Current State of the Game?

I have been removed from the game for quite some time now.  I aided in the testing and a couple of months after it launched I was burned out and frustrated about some things.  I have been playing wildstar and some eve online, but while those games have had their moments of fun what I truly miss is the community.  One thing that kept me going in Wildstar was the sheer transparency of it's dev team (and the PvP was awesome).  Their weekly twitch streams really went a long way for me because it showed me that they do actually play the game (as I'm sure all devs do), but it also showed me just how passionate they were about their product.  Those are both points that really cannot be expressed in forums/patch notes.  Now that Wildstar is "failing" I find myself yearning for community again.  I have been thinking about resubbing in ESO and seeing how it is.  I know some things have changed but I wanted to ask about some of my particular frustrations with the game and see if changes have been made.

I had every class a bit, but mostly played templar and nb. So here are my questions...

Are magicka builds still far superior to stamina?

Playing NB back I was extremely frustrated having a lot of abilities not working as intended...Have they fixed these or at least updated the tooltip to reflect what the abilities actually do?

Phasing was also a big frustration for me as I would like to run dungeons multiple times with different members but after the first run through I was more of less fighting blind and not able to see the next step in the dungeon...is this still the case?

I was also wondering if there were a healthy amount of builds for each of the classes, such as there being multiple viable top tier dps/heal/tank/leveling builds or is there really just one or two?

Are the morphs more balanced? I noticed when playing before there were morphs that were worlds apart in how much better one was vs the other.

Do all abilities get equally better with ranking up?  I noticed when playing before that some abilities would do just 1 more damage or cost 1 magicka/stamina less per rank and some abilities (inner light for instance) would incrementally increase the percentages in the abilities making them far superior.

Are the armors more evenly balanced? Last I played light armor was more or less king and some of the med armor perks were completely broken/not working.  Has this changed?

How is WvW with the split between vet and non vet? Are the populations healthy for both? Is one clearly more fun than the other?  Are the WvW events zergy?  When I was playing I was very interested in WvW but everytime I went to an event we were just zerging point to point with no dagger groups or defend groups with no real multi-group tactics.  Has that changed

And Lastly I remember this game being VERY solo friendly so I was wondering if our guildies tend to play solo or group up and join RC...I have come to feel that if I sub for ANY mmo again that I take a more social approach to it.  If I (more or less) just played solo I should just stick to console games as they have a superior solo gameplay product.

So those are my questions and I would greatly appreciate any feedback.  I have been playing skyrim modded high quality textures and am LOVING IT.

I can't answer all your questions because I don't think I am quite as advanced a player as you.  Fog would probably be your best bet though. I can answer this:  They are still working on stamina builds is my understanding and groups are better but still need work.

In terms of questing, I have been running them mainly solo just because I don't know of anyone else at my level.  I do think though I will start joining RC more while questing.  I ran through the whole AD story the first time and was really immersed in it. Now I am running in EP and don't find it quite as intriguing.  I need some socializing too!!

In conclusion I would definitely get with Fog though and see what he thinks.

My thoughts on this, but again Fog would know even more, due to having face to face time with them recently:

1) Grouping has less hiccups than it did.  There are still spots with some phasing out in the open world.  Instanced dungeons have it so the first time you do the quest and complete it you never see it again.  This never caused an issue with any group I've gone with because you pretty much just slam through everything anyway and all groups I've been in were on RC or good at typing as needed so we knew who had to go where.  This includes my Map Romp events were on several maps I had quests done that I had the group due in conjunction with delves and the public dungeon.  Everyone worked together just fine to get through eveything.

2) AvA has a lot less lag and grouping issues.  The disconnect half the party randomly issue is definitely gone.  Lag is more dependent on your system, network and number players/siege all going at it in an area.  I have an older system, but fiber in my house now, so only lag I get is the random hiccup and the charges into the inner area of a keep with all the spell effects and people moving may skip some, but not bad.  My issues is entirely my graphics card in my own opinion on this.

3) They have done some tweaking to stamina builds, but are still working on it per what I know.  My NB who still little seems to work better in the past two or three months than a little one I did in beta and live the first month with a combo build with stamina being used more than magicka.

4) Overall, I never really found skills that off other than the ones they definitely had to tweak because they were either too much or too little.  There has definitely been some tweaking on skills, but not being one of those that digs for the numbers and goes with what works best for my play style, I don't know if you will find what you want out of this or not.

5) Set armors have been tweaked so you get more bonuses than before.  At each piece added, max of 5 pieces, there is a bonus added instead of 1/3/5 as before.

6) The game is still a definite combo of solo and grouping.  A lot of people still do questing solo or in pairs from what I have seen.  I do lead a weekly Map Romp of a chosen map each week that usually has around 7 of us since it is 11am pst start and goes for usually 3 hours even if I stated it goes at least two.  ;)  I've helped people out with questing where phasing does not cause issues.  Phasing is still there, but seems a little more friendly than before.  Craglorn for those in the upper vet ranks is a definite group, not solo place - mostly 4 man other than the 12 man trials.

Of course, this game is one of the few that has grabbed me with its looks and world story without me getting bored by the end of two months.  I still can't say I've done everything in this game and I tested for nearly a year before it went live.

So I say sub for one month and see what you think.  If it still frustrates you, it is totally understood.  We still have lots of people in GW2 and a crew running in ArchAge because they rather play those games together.  There is not a game out there that is for everyone and I doubt there ever will be.  Just some games make more people happier longer than others.  =)

The good news is a lot of the Major glaring problems are coming to an end with Update 5 and 6. I saw a lot of them implemented while I was at the Guild Summit. They are aware and have fixes on the way. They're heading in the right direction it's just going to take some time.

Sorry I had been late at work...Thank you all for the feedback. I figure I'll sub on my next day off and see how it goes...It is good to see that they are heading in the right direction. Though it is sad to see that the dungeons aren't really repeatable with the same group of characters.  And what else will be weird is that my mom is in game and it's the first game she's ever touched before so that'll be new

The dungeons are repeatable, you just won't have the quest to do after the first time.  Still have the same bosses to kill and everything.  I've been on several to help people get through them that haven't.  So not everyone has to be on the stage of needing the quest.  If you just feel like messing it up, go ahead and go do so.  ;)  The other thing is that once you are 5 levels over a dungeon content, it really isn't worth your character doing it unless for some reason they still have the quest and thus can get the skill point out of it.

Well I heard that they were going to make the dungeons scale to the group if they are higher level...but yeah you're right in that there is no reason to really doing them over and over.

Oh and I just read up on the Champion System and I'm excited to see the vet rank grind as I knew it disappear

  Over all the proposed changes look ok , I assume they were surprised at how much was wrong that needed changing, they should have actually read more of the reports we sent pre launch .

 Hopely the new changes when they finally add them will bring back some to try the game again , since it`ll be almost a entirely new game .  ..  

 Guild rosster is starting to thin out on people still playing . we down from 426 to 265 in the last 3 weeks .

Dirkdaring, The roster is smaller because I removed the people who haven't played in 3 months. I wanted to get a real visual of how many people we have playing. What you see is what we really have. Those others in the roster hadn't logged into eso for over 3 months.

I know a few people, including myself, have just come over to ESO. For my part, I'm enjoying it so far, though I dislike how single player it is. I've yet to do any sort of group event (just hit level 11), and guild chat is a lot quieter than I'm used to from GW2 or ArcheAge.

I'll accept my share of the blame for chat being quiet. I have a bad habit of just pointing my head down and soloing, with nary a glance at the chat box. This despite my desire to participate more in guild activities. I guess after 50 years I'm having a hard time learning a new trick.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

  What I also see lately is us haveing daily events ,  which is great , but lately a few of them are not announced in zone chat so that people outside the guild can join .

  I asked why and was told it was not announced because  the leader didn`t wish to deal with trolls etc on raidcall .

  That`s a easy fix  just don`t announce the raid call info ,  you can have 1 person relay what we are doing in group chat for those not on raidcall.

  Lots of people playing this game are consoel players etc and aren`t used to guilds, they think a Guild is a trade guild lol .

 I`m sure if we  opened up every event like cyrodill shard farming, Vet dung runs, normal dung runs and Crag questsing to the entire server , we`d draw a few more people to us .

 I know a lot of people are completion types, but due to bad game design, can`t complete everything solo I always ssee them lfg for stuff like this . even if we only get 1 member to join from an event and  they fit in it`s a bonus to us and them .  

I know if I hadn`t fought against you guys in warhammer in the server Battle for Badlands events and enjoyed it , I would not have  reserached Gaiscioch and apped after I left  Warhammer .

 Same way when I see people go looking for guild , in zone chat , I  send them a whisper and ask if they are looking for a guild or a trade guild ? . the ones that replay they are looking for an actual guild, I give them our adress and tell them to check us out and see if we are what they are looking for .

 Since this game has no Guild tags , it is harder for people to see us and see what we do and go hmm I`d like toi do that also.

 All in All the new changes look promising .  Now if they could just fix some of the bugs  we have had for months  soon . 

» Edited on: 2014-10-28 06:31:57

"What I also see lately is us haveing daily events ,  which is great , but lately a few of them are not announced in zone chat so that people outside the guild can join ."

Maybe I misunderstand the system, I thought Lorgair and above could lead Family only events, that you needed to be on the War Council to lead "Zone wide" events.  I do invite PUGs to the group if they are running with us.

I completely agree we need to make our presence known, many people have no Guild (or had a guild that went to other games).  We need to help them find Us.

Well, I'm disenchanted and admit not going to zone for my event today.  Why?  In the 2.5 months I've run my afternoon event I got one non-guild person ever to even stick around.  I've had several bites, but by the time the 15 minutes or so of organizing get done and everyone is there, they have slunk off already to do other things and left the group.  It's like they want the help, but they want it their way.

I definitely don't worry about trolls because I'm only doing a PvE event.  I can't even get people to troll me, not that I try, just for the times I did a few spams of events over 15 minutes in zone chat.  Not even in the two starting zones of EP where even high level people tend to hang out for various reasons.

I'm still enjoying the game, but I really feel annoyed about the way it makes community stuff hard on the PvE side of things.  I actually am glad I usually have a group of 6 or 7 guildies because with more a lot of the content gets harder for everyone to get credit for.  Most PvE is solo to 4 people intended, other than trials.  Craglorn is a 4-man fest for most of the quests.  We just can't plow through zones doing things like we could in GW2 and Rift.  We were definitely a PvP zone guild in Warhammer since the PvE there seemed rather simple and easy.  Rift is where we picked up lots of PvE and Raiding peoples, but then lost the PvPers for a bit.  It's been a crazy mix in every game, which is why we have such a long list of what we wants and probably won't find the PERFECT fit.

I just know I really like this game and I'm resubbing for another 6 months.  I might actually bother with zone chat invites next week on my event because I might actually feel better.  The last two weeks have been HELL with a funeral and my MS kicking my butt all over.  I'm not really a patient or overly happy camper right now.  

That said - that whole must be a commander thingy whatever, I think that is a lag over from GW2.  There is no commander thingy in ESO and no set these people do things deal.  Now what we have to keep in mind is when we are out there that we are being friendly and the leader is being nice even to the trolls in explaining things, if they can't just be ignored.  At lorgair you can start leading, but the first ten you are set in a small group so you learn the system and how to at least work with guildies.  Once you get past that you can move on to single raid group stuff.  In any of these things you can invite non-guildies.  Nothing says it has to be just guildies.  It just has to be the right number of guildies to claim on the website as an event that happened.  What you must do is be sure you can put your best foot forward and keep on the happy face despite the trolls.  If you can't handle trolls and public outside the family when doing events, well then you shouldn't be doing public ones.  Just saying.

Coming from ArcheAge, there are two things I'm really liking about ESO:

1. Crafting is easy to get into and not absolutely insane.
2. The community is so much better than in ArcheAge. Much friendlier, a lot less toxic, more helpful. I had a really nice chat with a fellow yesterday, someone not in our guild, about crafting as we negotiated his making a set of armor for me. Since ArcheAge allows player killing of one's own faction, you don't get those type of interactions often, and due to the lack of COD in mail and current trade hacks that mean someone can take your stuff but give you no gold, there's no trust or community built around trade like there is in ESO.

I don't like how solo it tends to be, though I am enjoying all the quests and the gameplay. I got into the Skyshard and Lorebook run in AVA the other night with the guild, and it still didn't feel as engaging as GW2 grouping. But it's acceptable, and it's something new compared to GW2 where I've done most everything.

@Carrick I totally get what you are saying regarding the grouping in GW2 vs ESO.  On the opposite side though, I felt in GW2 you almost HAD to group to get ahead; and with me being the type of player who likes her solo questing time, I would get really frustrated.