I love Doom. I watched my old man play the original Doom way back when I was a kid and it was the scariest shit, ever. The gore, the screams, the dark corridors with the flashing lights. Since then I played it on the PC, the Gameboy Advance, PSP, 3DS and god knows how many other consoles, phones and other such devices. Heck, the game has been ported to ATMs and even a car.
When the 2016 version of Doom came out, I was really happy with it. Sure, I absolutely don't care for the platforming bits, the game was juuust a little bit too long for me towards the end and the whole corridors with tiny puzzles followed by a monster arena followed by more corridors etc. thing got a little repetitive after a while. It's still a fantastic game with incredible artwork and super fast-paced gameplay. And then they released that exact same game on the Nintendo Switch. What the fuck.
Like the real thing, but blurrier.
I didn't care for the Switch version much, because I prefer playing shooters with a mouse and keyboard. The PC version also runs really well in 4K, while the Switch version barely maintains 720p at 30fps. Reviews mentioned frame drops and the occasional awful texture, so I gave this one a hard pass. But then they added motion controls. Motion controls change everything.
I absolutely love playing Resident Evil: Revelations (2) on the Switch, because with a bit of practice the game's motion controls feel just as accurate and comfortable as playing with a mouse. In fact, I think they're a bit more immersive, because aiming and pulling the trigger on the joycon just feels a bit better than clicking my rodent. There's something immensely satisfying about aiming at a zombie's head and blowing his head off using motion controls. Call me crazy, but I might actually enjoy this playstyle even more than my mouse and keyboard.
And HD rumble really makes you feel the chainsaw as it goes through your enemies.
Of course I had to take a look at Doom on the Switch now. It also helps that the game's most recent update has upped the average FPS to 27.6 - sure, this sounds like a bit of a joke when compared to other platforms, but we're talking about a portable device here. If I can play Doom on the go, chilling on the sofa while Claire watches her soap operas, waiting for food in the pub or whilst keeping Claire company at work, then I'll gladly take those 27 FPS without bitching.
The campaign runs just as I remember it from the PC version. I didn't notice any dramatic hiccups. The textures looked decent enough, though I didn't get an awful lot of time to stand still and appreciate every wall, floor and ceiling whilst getting beat up by an angry army of pissed-off hellspawn. The game is blurry as fuck, alright. I play most games in 1440p or 4K where possible, so 720p is a bit of a step down. The fact that Doom makes aggressive use of dynamic resolution for the sake of performance doesn't help here. It rarely hits the 720p mark and you can tell. It looks like the real thing, but Doomguy didn't put his glasses on.
In some situations I'm almost grateful for a little less detail.
There's no way around it - if you have a decent enough PC or any other current-gen console, then there's really no need for the Switch version. That is, unless you like the idea of playing Doom on the go, which I do. And there is another reason why I'm enjoying Doom on the Switch so much, even though I already had it for PC: Multiplayer.
Playing multiplayer in the PC version of Doom means cheaters. Way too many fucking cheaters everywhere. And no anticheat measures or a report function. When it comes to mainstream FPS titles, the PC as a platform tends to be a bit of an afterthought, which simply doesn't get a lot of love. The vast majority of players are on consoles. Customer support and cheat detection cost money, so fuck that. Doom is hardly the only game with that problem - just look at any CoD game, ever. Some master race.
Chainsaw the bastards!
But while every idiot can fire up Cheatengine or subscribe to some fine russian hacks on PC, it's a different story on the Switch. I used to bump into players who would headshot me from every angle, across the entire map, never needing to reload, never running out of health. Things seem a lot less extreme now that I play on Nintendo's hybrid console.
Though I can't carry an entire terrible team all by myself.
Sure - just like the campaign, multiplayer is blurry, the resolution is all over the place and in really intense matches the sound tends to glitch out for some reason. But the framerate is reasonably stable even in matches with 12 players, demons, BFGs and all that sort of thing. And damn is it fun to play with motion controls! I won't lie - it's a lot harder than Resident Evil, because it's just more difficult to keep track of a bunch of bouncy human players than it is to keep your eye on some shuffling AI zombies. I'm gonna have to practice a lot more until this playstyle will start to feel as natural and easy as using a mouse, but I'm getting there. I couldn't get myself to play an FPS using only a controller, but motion controls are fine. I don't feel like I'm gimping myself.
