly add effects and make minimal changes to the way the light is by default.[/QUOTE] By SkyREAL, do you mean SkyRealism? I'd been using that and it's pretty nice, but it was also updated last year and I'd rather not spend four hours learning ENB so I can update it to use any and all new features since then [i]and[/i] tweak them. [editline]8th February 2014[/editline] Yeah, the Enhanced Shaders haven't been updated since October last year, either.

So what's the status on skywind?

[QUOTE=Laferio;43844343]So what's the status on skywind?[/QUOTE] I wonder this a lot myself. They should have one of those planners where they talk about what's done and what needs to be done and how far along they are in certain areas.

[QUOTE=Laferio;43844343]So what's the status on skywind?[/QUOTE] They're tossing around the idea of a public release in the next coming months for the next version. They've just completed remaking about two thirds of Morrowind's creatures from scratch and a little less than half of the armor sets. Their biggest focus right now seems to be redoing the landscape with new assets and polishing quests. Very little work has been done on weapons and clothing. The consensus seems to be that the next big phase of releases after that will be in "8 months" or so. [editline]9th February 2014[/editline] Part of the reason for the slowness is because the assets they're making are usually superfine quality from just a handful of people, and get vetted for quality before being merged into the esp. Basically, it's going to be a visible tier above nexus quality.

[img_thumb]http://static-2.nexusmods.com/15/images/110/4216862-1387902085.jpg[/img_thumb] [img_thumb]http://static-1.nexusmods.com/15/images/110/4216862-1378001072.jpg[/img_thumb] The assets that have been made are totally stunning, if you haven't taken a look yet.

Those are fucking beautiful

How long is the beta still gonna be running?