Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Immersive criteria
To be honest I never see such an non-immersive world as I saw in Skyrim. Sure NPC that coming home from work, wandering around city or spend their money in the inn look qiute "living" but if you see this every day, in the same time in the same place it become boring. I see no difference between WoW guard wanderers and Skyrim NPC that make same actions every day. I'm talking about Skyrim but I mean every TES game. Morrowind was much better but this is only because it was so long ago and game of such quality as Morrowind can't be bad back to 2002. Skyrim already king of grind among games. We got same ruins, same monsters, same quests. As archer, my progress through Skyrim  consist in hide-and-shoot. There was no problem to run through any dungeon in 5 min, oneshoting everyone. Same traps, same draugrs,  same ghosts. NPC in any city have same gossips, innkeepers have same tasks, and guards are dumb as hell. There was no living creature in whole game. Every step is predictable, every end-room is known. Just pick and shot. I know I want a lot from game but there is so many egregious things that want to be fixed. Here just short list:

  1. A lot more greetings for vendors.
  2. More "life" behavior for citizens when you break into their house.
  3. More realistic trade system (damn homeless sold me robe for 6000 gold and bought my daedric sword)
  4. Changing look of stalls on markets squares.
  5. Damn weather change (spring summer you know)
  6. Cease bullshit 3x time speed.
  7. Make guard guarding not chasing my character.
  8. And add some real prisoners in prisons. Make some work for court system.
Just a very short list. I forgot a lot already since I stop playing Skyrim about year ago. But when I play its like every 10 minutes I cried: "Did the developers blind? How they can make such as nonsence thing?I just can't remember all right now. Skyrim can be immersive only for people who want to be immersed in the game. But if we take random player... Game must offer something more life-looking than it got now. Every game we start as prisoner that save world. It doesn't looks cool. Make us usual citizens. This will be much better. And make progress really hard. Try to play cosmic simulator X2 or X3. You should spend about half year there playing every day to build up you very first station and buy a decent ship. Life is HARD so make it that way.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Don’t have a PC or Mac? Don’t worry! You’ll be able to play this game if you have a console! Just think about that for a second. ZOS has just potentially tripled their player base by coming to console. That’s three times as many players that can enjoy this game now, three times as many players can have fun wandering around Tamriel without feeling alienated because they don’t have a computer to play on. This is huge.

Taken here ESO on consoles

There so huge buzz really about this console thingy. You know, it is astounding holy war between PC and console users when it comes to gaming. Personally, I am a PC user. Not a notebook even. A rough, heavy and powerful desktop computer. But let's stop this pointless holy war. When we look at gaming I think it's doesn't matter where to play. Concoles designed to play games, to play with friends and have fun. Computer for single use mostly and allows you to do some other things while playing, like computing something in background and so. And more important I don't like wars. Not a fun of PvP, you know. And here, where I'm living, not many people have consoles so as for me this news is completely unimportant. That's all what I want to say for now. Have a good day, consolefuckers.

Monday, June 17, 2013







This is some nice screenshots about how mass PvP looking from first-person view. Sure it is bad graphics from past century but the main idea is amount of spells effects and characters running around. I'm wonder how it will be implement in ESO.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Some thoughts about ESO "random" items like books or skyshards. In TES games all items, that give you some skill points or something else valuable have their constant location and after one or two weeks hardcore players will make a full guide about all locations in game - just take and go. In ESO, I believe, there will be nothing like this, skill books will be randomly generated but the names must be same. So after one week there will be book table so you don't even need to open all the books just the necessary one. With the addon that show skill book's names with special color, process of searching can be way much easy. Skyshards must be not that easy to find that all players think. Probably they will be in endrooms of dungeons, protected by power enemies. But even if so, some of skyshard can be constantly on same place. These places will be hardcore grinded.

