User blog comment:Whiterunguard001/Regarding The Elder Scrolls Online/@comment-3217145-20130501153806

Good points. I agree with the first, second, and fifth paragraphs, and I think your last point is SO prudent. My responses to the rest is mostly based off my opinion, but with a few factual additions.
 * 1. "the real accomplishment was leveling your character to that uber mage or grand warrior or master thief."

That's your opinion. I'd say the "real accomplishment" is whatever the player feels accomplished doing. Being forced to choose one "pure" class, and then choosing the one "correct," maximum-efficiency build for it, is not an accomplishment to me. If you want to do that, the system allows you to; focus on the skills and perks you want, leave the ones you don't. The point is to allow variety for players who don't want to level that way.

The reason I hate other MMOs is that they reward choosing the "optimum" class and using the "optimum" route to level them, and they punish deviation, greatly limiting your freedom to develop the character if you want to remain competitive. The design goal of ESO is that a player can construct a character with any skillset they want them to have, and their effectiveness in combat is determined by how intelligently the player uses those skills. This means you can (in theory) do lots of things. For example, you could create a theme (like "manipulate the enemy") and grab skills centered around that (Fury/Calm/Fear spells, chain-and-grab abilities, staggers, grapples, knockbacks, etc), without it being purely based on one class archetype. You can say "this character has this ability because of this event in their past," but not make it central to the way they fight. You can make up a character superhero-style, giving them some abilities and strengths without worrying about synergy and objective effectiveness, then translate them into the game for fun. You can spread yourself a mile wide and an inch deep, or focus intensely on one playstyle, or cultivate two different ones (i.e. Tank and Healer) and alternate between them as appropriate. If the system only rewards/allows objectively efficient playstyles, it becomes all about pumping your core stat(s), spamming your best skills, establishing a "rotation" where you're watching a bunch of meters and doing math, and then you're doing accounting instead of playing pretend.

What I don't understand is that you seem to be complaining about increased freedom in character creation, which doesn't affect you at all if you don't want it, and only benefits players who do. I may have missed the point of what you were saying.


 * 2. "Giving a person the option to switch a characters purpose part way through a given playthrough is jarring and unhelpful."

Could you expand on this? The game doesn't force you to erase your progress and redesign yourself at some point, so I don't see how it's jarring, and clearly it is helpful if someone uses it to improve their character. I changed majors in college, and that was super-helpful. Like I said, if you don't want to do it, then don't do it. It doesn't hurt you. It's an incentive to creativity and discovering things you didn't know you wanted to do, instead of mechanical efficiency and meticulous planning before you take your first steps. If nothing else, every other game uses the system of picking classes and min-maxing, so ESO is at least providing a new experience.

This also assumes that it is their goal to allow you to completely switch character focus. The point is not necessarily to heel-face-turn at level 25, it's to allow gradual refinement of the character and gradual addition to what they can do. It remains to be seen how this will work out in practice, but I think it worked pretty well in Skyrim. I started a mage thinking I could ignore Destruction altogether, but was relieved to find out that after a few levels, I could still grind it up and be perfectly effective with it, without any kind of penalty for choosing waaaay back at the beginning that I wouldn't focus on it. Later I picked up the Ebony Mail, and loved it so much that I decided to focus on Heavy Armor with my otherwise-Pure Mage, but didn't bother with all the higher-level perks for it. I ended up with a different character focus than I started with, but it was still a pretty specific playstyle that was heavy on the aspects I wanted (Conjuration and Illusion), just supplemented by things I didn't know I would want.


 * 3. "the only thing that I dislike more than a twelve year old little kid yelling into his mice telling me how he's a warrior and could "own" me on any game, is when he begins to level up magical skills or stealth skills taking over the job of myself or my friend who is questing with me."

That is annoying. Kick him out. Besides, he won't be as good as you or your friend if he suddenly starts changing his character in the middle of questing. If he's not helpful, don't work with him. There will be jerks and bad players regardless of the system.

Also, you're saying that the game has thrown out the "holy trinity" of classes, but still comparing character builds to those classes. It's not as easy as just "being a Thief," taking the "Thief skills," and making all other "Thiefs" obsolete. The preponderance of skills and perks (supposedly) means that you can make vastly different builds with a similar focus. They say you can have a party of four Warrior-types with different focuses (for example, one with heavy tanking and healing skills, one with crowd control, one with anti-undead moves, and one with lightning-fast dual-wield attacks, all with Heavy Armor and high health), and still be balanced and take on enemies effectively. It's (purportedly) not so simple as "taking over the job of" someone else.


 * 4. "Why have we not seen much in the summerset isles, or blackmarsh, why has there been no real mention in regards to locations like Orsinium and High Rock?"

Probably because it's in early beta. They probably focused on getting one area all polished for demos and pretty screenies and stuff while they finish up the rest.


 * 5. "How far does the "exploration aspect" actually go even? We have seen little as a fan base in respect to the full extent, but I would not get your hopes up for you, an argonian/ dark elf,and your nord allies running around elsweyr, as from what I have seen, each faction stays central to their faction area."

They have already addressed this. You are allowed to go anywhere. The entire continent exists and is fully populated. IIRC, after level 50, there are no restrictions placed on where you can go, so you can use one character to complete all the storylines without making an alt. Don't quote me on that though.


 * 6. "And what of Cyrodiil, sweet, sweet Cyrodiil? only for PvP, no surprise visits to the daedric shrines, no frolicing in the fields outside skingrad, just deathmatch on those available maps."

Also discredited. Cyrodiil is a full map, not a series of battle zones. There are quests in Cyrodiil that aren't PVP-related, but there is still the possibility of hostile players showing up when you're in a dungeon or something away from the big battles.


 * 7. "I will not be surprised when people start whining of the short comings of the game, and I will not be surprised when the media declares The Elder Scrolls Online a monumental success."

And I will not be surprised when they completely lie about something, or end up cutting out something they've been bragging about for a long time. It probably won't be the greatest thing ever. The game hasn't even been released yet, so it's almost entirely Zenimax's hype and promises at this point. There have been betas, but obviously these are very limited and still under construction. I'm defending it on the basis of what I know and what they claim, but that doesn't mean that something I don't know won't make it suck. (- ,-) I'd say it's almost certainly "not all it is made out to be," because that's true of pretty much every game ever.

Btw, most of what I mention here comes from the "Elder Scrolls Off the Record" podcast (or "Quest Gaming Network" on iTunes). It's a bunch of guys who got together over liking Skyrim, so obviously they have a bias and gush over how amazing the game DEFINITELY WILL be, but they still present a lot of good information that's mostly from quoted tweets and articles and such from the developers.