Elder Scrolls Online: Research

Gameplay

When the player gets into a position to control the character the movement is extremely smooth and scales well with the world that you are thrown into. The lighting is well done for every different theme of area since everything is visible and nothing is left in total darkness. The environment is very realistic, foliage waves very gently on small islands where ocean wind can pass through easily, and the water comes in waves and ripples; in-land cities are very active since there are people and NPCs jostling for room and going from stall to stall to buy wares and repair equipment. Caves and dungeons have a sense of eeriness to them that someone would feel when walking into ruins or a tomb in real life. In-game ruins don’t capture the feeling that it is ruined and abandoned since most ruins are used as Solo Dungeons then packed with enemies to kill. Crafting is incredible boring and the interfaces are hugely different compared to the last Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, leaving new players confused and asking around for instruction, which leads into 2 more problems. Most people will ignore players requesting help, usually out of laziness; the game doesn’t explain that there is a help menu full of information for new players, making it even more difficult for new players to get the hang of the game. A notable bug that has been fixed now was in the early releases and beta of the game where some stairs wouldn’t have any collision so you would fall through them with no way to escape without teleporting to someone or spending hard earned money. The crafting is overly simple, making it boring to craft despite its usefulness. Looking past the weaknesses of the crafting, it can be quite enjoyable making your armour look whatever style you want to by choosing a racial style and then dying in any colour you want. There is very little replay content to ESO since despite it being generally an open-world, the quests don’t change and there is generally one way to do everything, making the game very inflexible. By means of immersion the best you can do is go into first person which doesn’t offer much immersion since your first person is way too far forward for realistic vision, you feel as if you’re in front of your character. The game can be very random at times and it is mainly down to chance if you do well or not. Levelling within the game is a touchy subject since some quests can be hard to complete or even find; Craglorn is also a game-breaker since there are ways to manipulate enemies that give a lot of experience when they die which leads to groups doing experience grinds and levelling much faster than other people who would take a different path by means of gaining experience.

Sound

The music in ESO is enjoyable to listen to but doesn’t hold the same power as the soundtrack from Skyrim. The combat music is simple and dull, making fights irritating in long periods or wave based fighting. Sound effects are varied and make trying out different abilities enjoyable; the noises enemies and NPCs make are realistic for the things that exist, and fantasy creatures are well done too, the cries and howls they make put hair on end. The sounds of the environment make you feel as if you area actually in that environment, e.g.: In cities, vendors shout out about their wares and animals are audible over the noise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOTIsNELvis ESO Official Soundtrack

Graphics

The graphics aren’t as high definition as a game like Crysis 3, but this is a good thing since there are so many textures that need loading in areas. When the rendering slows down textures become ugly smudges of stretched out colour. The design of NPCs and armour by race (clothing, racial style, etc.) was very well done since you can see someone run past you and still recognise it. Some of the crafting styles are very similar, especially with light armour and can be boring to create since it all looks similar. On a high cost computer ESO is a beautiful game and it becomes obvious that a lot of effort was put into making the game as realistic as possible without losing the fantasy feel about it.

AI

The AI in ESO is well designed when it works realistically, but it can really mess up from time to time, ruining the immersion and feel of the game. An example of this is when you try to jump off of something high or onto something high to escape from a tough enemy: the enemy can still hit you when you’re a good 7 feet away from them.

Control

The controls are very simple to understand and get the hang of, and they can all be re-mapped to any key you want. Movement is standard “WASD” with “Space” as jump, “CTRL” is crouch and “Shift” is sprint. Nothing is bound to toggle walk/run but it’s used for RP mostly, making it an optional key-binding. Some functions that are brand new to the Elder Scrolls games are mapped to keys you need to reach far to press, being forced out of the way for convenient menu hotkeys, making it seem as the functions aren’t as important even though one of the far-out keys is bound for weapon switching, a vital component of fights.

Combat

The combat is usually smooth and enjoyable, but the most recent patches have made combat clunky: abilities sometimes won’t go off or will go off for every time you press the button, and other times it won’t. Basic attacks haven’t been buggy for a long time and are generally the most reliable

way to damage something; unfortunately, most fights can’t be won by just spamming left click and require you to use abilities to survive in combat. This doesn’t always hold true since you can enchant equipment, and some classes can buff their attacks and survive off of that.

UI

The menu UI’s are simple and pleasant to look at (pleasant as in it doesn’t hurt to understand or look at). It has a simple layout that is easily understandable and is traversed easily. The crafting UI’s however are confusing to understand and make little sense. The out of menu/combat UI is very simple, making the screen un-cluttered and easy to see the world around it.

Economy

The world’s economy is poorly balanced, making the middle of the game the most money-filled. Early game money isn’t overly important since good items are easily acquired, but late game when you need money the most it is very difficult to get enough funds to repair armour, leaving little

leftover for profit. Money is overly easy to come by, however, if you choose to not do crafting at all since items sell for ridiculous amounts to other players and still sell for a fair price with NPCs. The sense of earning money is lost when you reach “Craglorn”, a high level area: this means there are high level drops there which can be sold for a lot of money. A lot of enemies can be manipulated to spawn very quickly, which leads to groups grinding it for endless money since all levels are guaranteed a high-tier drop.