About public dungeons. Long time ago I heard the anecdote. 
Two friends speaking about Morrowind.
-This will be so astounding If you can play with some other people in same world, battle with them, trade and speak. May be there is such games like Morrowind to play with other people?
-You really think so? Do you think that someone will enjoy sharing their world with other people? Share loot and items? And power, contest each other, loose? You have really good work, wife and soon kids, so remember, that there is no such games.
-Yeah, you probably right. Noone want to share things.

May be I'm not good storyteller but the point is that noone want to give anything to other players. I don't know how will public dungeons works, but I don't want someone to disturb me or my party with dumbasses questions or asking me for help, or even looting my items and taking my exp. For me dungeons - is way to unite with closest friends to enjoy freedom from random "dears" and I don't want anyone to help me (read 'mitigate the complexity of the game') or disturb. And especially I hope that players of different alliances can't enter me dungeon and kill me on boss fight, taking the loot. 

Wednesday, June 12, 2013


So my little thoughts about it. Developers made world and just decided to split it on 3 alliances but keep all territories available for other faction after reaching level 50. This enhance end-game largely since we have, to be honest, three times more quests, so firstly we leveling to max level, spending x hours, than made quests in next zone spending again x hours, and last zone again x hours. 3 in 1 of leveling quests. That means more gold, more useful things if there be any. I never understand people who make characters of another faction and start playing with them. In my opinion, if you find your main character boring, you made wrong choice at start. Wasting time on alt characters will make your main one weak and non competitive. So such zones for me is very good: I will increase my own wealth, exploring new territories. As for lore part, just one simple quest can repair all: make the character double/triple agent, that work on profit of all three alliances.
About the evolution of MMO games.

You ask me - what the main key to game suceess? Players, I'll told you and how you keep that players in game. So as for me, the main question of game development is how keep players busy and interest. Since most of player's time taked by gearing and getting end-level equipment/scrolls/runes/gems/glyphs/trinkets and so on (in most of RPG games) or just new cars/tanks/mechs or achievments or other same-looking activity, developers made the biggest mistake ever by introducing same activity in new patch. 
Let's just model the situation: we start game, leveling some time, gearing some time and finally got super-puper-end-top-high level gear. The game for us is ended and we awaiting next patch. 
Second scene: new patch. We start leveling with top gear, and some other new player, that started game late, will start leveling with average gear from quests. At this moment we will spend 1-2 days to get new max level and start gearing again, and new player will spend 1 or 2 weeks to get new max level due to gear difference. Than he start to get top gear, one by one, probably he will start even from getting old top gear as a boost. So to the middle moment between two consequitive patches we already will have top gear, and new player will have only started pack. Rest of time we will spend on farming gold or other extremely rare resources so to the moment of next patch we will got some new fancy relic plus end gear, and new players will have fifty/fifty of something. This prosecc will repeat until ∞. In result we will have: old player with all possible relics and top gear and new player with started-pack relics and some kind of pre-top/top gear. What I want to say? There is almost impossible to reach the level of old players in games, when the main activity is based on time spending: the more time you play - the more powerful you become. Live to win.
The answer is not introduce new activity that looks like old one. In first patch players get gear and use it till patch number 5, for example. In patch number 2 players of same faction working on build some tower, getting resources in dungeons. In patch number 3 they fight each other in massive PvP. And so on. Every next patch force players to make some different activity and all other activity is connected with main one. That's my vision of game evolution.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Tribute to The Tamriel Chronicle, Issue #10 and connected topics from here. Part 1.