My main problem is getting used to looking around and rotating with the right analog stick, while adjusting my aim with motion controls. Keeping the two separate is difficult and requires some getting used to. Though just like Resident Evil, it's incredibly satisfying to aim your shotgun at somebody, to pull the trigger and blow them to bits.
Sneaking up on a player to rip their head off is also fun. The game is blurry and it's difficult to tell that's what happened. You had to be there.
If you always hated Doom 2016's multiplayer, then the lack of cheaters alone won't make you love it on the Switch. The game still uses loadouts and CoD-style unlocks and the most popular game mode is still TDM. But if you're just looking for some dumb, mindless fun, over the top gore and violence and a refreshingly non-toxic multiplayer environment, then the Switch version might just be the best place to look. Because for better or worse, there's no voice chat, there sure as fuck is no text chat and taunts don't get much more offensive than someone doing the Carlton Dance. I'm almost sad there are no teenagers informing me about my mother's sexual antics.
I've put quite a few hours into Doom's multiplayer mode and I'm not going to quit anytime soon. The campaign is still great fun and I'm sure I'll appreciate having it with me when I have to go to London and Indianapolis for work this year. In the meanwhile, however, I might actually spend more time playing multiplayer than playing the campaign. I wasn't expecting to have so much fun with it, but it was absolutely worth it. Rend and Tear!
Yep, still playing Elder Scrolls Online. And doing all the stuff I hate doing in MMOs.
I hate MMORPGs with a passion. The endless grind and repetition, the hurrdurr click a rotation everyone copies off the internet and move out of red circles and, most of all, the people. I hate the entire genre so much, I told GameStar magazine I was done being their MMO guy. They originally employed me specifically because I played MMOs, so that was a safe and steady (albeit tiny) source of income. See, if you're a games critic, then that's yet another reason to hate MMOs - you have to spend infinitely more hours playing and reviewing an MMO than some asshole who gets to review this year's Need for Speed or Call of Duty, but nobody pays you by the hour. You're getting paid per fucking page. So do you want to work 20 hours for your 150 Quid or would you rather spend 80 hours getting the exact same lousy pay? Exactly.
Fuck WoW in particular
"But you're enjoying the genre and playing these games anyway, so basically you're having fun and making a bit of money on the side?" That's usually the reason why MMO reviews aren't paid any better, but that was just the thing. I fucking hated MMOs to begin with, so I finally quit the whole genre, even if it meant I would potentially have to look for a new job. I didn't and they just gave me different games to review, everything worked out fine and I'm already going way off topic in the middle of the second damn paragraph of this stupid entry. Focus, for fuck's sake!
Cosplayers always miss the shitty ponytail.
I gave WoW: Legion a try a while back, after I had not taken a look at Blizzard's MMO since the Pandaria announcement. Oh what fun I had! Frequently landing in quest hubs, which were being utterly destroyed by the enemy faction, so I'd enjoy getting ganked for the next half hour. Repeating the ever-same daily shit in Argus, looting the same random chests over and over again, hoping for a fucking legendary. Asshole tanks, who threaten to quit dungeon PUGs if you don't cough up loot. And a completely worthless guild. Dear guild mates, if you're reading this, I still love you. But if we all agree to meet and play some dungeons, then one of you doesn't show up at all and the other one delivers DPS the size of a kitten's nostril, while we're already one player short on the best of days... look, be offended if you want, but every once in a while it would be nice to actually beat at least SOME current content instead of dicking around in ancient raids nobody gives a shit about, only to give up two or three bosses in, because we suck too hard to make it any further.
And don't get me started on all the stupid padding and artificial time-sinks. "Wanna use your flying mount here? Just complete every single quest and grind out rep with every damn faction and you're good to go!" Yeah, thanks! It's super helpful to let me fly after I'm done with all the stupid content! "You need to wait 20something hours for a fucking timer bar in your class hall to run out if you want to unlock this quest!" For fuck's sake, Blizzard! I'm paying premium money AND a subscription fee to play your stupid game and you're still locking me out of content like I'm one some shitty freemium mobile game!
Or one of the many awful rip-off titles. Is LordCraft even a word?
Leave me! I soro!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I went and had another look at Elder Scrolls Online. The Clockwork City DLC added a new zone for me to explore on my own, so I went there, did that, got the skyshards. That's how I usually play this thing. Do all the story stuff and the quests, pretend other players don't exist and then uninstall again for several months until new solo content gets added. The occasional round of PvP aside, I never really treated ESO like an MMO for all the aforementioned reasons. The Elder Scrolls games were always a safe haven for me, away from chat spam, loot-hogging, griefplay and orcs with pink dresses and stupid names going out of their way to fuck up the atmosphere. Who the hell has even asked for an Elder Scrolls MMO? That's the one question which kept popping up in all the low-70ish reviews the game racked up when it was released.
But something must have happened since then. I'm not completely sure whether it's ESO itself, which kept changing and improving more and more over the years or whether it's my attitude. Over the past few days I've found myself taking part in activities on there, which I generally avoid like the plague in other MMOs. What's weirder, I actually enjoyed them! And it must be something about the game, because I sure as fuck didn't stay on WoW. I also immediately quit SWToR after completing all of the (super awesome) story content, because fuck grouping up with other people!
Successful stealth = free instakill. OP and stupidly enjoyable.
Yet here I am, dicking around on ESO and seriously enjoying the exact shit that drove me away from the genre as a whole: Group dungeons, repeating content for loot, fucking stealth and leveling a goddamn alt! The thought of doing any of this nonsense stops me from installing this kind of game. But ESO just pushes all the right buttons for me.
Gear for everyone
As mentioned in my last entry, I seriously love the large-scale PvP in this game. As it turns out, there's now* a pvp vendor, who shows up every weekend to sell legendary goodies and certain monster-sets, which are normally obtained by playing group dungeons.
*By 'now' I mean the vendor has been there for ages, but I haven't been playing much, so it's all new to me.
Seeing as I was sitting on ridiculous amounts of pvp currency, I went on a bit of a spending spree and put some nice new kit on my character. This is another reason why I'm enjoying this game so much. I spend countless hours in pvp and the game rewards me for it and throws some really powerful gear my way. You know, gear that's actually useful and not "useful, but only for pvp" or "almost as good as raid-gear" levels of useful. You want the same cool stuff lovers of pve get in dungeons? Go ahead and buy it with pvp currency! You know, as opposed to saying, "we're giving you slightly inferior gear, because your time spent on the battlefield isn't as valuable as time spent by raiding players". I absolutely hated that about WoW. Where battlegrounds gear was nice to have, but if you wanted the good stuff you had to participate and win in the arena every week. And you still didn't get the best stuff unless you went for the top ratings.
Yes, ESO has group trials and a solo arena with exclusive rewards on hard mode, but not playing any of this stuff doesn't mean you get excluded from obtaining powerful endgame items. You may not get the same amount of options a hardcore player with an active guild might get and that's perfectly alright. There's a shitload of powerful gear available to players of each and every kind and gearing up a max level character is laughably easy. And for as weird as this may sound, it actually doesn't hurt the game - it helps make it better!
Welfare epix are a good thing?
'Welfare epix' was a term WoW players used a lot when the game started handing out purple items for relatively mundane tasks, like waiting for a garrison quest to complete. In classic WoW it was perfectly normal to play all the way to the level cap (which could take an average player a month, because we were all noobs) and never obtain a single epic item in the process. I found my first ever epic item, a ring, whilst grinding pirates in Tanaris. Back then it was also normal to just farm monster spawns in order to level up. I wouldn't obtain another epic until they introduced the T0.5-questline. It wasn't really surprising when some people were upset when it became easier to get epic items on WoW. Of course it's all an illusion and while these items may be purple, their stats still don't compare to powerful raid items of the same colour, because of course they don't.
And then there's ESO. Once you hit the level cap (and the game's champion points gear cap of 160 if you want to get technical), every bit of loot you find will be level-capped. Not only that, but you're also constantly finding set items. The game has dozens upon dozens of sets. You may be more likely to find these items when fighting world bosses or clearing group dungeons, but you also find them in treasure chests, when completing quests and you'll even get them in the mail whilst playing PvP. Gear drops in such abundance, you can buy entire epic sets off guild traders for such tiny amounts of gold, they're practically free. And if you level up your crafting professions, then you can upgrade any item from shitty white quality all the way to legendary. The final, legendary step requires some rare, expensive resources, but if you keep harvesting, crafting and complete your daily crafting missions, you'll get enough materials fairly quickly without ever having to pay for anything.
And that's why I love crafting on ESO - which is another thing I never do in other MMOs.
Gearing up isn't the ultimate goal like in other MMOs. It can be if you desperately want that one special weapon you can only get for beating the Maelstrom Arena or you really want the monster helmet you can only loot in a specific veteran dungeon. But unless you seek out some very specific items, gearing up a level-capped character requires zero effort, costs next to nothing and then you go back to playing all the activities you actually want to play, whether it's story-based stuff, pvp, random dungeons or whatever floats your boat. Meanwhile, every single thing you do in other MMOs revolves around the dreaded item-treadmill. Gear up so you can raid, so you can gear up in the raid to do the next raid, where you gear up for the raid that comes after, then watch as new green quest items will be better than your epix in the next content update. Yeah. I think I prefer ESO's approach.
Rolling alts can strengthen your main
Since it's so piss-easy to kit out a character, creating new characters is actually pretty damn fun. I love my berserking khajiit dragon knight, who stabs people in the face with his daggers and riddles enemy players full of holes with his bow in pvp. But there are so many fun play styles out there, I simply couldn't resist creating a sorcerer, who commands a bunch of pets. There's my pet clannfear, who tail-whips baddied into submission, while my winged twilight attacks enemies from a safe distance and heals my group. I can also summon a storm atronach, who trolls enemies with lightning.
And then I went and looted an item set, which surrounds me with a cloud of ravens, which are all too happy to take turns at attacking my enemies. I rounded it off with another set, which occasionally spawns a monster that sprays bad guys with acid and stuns them for a while. I'm a one-man-army and I'm having stupid amounts of fun with it.
Can't get the pony to attack anyone, though. Boo!
Having additional characters also means getting more crafting resources in the mail, getting extra attemps at daily dungeon chests (I'll get to that) and more possibilities to earn account-wide champion points. Champion points provide passive bonuses to resistances, critical hits, armor penetration and all that sort of thing. They allow characters to progress and get a little stronger after they've hit the level cap. You earn them simply by gaining experience. Problem is, my main character has already completed all of the quests and story missions, so outside of group dungeons, pvp and monster grinding, there isn't a lot he can do to gain more points.
Luckily for me, I already have 300 of these champion points, which each and every one of the characters on my account may use any way they want. Better still, whenever I complete missions and just generally play around with my sorcerer alt, I'll earn more champion points, which are also added to my main character's points pool. So no matter which character you play - all toons on your account become stronger as a result. You only get rewarded for playing multiple heroes. There is no downside.
A chance to shine
Here's the one thing that surprises me the most about ESO - I'm currently just killing time whilst waiting for the server maintenance to end, so I can finally play more group dungeons. You know, that shit I hate the most in MMOs. Having to team up with other people. I absolutely love the way group combat works on ESO - and how I can make a difference as a single player.
We get it, you're fucking vegan!
Remember how I said you may want to go after a specific item, which can only be looted in specific content? Well, there's a piece of gear I want, which can be obtained from daily dungeon pledge reward chests. And that means teaming up with other people, unless you wanna go full hardcore and solo that shit. So I begrudgingly fired up the LFG-tool, queued up for the dungeons I had to complete and surprisingly, it wasn't awful.
Things started off with an easy dungeon, where my group just rushed through and rampaged all over the place, murdering everything in our path. And right before the final boss our tank ran into some issues with his lack of gravity resistance, ran off a cliff by accident and got stuck. Meanwhile, the healer couldn't be fucked to wait for the tank to come back and pulled the boss. The tank was now locked out. And it took all of ten seconds for our damage dealer to die, because not standing in a pool of lava is hard, apparently. And then there were two - the overzealous healer and my stressed ass, fighting the final boss on our own.
Go fuck a landmine, Bubsy.
So I stab-stabbity-stabbed the shit out of the boss, the healer did whatever it is that healers do and things went okay for a while until the healer kicked the bucket. And then it was just me. And I aced that shit. Mind you, the boss was on his final 15% by then, there were no hard modes active and I never leave the house without a crapload of potions and healing abilities. So the whole thing wasn't as epic as I'm making it sound, but it felt awesome at the time. Yes, my group consisted of a bunch of idiots and the entire situation was perfectly avoidable. I'm not even mad.
I love the insane pacing. You see 'tanks' charging from one enemy to another, bunching them up and pulling them all over the place with fiery chains. There are no massive AoE-tauns, so everyone gets to deal with a bit of aggro. It's a good idea to bring some defensive buffs and/or healing abilities even when you're not the designated tank or healer. Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for the tank to whip out a massive warhammer or stereo axes when not blocking a minotaur's horns with his face. Tanking doesn't mean you don't get to deal damage. Dealing damage doesn't mean you can go entirely without protection. The "holy trinity" isn't as extreme and brain-dead as in other games of the genre. Nothing is more depressing than speccing into maximum defense for "the greater good", causing your enemies to die of old age, if anything. Or being unable to handle more than basic trash mobs solo if you're a damage dealer. You can build a character that way, but you don't have to. Thank fuck.
Bound to account
One small gripe I have with the whole dungeon pledge thing is how the rewards are so random. The pledge reward chest that potentially contains the thing I want only grants a 1 in 12 chance for the desired piece of kit to drop. And since the item in question may randomly drop as cloth, leather or plate armor, it's entirely possible I'll finally get the desired object, only to realize it's the wrong material. RNG is generally sucky. I prefer a token system, where I know that I'll definitely get what I want after a set amount of runs, for as long as the amount of required tokens isn't absolutely ridiculous.
Getting pretty takes a bit of effort.
BUT - there's a guaranteed dungeon set shoulder in every chest. And you can open the chest six times a day when you play the veteran modes (three if you're a wuss) - plus additional keys for every character in your account you want to run daily dungeons with. So getting the stuff you want is still a relatively quick and painless process. And since the stuff in the chest is account bound rather than bound to a specific character, you can always pass on unwanted loot to your alts. And seeing as I'm enjoying the dungeons so much, I really don't mind running these dungeons multiple times. Not only is there a massive amount of dungeons to keep repetition to a minimum, but it's also so much less depressing than having to repeat Argus until you throw up on a certain other game.
I quit MMOs. I quit writing about MMOs, quit reviewing them, quit accepting work involving MMOs. Thanks for making me such a fucking hypocrite, ESO. Also, thanks so much for extending today's maintenance till 1am. You bastards.
(The) Elder Scrolls Online does a bunch of shit that really pisses me off. Despite all that it's probably my all-time favourite MMO.
I'm going to praise this game today. But not right away, because I love to bitch about stuff. And bitch I will. There's a bunch of stuff about this MMO, which is so annoying it makes me want to punch my screen. Let's start with the title. I previewed and reviewed this game a bunch of times for work, contributed to guidebooks and compilations. For some of these magazines the folks at Zenimax insisted I refer to the game as 'The Elder Scrolls Online' and/or TESO. In later reviews they insisted all authors just call it 'Elder Scrolls Online' and ESO. For one magazine in particular they started by telling us to call it one thing, then asked us to edit and change it throughout the entire magazine when they changed their mind halfway through the process. Heck, their official URL is elderscrollsonline.com - yet it's titled 'Home - The Elder Scrolls Online'. Nobody knows what to fucking call it anymore. And that includes the folks who create and sell this thing. For the sake of my sanity, I'll continue referring to it as ESO from here on out.
Greed and tourists
An even bigger issue I have with ESO is its asshole monetization. The game is Buy2Play. The PC version of ESO costs 20 Quid and also includes the Morrowind expansion if you grab the correct edition, which is a perfectly reasonable price for a game of this size and quality. There's an optional subscription, which gives you some benefits (bigger inventory, slightly faster progression, even more content), but that stuff is by no means mandatory, especially before you complete the insane amounts of content found in the base game. And if you stop right there, you've got one of the fairest, most affordable MMOs with insane value for money. But that's where the greed kicks in.
Fucking loot crates.
ESO waits for a minute or two after you log on, then shows you a pop-up with special offers from the cash shop. Doesn't matter whether you're subscribed or not, you'll be looking at these fucking offers! The shop contains costumes, mounts, experience boosters, nothing game-breaking, no legendary weapons or anything that directly buys power. That's okay. What isn't okay is when you find in-game mount vendors, who have exotic stuff like wolves and tigers in their stables and even talk to you about them, but when you try to buy one, all they offer to you is a bunch of horses. If you want to ride something that isn't a horse (or you want a slightly cooler horse), then there's no way around the cash shop. And that actively hurts immersion. There's a guy who breeds riding tigers, who talks about how awesome they are and even pretends to sell them and all I can get there is the same stupid horses I can find at every mount vendor? Great, thanks for nothing!
And of course they had to put fucking loot crates in there. Spend a whole bunch of real money because you want one of the costumes or one of the epic mounts in these boxes and all you get is a dress or some make-up, which only works with a race you don't even play. They couldn't just put these mounts and outfits in the cash shop so you can simply select and buy them - they had to put them behind an annoying gambling system, which may very well reward you with items you cannot even use! Way to go, Zenimax!
And yes, I know that you can turn unwanted loot crate items into a tiny amount of yet another meta currency. And you can use that currency to buy the loot crate rewards you want - but only if you buy another ton of loot crates for real money and convert their rewards into enough currency first! Greedy fuckers.
Just let us buy cool mounts with gold!
Can we please put some stupid riding tigers in the shops of riding tiger breeders and vendors? Can we stop pretending that certain NPCs sell wolves, camels and panthers and have them sell actual exotic mounts instead of just horses? For ingame gold? Make them cost a whole lot of gold for all I care, but don't ruin the fucking immersion by not selling them at all outside of the fucking cash shop. I'm sure there's no point going on about the loot crates, seeing as this shit is far too lucrative for greedy developers. They're here to stay.
Before I stop complaining about the stuff I hate, let's not forget the one thing that makes every MMO annoying as fuck - the players. I've lost count of the millions of wankers I bumped into, who had names like 'Khalessi' or 'Karl Drogo', because not only are they too stupid to come up with anything creative, but they're also too dumb to properly spell the shit they're stealing. Massive groups of people who rampage through every public dungeon like a bunch of tourists, killing all the shit, plundering all the chests, turning the whole experience from an immersive dungeon-crawl into a ride at Disneyland. You may as well put shorts, Hawaiian shirts and cameras on all the characters.
I can appreciate how the occasional fellow adventurer may become an ally as you end up exploring the same monster-filled cave, but once you add 25 other adventurers to the mix, things turn into a ridiculous clusterfuck, which completely ruins the atmosphere. Because, you know, let's turn everything into a fucking MMO instead of adding optional multiplayer. You can't seriously try to pull off the whole 'you are the first one to set foot into these sacred halls in over a thousand years' shtick whilst filling the room with two dozen additional players. But hey, it's not all bad.
Sometimes other players are great
Outside of dungeons and story-related places, seeing other players actually helps the game's atmosphere. I never thought I'd say this about any online game, but thanks to the presence of other players the many cities and outposts in ESO come to life and look and feel more believable than anything I've seen in any other MMO. And that's because Zenimax went absolutely crazy with the amount of tools they gave players to animate and roleplay their characters. In most MMOs when you play an emote you just mime shit. For instance, Guild Wars lets you play an air guitar. Or you can type /lol and some ingame text claims that your character is laughing, even when there's no animation. WoW goes a bit further than that by adding sound to many emotes. I think /puke now has a particle effect. But they also have tons of emotes like /burp or /spit or /fart, which have no sound or animation at all. Lame!
On ESO you can make your character play around with a coin or a dagger, eat an apple, play an instrument and all sorts of other fun shit just through the emote system. You don't need to own a drum or a lute and carry it around in your inventory - you can just whip one out when you emote. If you want your character to sit, you can get them to whip out a little chair. Heck, even stuff that isn't tied to emotes at all is animated. Open your inventory window and people around you will see your character rummaging around in their backpack. Assign champion points and your character will be looking at the star constellations. Everything you do causes your character to look busy. Everyone is always doing stuff instead of just standing around and blankly staring into nowhere.
"And now to add the most important ingredient... hair!"
I ended up buying an ingame house in my favourite city, just because I enjoy hanging out there, crafting, trading, checking the guild stores while everyone around me is smithing, brewing and cooking. The place is packed, everyone is busy, it's all full of life. Like a real city. Thanks, Megaserver!
I can do what I want
The #1 thing that ultimately drives me away from every MMO is how I'm expected to play in a certain way, going through a certain type of content a certain amount of times, because if I don't, then I'll simply stop progressing. Take WoW, for instance. Once I hit the level cap, I'm supposed to team up and clear dungeons with other players to gear up. Then I'll use said gear to play raid content of increasing difficulty, getting stronger and stronger in the process, for as long as the group succeeds. If I don't want to raid or team up with other people, that's where my progress as a player ends. Sure, there are side activities like pet battles, reputation grind and so forth, but the very best gear is reserved for the smallest fraction of players, which can actually be fucked to play hardcore raids. Because as a single player you're worthless and your efforts count for nothing. It's in the name of the genre.
I stopped playing Warframe for a similar reason. In the Plains of Eidolon update you have to grind a stupid amount of reputation each day in order to unlock new abilities and powers. Thing is, I absolutely do not enjoy going out into that same area day after day after day to gather fish, rocks and sentient cores for the sake of progression. I never started playing Warframe because I'm crazy about fishing. And if I have to force myself to do something I do not enjoy for several hours each day, that's no longer a videogame. It's a job. Except I don't even get paid.
I used to be a badass cyber space ninja. WTF happened?
In ESO I don't grind reputation. I don't farm tokens. I just play the fucking game. It doesn't matter what I do - fight other players in pvp, kill monsters, complete quests, explore dungeons, team up with other players to tackle group content or duo world bosses with Claire. I can play any way I want, only take part in the activities I enjoy and feel like doing and absolutely everything rewards me with experience, champion points and skill points to make my character stronger. I can loot set items just by playing the game, I can craft my own item sets or I can trade for them. I can enhance my favourite items and make them legendary if i want to.
Yes, there is super challenging content for large groups of players. You can get stuff like a special hat or a free legendary in the mail for successfully tackling that shit. But that's okay. Because you don't get excluded if you don't want to play that way. You can still get your legendary gear. You can still get stronger and have as many champion points as everyone else. Heck, you can roll a whole new character and then all the champion points you've earned on your main character will also be available on your new one. Unlike other online games, ESO doesn't tell you that you're worthless and they don't give a shit about what you do. You get rewarded simply for doing whatever you want. For having fun. And damn, are we having fun!
The best damn PvP
"But DAoC did it first", "they're just ripping off GW2", "It's too random and messy" Oh yeah? Well, here's an idea: fuck off! The massive siege battles in Cyrodiil are the best fucking PvP I've ever played in any MMORPG. You could disagree with me, but you'd be wrong. And stupid. And also wrong. Yes, sometimes the servers lag out and that's annoying as fuck. But you get hundreds of players punching the absolute shit out of one another. You lay waste to entire armies and their castles with trebuchets and battering rams. Leading dozens of people across the battlefield to conquer one fortress after another whilst getting showered with experience, epic items and gold for your efforts is one of the best damn things you can do in any online game, ever!
If you can't understand how amazing the massive pvp battles are then you're objectively a cunt.
I don't care how much nicer this may look on Guild Wars 2 when the action on there slows down to 20 FPS or less whenever there are more than three characters on-screen. ESO also doesn't have a dozen or more parallel PvP-campaigns running, where all the strongest teams will constantly server-hop until they find the one where they dominate everything. Fuck, last time I played GW2 you couldn't even mount up in pvp. "Look, everyone, it's countless square miles of massive battlefields! Let's go everywhere! ON FOOT!"
It doesn't matter how weak or strong your character is on ESO - you can bring a fucking catapult at any level and absolutely wreck shit. Every player can make a difference. Or you can be an asshole, stealth on top of some hill and wait for random newbies to walk by, so you can murder them with poisoned arrows. Just watching a hundred blood-thirsty weirdos on horses, armies clashing into each other, sounding their warhorns, it looks, sounds and feels so much better than the pvp in any other MMO. And while there's always some bitching going on about balancing (because it's a videogame), you also don't get the same flavour of the month bullshit, where one class simply dominates certain other classes because "it wasn't designed with 1vs1 pvp in mind" or "it's more like rock-paper-scissors" or whatever other dumb shit WoW players use to excuse what's some of the worst PvP in any MMO, ever. Oh, so it's working as intended when a rogue gets to permanently stun, sap and disable your character, basically granting them an infinite amount of attempts at running away and recovering. Now that's some great balancing!
Actual great balancing
ESO uses a scaling system, which basically puts characters of all levels on the same relative power level. A level 10 character in full epic gear will have the same relative strength as a level 50 character in full epic gear of an appropriate level. They'll be dealing the same amount of damage to the exact same monsters in the same area. Quests, dungeons, monsters, bosses, other players in pvp - they all scale around each other. Of course the level 50 character will have more skill points under the hood, meaning he has more abilities and spells to choose from to fill up his action bars.
Players of all levels can team up and be useful.
This means that players can team up and play all content together regardless of character levels. It also means players can fight each other in PvP, no matter what level they are, and have a (somewhat) fair fight. Of course you could get upset about this. You could hate the fact that you can never grossly overlevel content or gank the shit out of lower-level players with this system. Technically, you'd be correct, but you'd also be a twunt and you can go fuck yourself.
Here's bow PvP "balance" works in WoW's open world PvP:
Scenario 1: another player spots you. He's 20 levels above you. He kills you in one hit, spams insulting emotes at you, then sits on your corpse, so he can kill you again when you respawn.
Scenario 2: another player spots you. His level and gearscore is equal to yours. There's no way he's gonna attempt to beat you in a fair fight, so he just walks away.
Scenario 3: you spot another player. Your level and gearscore are about even. You attack, he doesn't attempt to fight back and will spend the next 20 minutes running away.
Scenario 4: another player spots you. His level and gearscore is equal to yours. He follows you around, but doesn't attack until you get stuck in a fight against a particularly tough mob or until one of his guild mates shows up. He then proceeds to gank you.
I'm aware the comparison to ESO isn't completely fair, because all PvP on there is consensual. It's not like the game allows random enemy players to gank you repeatedly outside of Cyrodiil. With that said, you also cannot attack any random low level player in PvP and beat them to pudding simply because your level is so much higher. What matters is your gear, your build and personal skill. My first ever duel was against a level 5 twink from hell, who challenged absolutely everyone around him in town. The guy more than likely had a truckload of champion points and the most stupidly upgraded level 5 gear you can possibly get. How cool is it that you can just go and fight anyone you want and actually stand a chance, even if you don't spend all day grinding levels?
Great customization
If it sounds like I'm bashing WoW a lot, I don't actually have anything against that game and I can appreciate it for what it is. But can we all agree that, over the years, WoW became more and more of an MMO, whilst reducing the RPG part to a level where it almost doesn't exist anymore? Every class on WoW has three playable specs with minimal customization. By the time I got to my class hall I saw literally hundreds of other players using the exact same gear, weapon, spec, even transmog sets I was using. On WoW you're one among many. You're like every other player of your class. No margin for error, no room for customization, because god forbid, people might actually make mistakes, causing their characters to become so weak they can no longer manage the piss-easy solo content by smashing their faces into their keyboards.
Mind you, I feel the majority of content on ESO is also waaay too far on the easy side, but sadly, that's just what many mainstream-titles do these days. But ESO lets me create whatever character I want. I have a sorcerer in heavy armor, who charge-attacks baddies and fucks them up with a comically huge two-hander. I'm playing a Dragon Knight, who sneaks around and takes people out with deadly stealth attacks. I'm still trying to come up with a fun new build for a nightblade caster, who focuses solely on magic attacks. Maybe add a dash of vampire to that build.
I'm not a huge fan of the classes in ESO. I don't feel they're necessary. Yes, you can play a sorcerer and you'll be called a sorcerer and you can wear a robe and wave a stick if that's your cup of tea. But nothing stops you from putting on a full set of plate armor and pummeling shit into the ground with a giant warhammer. That's both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, hey, thanks for letting me create just about any character I want. Thanks for giving me the option to change gear, spells, skills and playstyle anytime I want without forcing me to create a new character. On the other hand - why even put classes in there at all? If we still have the same free-form character progression we're used to from the offline Elder Scrolls games, why restrict players by having them pick a class? Sure, older games of the series had 'classes' of sorts, but those mostly influenced your starting attributes and very little else.
Pictured: My "Sorceress".
Bitching aside, you can be as sneaky or 'in your face' as you want. Combine any two weapon types you want. Use a sword & board to fight elite monsters, then switch to a destruction staff to toast large amounts of trash baddies with a meteor shower. Shoot people in the back with a longbow, then finish off the ones who actually manage to get close to you with a greatsword. Turn into a werewolf and literally eat their faces. Drain their blood as a vampire. Be an upstanding citizen of Tamriel or steal all the shit from all the shelves, shops and NPCs or go on a murdering spree and slaughter a bunch of innocent people just because it's fun. And because crime seriously pays in this game, if you're good enough to avoid getting caught. This MMORPG actually remembered to keep the RPG side of things in there is what I'm saying.
ESO's name is stupid. The dungeon tourists are stupid. And fuck all the fucking lootboxes! But not many other MMOs grant me so much freedom when it comes to customizing my character and finding my own playstyle. And more than any other MMO I know, ESO respects my time as a player. Everything is rewarded. The game doesn't shit on me and end all progression just because I don't want to raid. Or because I'm not in the mood to queue for random dungeons or whatever. I can do anything I want. I can have fun. And the game rewards me for it. You know, like an actual fucking game and not a stupid virtual job like so many other games these days?
