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They have megaservers instead of separate 'shard' servers? The game opens up when you hit the level cap? Real-time combat (tap attacks, hold attacks, blocking)? Looks like someone on the dev team has been playing DC Universe Online. | |
Going to have to disagree with you here. I feel more awkward swinging a melee weapon in first person than I do in third person. When you are wielding a melee weapon you have a full range of motion that carries deadly threat, not just the front 90o of your vision (with a few exceptions, pikes being one). So backing out to a third person perspective to give you a solid grasp of your surroundings seems like a natural choice. | |
In Elder Scrolls games, even the most advanced researcher of Dwemari artifacts are still just trying to get the stuff they made to work, not trying to improve upon it. Until the leaders in magical research get a firm grip on how to recreate all of the Dwemer relics, they aren't going to be able to move that technology forward. Armor is similarly like that, in that most of the best stuff is Dwemer and Daedric in nature. | |
I love how they've clearly studied Guild Wars 2's mechanics and I'll admit I'm tantalized by the prospect of being able to go from Hammerfell to Solstheim in one sitting. It'll be fun to see Tamriel fleshed out as an actual continent and not as this disjointed concept of which you only see parts of in normal Elder Scrolls titles. Still, I'm worried it's basically going to be "Oh, wook! Here's Red Mountain! There's Taneth! And, oh shit, that's Whiterun, way over there!" for a few months, and then the novelty will wear off. Sign me up for a Let's Play or a more in-depth travel montage, but I'm really wary of MMOs after The Old Republic's fiasco. | |
why do cambat animations in mmos always look like total shit? | |
Human civilization has been around for over 5,000 years(might be longer, I'm thinking somewhere around 8,000, but I can't be certain so I'll just stick to 5,000) and only within the past 200 years have we used steam power or electricity, so the idea that it might take even longer in these lands with these great times of darkness and horrible rulers and divine and demonic intervention and all around just shit luck isn't all that hard to believe if you ask me. | |
Here's something to consider: Human history spans thousands upon thousands of years, into and beyond the tens of thousands. We've only had electricity- and steam-powered machinery for the past 200 or so years. So... yeah. | |
Yes, but that's why I've used the qualifier "civilized society." In my head, that usually comes down to a written alphabet, language, and agriculture (for us, I consider the ancient Phoenicans, Egyptians, etc as the start of civilized society). Usually the fantasy novels I have a bone to pick with are the ones who have been stuck in an age where they have been "civilized " far longer than we (in the real world) have even existed. Some of the worst offenders are permanently stuck in an analogue of our Dark and Middle Ages, which only lasted for 1000 years. | |
I'm personally wondering how well Bethesda is going to do in balancing these "Perks". How many people put many, if any, points into Alchemy in Skyrim? How about Speech, or Restoration, or Pickpocketing? (I mean aside from roleplayers.) Blizzard has been trying for years to balance skill specs and the like in WoW- and in Mists of Pandaria, they basically tossed half of it out the window and squashed the other half down into paste. And this is a company that has probably the grandest example of wildly different yet balanced game styles- Starcraft. Also, seriously. The Argonians still look butt-ugly. Can't we get something like a mix of Oblivion and Skyrim's design for them? | |
That's kind of a loaded qualifier, for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that not being "civilized" enough is the reason that the British would attack and enslave a number of other cultures; never minding that their own culture was extremely brutish in its own ways. Then there's the fact that you could certainly debate just how "civilized" the current world is, lest I remind you of what's been going on in the middle-east this past decade or so. Also, do you think that we were a bunch of wandering nomads until a thousand years ago? Exactly how do you define "civilization" that it excludes millennia of civilized human history? | |
No it's not. The advent of agriculture and the written alphabet is seen by many historians as the point in history where we stopped being a loose collection of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes and started being "civilized" societies (which was about 5000 years ago, so no I don't think it was a thousand years ago). You're turning this into something of a commentary of society that's way off base from my point, by the way. | |
Eh? