+ Reply to Thread
Page 11 of 50 FirstFirst ... 9 10 11 12 13 21 ... LastLast
Results 201 to 220 of 985

Thread: The Elder Scrolls Online     submit to reddit submit to twitter

  1. #201

    Tera's combat is amazing. I can't remember if it had autoattack or not.

  2. #202
    Onto plan B...
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    913
    BG Level
    5
    FFXI Server
    Sylph

    I really enjoyed TERA's combat, but the environments were so bland and unrewarding. GW2 had pretty good combat but the lack of progression I felt with the weapons kinda killed it. I don't think a TES game with a mash up of all things "good" in MMOs will be a good MMO. Hell, I think we're looking at SWTOR v2 here. I love TES, but I'm also well aware of its flaws.

  3. #203
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    20,326
    BG Level
    10
    FFXIV Character
    Lord Longhaft
    FFXIV Server
    Gilgamesh
    FFXI Server
    Cerberus
    WoW Realm
    Mug'thol

    TERA has some great combat in terms of positioning and attack, though I'd like to see every class (within reason) having some variation of the block and dodge mechanics, even if dodging is simply a way to move faster for a short amount of time.

    If TERA and GW2's combat styles could fuse, I think the resulting child would be very, very slick. TERA has a slightly slower pace to the game, though this doesn't translate to dull or slow fights; its just not a frenetic lightshow of arrows flying and spells going off every which way. You have to pay attention, use audio and visual clues, and coordinate with others to get the most of it. Oh, and its fucking great knocking a big-ass boss on his fucking face because you got that nice knockback proc.

    TES has never had good combat. I've always preferred to immediately obtain mods that either allow for realistic lighting (for more nuanced assassinations on a stealth character), or mods that take the fighting out of my hands by allowing me to command NPCs. That said, the fatalities themselves are satisfying and chunky.

  4. #204
    Impossiblu
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    10,364
    BG Level
    9
    FFXIV Character
    Prothescar Centursa
    FFXIV Server
    Balmung
    FFXI Server
    Valefor

    nvm

  5. #205
    Salvage Bans
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    943
    BG Level
    5

    Quote Originally Posted by Brill Weave View Post
    That's incorrect though. While they may not tout it as a key feature, an auto attack combat system is the cornerstone of 99.9999% of all the MMO's out right now. It's not a remnant of the past if it is still the primary basic ingredient to all combat systems. They start with auto attack and build out from there. I can't think of any games out right now or in recent memory that didn't have an auto attack function based combat system. You're basing your debate on this particular point on a fairly easily refutable fact.
    Oh come on now... There are MMO's with no auto-attack and many MMO's with optional auto-attack. MMO's are not built around auto-attack, real-time attacks took over years ago. Auto-attack is generally just in the background doing a little bit of extra damage for melee classes.

    Back to TES:O though... We'll see when beta hits, but the introduction of a hotbar seems to have been a good start in improving typical TES combat. Hopefully they capture at least some of the sandbox-feel you get with TES games, it wont last too long if it goes full themepark in my opinion.

  6. #206
    Chram
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    2,708
    BG Level
    7
    FFXI Server
    Valefor

    Elder Scrolls Online set to prove (very) big is still beautiful

    In the first of two interviews, game director Matt Firor explains the thinking behind the game and why pockets can't be picked



    Everything about the Elder Scrolls is big. From Daggerfall's mind-boggling 188,000 square miles, a virtual space twice the size of Great Britain, to Skyrim's blockbuster sales figures and right down to the sheer amount of plants in Oblivion, this is scale at its most all-encompassing. So it's no surprise that The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO), the series' first massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), looks like it's going to be just that – massive.

    Building a multiplayer universe based on singleplayer worlds is no small task, of course, and there are many high-profile casualties. Even a killer brand only goes so far – last year Star Wars: The Old Republic suffered the humiliation of having to go free-to-play. There's also a little grumbling among Elder Scrolls fans that TESO is being developed by a new studio, Zenimax Online, rather than series creators Bethesda – though given that its staff are a specifically-assembled bunch of MMOG designers with quality CVs, the switch surely makes sense.


    TESO's game director Matt Firor is on the line from Maryland, and I've been wanting to ask this first question for days. Can you still pickpocket? In Skyrim you can get light-fingered enough to rob someone's clothes while they're talking to you, which always struck me as genius. "Pickpocketing's something that we have thought about doing," chuckles Firor. "But there's a lot of complicated interpersonal relations stuff with that feature, and basically what it comes down to is the world's divided into these three alliances, where everyone in your alliance is your friend and everyone else is the enemy, and if you pickpocket one of your friends then can you fight them?"

    I venture that yes, you could, but Firor has an effective counter. "It leads into design questions that we're unsure about – basically it's something that is a lot of fun for you, but not a lot of fun for everyone else."

    Put like that, it had to go; and anyway, getting bogged down in such detail seems rather miserly in the context of TESO's epic sweep. Previous Elder Scrolls games have been set in sections of the huge continent of Tamriel, such as Morrowind or Skyrim, but TESO's map is the whole of Tamriel, a thousand years before any of the events we know.

    "The lore about the era we're in has been kind of sketchy," explains Firor. "All we know is it's a time of big unrest and the provinces are fighting each other with no central control. That's the perfect setting for us, because we can tell the stories about this unrest and how provinces are forming alliances or fighting each other over the imperial city."


    There is something special about a videogame prequel of such magnitude, in that Zenimax Online is creating the history of a future we've already visited. Exploring a place you already "know" in a game has a particular intimacy to it, whether that's gunning through Goldeneye's Facility or re-tracing your steps through Skyrim – and it's a particularly awesome responsibility when the source is another game, because players feel a real a sense of ownership about these worlds.

    I ask Firor what a player might notice when returning to somewhere like Windhelm, one of Skyrim's major cities. "The first thing you'll notice is the similarities. The buildings look similar, the stone's similar, the general setting of the city in the zone looks the same. The differences are it's a different layout, I mean it's a thousand years before, the town itself is different in its makeup, the political system is different. You'll still walk out of the gates and recognise you're in Skyrim, and things like that little stream in front of the city, there's a lot of continuity in that sense. I guess I'd say it looks similar, but feels different."

    Making the Elder Scrolls massively multiplayer isn't just about the world, of course, and Zenimax's biggest challenge may well be adapting a singleplayer combat system – and one not without its share of critics – for huge co-operative and competitive battles. Player v Enemy (PvE) combat will see huge groups of players ganging up on the world's nasties, which Firor explains has led to a spot of table-turning.

    "We found as we played the game we liked certain character builds, so we've made enemies that essentially share some of those character builds. We're trying to simulate, basically, how players fight in groups – we want enemies to be using those tactics against you, so they'll help each other out, buff each other, heal each other. One might throw a pot of pitch and then a mage sets you alight – so now you're on fire and you're slowed down."


    The vast uncivilised tracts of Tamriel are used by TESO to address a more common and fundamental PvE problem – the plateau, the point at which you either PvP (Player v Player)or stop playing. "We might come up with a fancier name," laughs Firor. "But at the minute we call them adventure zones – you can go and explore the wilder parts of Tamriel, and our long-term PvE content is based around these areas. So if you're at a very high level but still want to play PvE, you can head to adventure zones and go explore solo or team up with similar players, and we'll probably tie some really big group quests into them."

    Your first hours in TESO, at least, will be PvE focused before the option to transition into competitive play. "Yeah we don't know exactly when that point is," says Firor. "Right now it's on level 10, which is about 15 hours of gameplay. Our thinking is at least a few hours of PvE to get the controls and how combat works – we don't want to throw 'em out there too soon, but we always want it all to be up to the player to choose."

    All well and good, because for many prospective players the focus is overwhelmingly on PvP – and Firor explains TESO's take in part two.

    Elder Scrolls Online – interview with game director part two

    Matt Firor talks about the online game's PvP system, where his experience working on Dark Age of Camelot came to the fore



    The Elders Scrolls Online (TESO) splits players into three factions, and the rivalry between them is what its Player v Player (PvP) system is built on. This is also an area where game director Matt Firor's previous work has particular relevance; the standout title on a long CV being Mythic's Dark Age of Camelot.

    Released in 2001 and still running, Camelot had an asymmetric take on PvP termed 'Realm Vs Realm' constructed around three very different factions, and is still considered one of (if not the) benchmarks for MMOG PvP design.

    "Yes we have a PvP progression system that we haven't really talked about yet," says Firor. "And in beta we'll go further into this, but you get Alliance Points the more you PvP, you get more abilities, and in that sense it's similar to Camelot where we had Realm Points.

    In Camelot, though, we had like 47 classes that were all different, and after a while it was much more difficult to balance than it should have been – so if we've learned anything in the 11 years since, it's let the players create the characters they want, and balance from there."

    To this end, TESO lets any player, regardless of class or race, use any piece of equipment. "So it's symmetrical in the sense that everyone has the same options, but of course not everyone's going to choose the same ones." That raises the prospect of homogenisation; players rapidly deciding which weapons are optimised, and then hundreds of them running around waving the same sword.

    "As game designers you have to solve those problems no matter what class or character system you have," laughs Firor. "In a true class-based system, you run the risk everyone rolls the same class, but in a more open one, the players will very much from the beginning try to find the most powerful build, and it's our job to ensure that there are many viable builds."

    I'm left wondering whether there will be any hard differences between the classes. Races in the Elder Scrolls traditionally have inherent buffs, and according to Firor these remain "a point of differentiation." But perhaps my thinking is too informed by the MMOG conventions TESO is trying to move clear of. "We're really trying to de-emphasise quote-unquote 'classes'," says Firor.

    "And [we want to] make the player's development more about their choices. So for example, we want to give everyone access to something like having pets – if they want to. Right now a perk lets you be a pet person, so if you want that ability, you can go and get it." A brief digression about crafting; Firor says Skyrim players should expect a familiar system, and also mentions the ability to enchant weapons.

    PvP takes place in the huge central zone of Cyrodil, and the obvious question is how many players can get involved. "We're planning on having 2,000 people at once in Cyrodil," says Firor.

    "In a particular fight, our client is optimised to have 200 players on-screen at one time, which means you'll have very large battles within an even larger battlefield."

    Such numbers means plenty of different player levels participating, an issue TESO solves by automatically increasing everyone's stats.

    "Everyone gets boosted up to the max level," explains Firor. "But you don't get abilities you haven't earned yet – just the hit points and stuff." A typical PvP battle might be a large-scale city assault, with one team defending, while the other is battering gates, firing trebuchets, and trying to sneak in through poorly-defended side-routes.

    "We've designed the system to let players do all of those things, and it's up to them to figure out which tactics work better – but generally, if your entire army is in front of the gate and just beating the walls, you're gonna lose. Carrying the day needs teamwork."

    A larger concern is how the melee combat of Skyrim and Oblivion, which is functional but somewhat unrefined, can be re-engineered for competitive play. "It does work the same way mechanically in PvP as it does in PvE," says Firor. "So you swing with the left mouse and block with the right mouse, but there are a couple of new moves, like a really fast left click then right click will stun someone, plus things like doubletapping a key to roll away.

    "We're playing around with all of this now, but obviously with PvP we have to keep on testing and refining – and this will really be helped with the large number of testers we'll get in beta – that'll let us hone the system on a large scale."

    "Very soon" is the most precise date Firor offers for the beta. "One of the joys of making games like this is that they're on such a massive scale, you need to get a whole lot of players into them to kind of see where you are."

    How big is the beta and how long will it run? "For as long as it takes for us to prove we're ready to launch, and we'll have as many people in as we can, especially because with a PvP system which supports thousands of players we really need multiple thousands to test that effectively."

    TESO inspires strong reactions among Elder Scrolls fans, and questions that will only be answered with the beta and many hours spent in its world. It's too easy to think about TESO as merely some sort of composite work, a series of singleplayer epics re-jigged into one massively multiplayer world. Too easy and so wrong-headed.

    I close by asking Matt Firor how TESO will silence the naysayers and pull players in – as well as keeping them there. "So the answer to that is pretty simple; if you have a good game, people will play it. It's got to be long-term compelling, it has to be fun, and if you do that, all the other questions answer themselves." Like most people involved in creating remarkable things, he makes it sound so easy.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...iew-matt-firor

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...terview-part-2

    Combat sounds like it will be fine, and PVP included.

    Though;

    Unfortunately, due to online latency, the combat system will not be the same real time combat the Elder Scrolls games are known for. The Stamina Bar will be the main focus in battles. Use the Stamina Bar to Sprint, Block, Interrupt, and break Incapacitating Effects. All these effects will vary by class.
    Doesn't sound all that great...

  7. #207
    The Sig...
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    4,946
    BG Level
    7
    FFXI Server
    Sylph

    Yeah thats the most concerning part.

    Regardless of the combat system (beating a dead horse at this point) - an MMO thrives off of content. If the game has no content, its swtor.

  8. #208
    Salvage Bans
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    972
    BG Level
    5

    Quote Originally Posted by Ohemgee View Post
    Yeah thats the most concerning part.

    Regardless of the combat system (beating a dead horse at this point) - an MMO thrives off of content. If the game has no content, its swtor.
    Absolutely. Look how horrible ffxi combat was, but nobody really cared because of all the content available.

  9. #209
    The Sig...
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    4,946
    BG Level
    7
    FFXI Server
    Sylph



    Max Scoville preview

  10. #210
    Impossiblu
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    10,364
    BG Level
    9
    FFXIV Character
    Prothescar Centursa
    FFXIV Server
    Balmung
    FFXI Server
    Valefor

    Pretty big text writeup here too


    Fine Iron Battle Axe of Undead Bane of Lightning
    lol

  11. #211
    Salvage Bans
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    943
    BG Level
    5

    No cooldowns. Thank god, I'm fucking sick of cooldowns.

    Sneaking. Not sure how it's not as deep as Skyrim, seeing as Skyrim was more derp then deep. Wearing disguises and not alerting enemies is pretty substantial though, wasn't present in Skyrim for some reason.

    Skill points. Fuck yeah. I don't care if it's old school, it's fucking awesome and you know it.

    Trying to not get too optimistic before I have a chance to play, but honestly it seems like everyone who touches it is impressed and design-wise it's hard to point out a lot of flaws. Biggest flaw will probably be character animations, especially facial features. TES games never seem to get that right, but we can hope/pray for mods, right? If the game is big on modding (obviously visual mods and not content mods), this is day1shutupandtakemymoney worthy, but it's hard to see an MMO going in that direction.

  12. #212
    Chram
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    2,684
    BG Level
    7
    FFXIV Character
    Vrumpt Vegallion
    FFXIV Server
    Excalibur

    Very happy about this

    http://www.destructoid.com/elder-scr...y-248674.phtml
    Fans were pretty upset after learning that the first person mode in The Elder Scrolls Online, a feature long time players have been rooting for, would be extremely limited. After all, it's kind of expected with this franchise.

    I was able to test out the fairly underwhelming first person mode at a preview event last week, which as previously reported, didn't feature arms, weapons, or full functionality. After asking a few developers about this detriment to the game, noting that including this feature would sell the game to a much larger audience, they responded with a smile, "we have something to show you later."

    What they showed me was in-game footage of a fully playable first person mode that looked just like a classic Elder Scrolls game. It was fast, fluid, and extremely impressive, to the point where it looked like they were playing Oblivion or Skyrim at times. Yep, I'm playing the entire game this way.

    Zenimax claims that this build is currently playable and in testing, and "will ship complete with the game at launch." A launch that they also confirmed will be available on Mac OSX day one.

    Stay tuned for my full hands-on preview of the game coming later today.


    Read more at http://www.destructoid.com/elder-scr...FPpvFbZu5AI.99
    First person mode is going to sell the game for so many people. Kinda looking forward to how that's going to work in standard MMO "don't stand in the fire" scenarios.

  13. #213
    Impossiblu
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    10,364
    BG Level
    9
    FFXIV Character
    Prothescar Centursa
    FFXIV Server
    Balmung
    FFXI Server
    Valefor

    can't wait for open beta, this thing's shaping up to be pretty incredible and actually looks to match (in some cases exceed) expectations

  14. #214
    D. Ring
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    4,961
    BG Level
    7
    FFXIV Character
    Grey Jorildyn
    FFXIV Server
    Hyperion

    The first person perspective will draw people yes. However the lack of real raid content will deter just as many if not far more.

  15. #215

    New interview here, Is there new footage in here btw?, some of them I have not seen Also im gonna get flamed but I fucking hate the animations still. I just do not understand why a skilled fighter would stand or swing a weapon that way, ever. No flare or footwork, positioning etc.


  16. #216
    Chram
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    2,684
    BG Level
    7
    FFXIV Character
    Vrumpt Vegallion
    FFXIV Server
    Excalibur

    Yeah the combat animations in that footage looked really bad. If beta is supposed to start soon then it can still change if it hasn't already.

  17. #217

    Quote Originally Posted by vrumpt View Post
    Yeah the combat animations in that footage looked really bad. If beta is supposed to start soon then it can still change if it hasn't already.
    I doubt they will cus well look at all the elderscroll games.. the combat animations were always bad.

  18. #218
    Salvage Bans
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    943
    BG Level
    5

    They said the combat animations from 1st person looked a lot better, who knows... But yeah all TES games look kind of funky in 3rd person view. Might be polished up a little before release, but in all likelihood what you see is what you get.

    Wish I could fly to PAX East and try it...

  19. #219

    sucks no freaking videos yet except this


  20. #220
    Chram
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    2,684
    BG Level
    7
    FFXIV Character
    Vrumpt Vegallion
    FFXIV Server
    Excalibur

    No idea how long these vids will last


Quick Reply Quick Reply

  • Decrease Size
    Increase Size
  • Remove Text Formatting
  • Insert Link Insert Image Insert Video
  • Wrap [QUOTE] tags around selected text
  • Insert NSFW Tag
  • Insert Spoiler Tag