I’m a pantster and I love characters ‘on the cusp’, so I’m not sure yet which side of the Good vs Evil divide Death will occupy, but as soon as I heard this piece on Soundcloud, I knew it was Death’s theme.
Enjoy? Maybe?
Meeks
I’m a pantster and I love characters ‘on the cusp’, so I’m not sure yet which side of the Good vs Evil divide Death will occupy, but as soon as I heard this piece on Soundcloud, I knew it was Death’s theme.
Enjoy? Maybe?
Meeks
I think I’m coming down with something, so I’ve done precious little all day. But sitting doing nothing does have its advantages. I finally managed to rig my little man, and that meant I could pose him. š
-grin-
Night night!
This post first appeared on my Medium publication, Tikh Tokh.
Disclaimer: Iām an older gamer whose main interests are crafting, exploration, lore, game design and aesthetics. If you want to know if ESO has the best dungeons or the most exciting PVP, youāve come to the wrong place.
Soā¦first impressions:
āGod, the characters are ugly.ā
āHelp! The camera is awful!ā
āBloody hell, how do you move around in this game?ā
But then there came a moment when I saw my first āmansionāā¦
ā¦and the graphics whore in me kicked in. Jaw agape, I wandered through this empty mansion and was transported back to my favourite game of all time – Vagrant Story. Created by Square Enix, Vagrant Story was probably the most beautiful game ever developed for the first PlayStation console, and the graphics had the same effect on me.
But this article isnāt about Vagrant Story, itās about ESO, and the reason I bring the comparison up so early in the piece is because this was the moment when all my other first impressions faded into insignificance. I still hated the appearance of my character [and all the npcs]. I still found moving around difficult, and battling excruciatingly hit or miss, butā¦the beauty of the āworldā had me hooked.
The following is a watery vista just to the north ofĀ Balmora:
The next is a close-up view of the texture of a wall in Balmora. The dark shapes are shadows from aĀ tree:
Before playing ESO, I honestly thought Final Fantasy XIV [FFXIV] was the most beautiful MMORPG currently available. I still think FFXIV is beautiful in that distinctly Asian, manga-esque way, but I no longer think itās the best out there. ESO is.
The grass and bushes in ESO are thicker, richer, more real looking. The textures are a million times better, and the abundance of fauna, both large and small, make the environment feel alive. Plus the whole landscape is full of things to find, but more on that later. Time now for some negatives.
I began this article by saying that ESO characters are ugly. I stand by that. Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that my aesthetic may not appeal to everyone. I have played Western MMOs [WoW, GW2 and a couple of forgettables], but the bulk of my playing time has been on Japanese or Korean MMOs. Bear that in mind as you look at the following screenshots. The first is of a Dark Elf male and a NordĀ female:
I love character customisation, but I found it next to impossible to create attractive characters in ESO. The faces shown above are two of the most attractive ones, but I donāt think either is that attractive.
The two characters above are from Asian MMOs. The character on the left is from my brief foray into Blade and Soul. Loved the aesthetic of the characters, hated the game. The character on the right is from FFXIV. Both are gorgeous, and as a female player I make no apology for prefering them to the ESO offering.
Iām not impressed with the ESO body aesthetic either:
To me, the legs in ESO look too short for the bodies, but that could just be me. The monotony of the faces, however, is not my imagination. It is possible to create some differences between races, but within races, all the faces come out looking almost identical. As for the Cat and Lizard racesā¦rolls eyes. Really? Stick an unmodified cat head on a human body and thatās it? Instant Cat race? The less said about those two races the better.
And now to the camera and movement settings in ESO. Having the camera locked to the head of the character may work in first person shooters, but for those of us who prefer a 3rd person perspectiveāāāi.e. seeing our characters from behind as they move aboutāāāthe camera is nauseating, literally. You canāt just point to some āobjectā with the mouse and look at it. You have to move the character until the cross hairs at head level pan over the object you want to check out.
The camera setting also means that the character has to be pointed at and looking at any enemy it needs to fight. Getting that āhead camera angleā just right in 3rd person view is tricky, very tricky. Again, I imagine that the camera setting would make fighting in PVP easier as you wouldnāt have to worry about lining up the crosshair, it would just be āthereā. Pity I donāt do PVP.
You can change the key bindings for actions and weapon skills, but after much effort I finally gave up and learned to use the default setup, more or less. These settings include:
Actual weapon skills are handled by the number keys, 1ā5. This means you can only ever have five of the total available weapon skills active at the one time. [I havenāt reached the level at which I get weapon swap which will effectively give me another 5 weapon skills to work with and Iām ignoring Ultimates for now].
Do I enjoy the battling? Not particularly, but Iām now able to hold my own. In time I may actually become reasonably proficient at fighting. -sigh-
Still on the subject of fighting, I have to say that the solo ādungeonsā [delves?] are fast becoming my favourite parts of the game. Most of these instanced, solo events are part of a quest chain and occur underground, or in some dungeon-like area.
This is the map of the Vassir-Didanat Mine dungeon:
These instanced dungeons can be completed on your own or by casually joining other players who are in the same place at the same time. No need to join a party, just tag along helping each other as needed. Great fun.
Returning to the camera settings, another problem is that you canāt just sweep the mouse over the environment when youāre looking for something. This can make gathering tricky as collectables arenāt marked in any way. You have to get up close and personal, and touch the object with the crosshair before you can see its label.
In the following screenshot, the object circled in red is a maple log:
If you love gathering and crafting, you will eventually learn to recognize the appearance of collectables from a distance, but as you can see from the above screenshot, collectables donāt exactly leap out of the environment at you. Yet despite this, or perhaps because of it, each rune, flower, or lump of wood I discover feels like an achievement.
This sense of accomplishment is in stark contrast to FFXIV where gathering is āeasyā but horribly boring. Sadly, crafting in ESO is the exact reverse. You rock up to a crafting station, choose the item you want to craft and hit a button. If you have the required materials, the item is crafted without any further input from the crafter. Boringā¦.
By contrast, crafting in FFXIV is a mini-game and actually requires both strategy and skill.
In an attempt to make crafting in ESO a little more substantial, higher levels require ātraitsā that must be researched. Researching a trait involves the destruction of an āitemā [weapon, gear, whatever] in order to learn the trait it contains. Researching a trait takes 6 hours and again, requires no further input from the crafter.
There are other bits and pieces involved in crafting, but at this point I havenāt discovered anything in ESO that makes my heart go pitter pat. Iām still at a very low level though so Iāll reserve my final judgement until I learn more.
Before I finish this preliminary overview of ESO, there are two further positives I really have to point out. Despite the fact that my character is only level 12, the quest lines have already given me a mount and a room at the inn which I can furnish as I wish.
None of the MMOs Iāve played have ever been this generous to a newbie player. Itās almost as if ESO believes players should be enjoying themselves right from the beginning instead of having to level up for weeks before being rewarded with something āniceā. Iām not saying ESO is perfect, far from it, but I will say that Iāve never enjoyed these low levels in an MMO before. That has to mean something. Oh, and itās free to play. That means something too.
cheers
Meeks
I always visualised the character of Miira Tahn as Eurasian, but I did not spell it out in so many words. So now, allow me to introduce Miira as she was, before time, marriage and illness turned her into a Boomer.
-drum roll –
The young Miira Lindgren:
Okay, enough fun. I’m on the second bend before the final straight that leads to the home stretch on Innerscape, so I’m off back to work. š
cheers
Meeks