About builds and weapons and armor. As i see in many games not all builds and characters set-up's are  playable. Yes, developers made them, but they are not viable. Like healer who try to tank or warrior with off-heal. The build will mean something only in solo fights; in party fighting friends will help you not to disgrace. As far as I see, in ESO developers cut out a lot of things that can interfere the balance. Only 4 class, limited amount of weapons and armor pieces, only 6 action bar buttons. Also they force players to choose from a lot of possible builds (that is good coz make some difference between characters of same class; but not excellent). As you know, build in MMO divide on a lot of types such as: PvE or PvP (main division), Solo or AoE damage, Solo or AoE heal, support heal, support tank and so and so. With only 2 possible set-up's we will be able to pick up 2 deep build cause making hybrid one with only 6 action button not the right move. We'll see. Since the Morrowind time I hoped that in online version of the game we will be able to construct character like we make it before, from the set of 20+ abilities and schools of magic. That may lead to really interesting combats in PvP and a lot of strategies and more realistic gameplay. But to my disappointment we will end with typical MMO type of action when if you meet mage you always know that he/she is paper boy and you must survive his first fire comet, than start close combat and kill him.

Now some nice quotes from link in top of post.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, character customization is one of the most important aspects of an RPG.
 You need to be a total idiot if you even pay a little attention to how looks your character. Probably you are the one who try to persuade orc not to attack you because you are elf with boobs. Character customization only for roleplay pussies.

Players can enter houses and businesses and pick up all the little things like plates and cups, even loot the family’s wardrobe looking for that old sword passed down by Grandpa.
So it is the thing which I hate mostly in TES. Tell me please, what will you do if someone break into your house? I'm sure you will attack him if you have sword or axe (as far as I saw all NPC in TES have weapons). So it is normal to make NPC attack you if you enter their house and try to walk here and there or hide behind closed bedroom doors.

If Elder Scrolls is known for one thing, it’s be the ability to tell stories in detail. 

I was through a lot of games and to be honest all games have lore of some kind. But amount of players that enjoyed lore part is so small that when you ask in raid consisted of more than 30 players "Who know why this boss lives in castle and put in chains?", only things i heard "GTFO and let's kill him" From my experience only about 5-10% of ppl even try to read quests. Since game will be world-wide and the amount of language usually 2-3: English, German, may be French or Italian, a lot of players found it hard to read stories so they just skip it. It consumes a lot of time, you know, to read all of this lore when you don't get any profit from it. The reasonable question is: if only 10% of people read the lore (and enjoy it, keep it in mind, "engrave" themselves in the matter of the game), why pay so many attention to it? What you can offer to the rest of players?

As you can tell by my impressions here, Elder Scrolls Online’s storytelling has left an impact on me. I was more impressed with the tale told in this brief quest chain than I ever was in my hundreds of hours exploring World of Warcraft’s barebones stories

You guys just have prejudice about WoW and ESO. The quests in WoW and it's storyline have great history too but i bet that you just was young to understand that and probably still young to judge fairly now.

Also Rus McLaughlin of VentureBeat told a lot of quite right things especially about side quests. In TES series side quests do nothing just some crap item, crap armor and weapons. Only profit was from guilds quests lines, such a thief guild which gives you Nightingale armor. So same was in other MMO, where side quests needed only for crap "green" drops, small amount of money and so. Only main chain matter, only valuable end-game rewards make difference, only things, that makes you stronger than your enemies are important. Side quests, that didn't provide it are condemned to skip as a time-wasters!


As a bonus, it's how combat in Skyrim works and probably why people want to play nightblades. It's my gameplay, after I mastered bows and stealth to max (oneshots being hidden on clear space). Hope nothing of this will be in ESO.



Saturday, June 1, 2013

Ohh yes, this video. What interesting about graphics here. First of all is movements of characters, they are way too fast and looks not real. It's hard to make it looking good in game that must suits video cards on slow PCs but the way it's done in ESO - it is looking quite ugly even for 2006 year game. One more thing that I notices secondly is "life armor". Probably it is new kind of armor in ESO that looking like steel one but moving as it is was leather! It stretchs like tights! Probably developers just make it as covering textures for character, without thought about physics and good looking but as for me such a small detail ruins all the armor exterior. This is same as hair - make hair little more streaming, I don't know, flying a bit and characters, especially woman ones will looking much more better. And combat in total looking like in Morrowind: fast simple moves, sharp turns and so on.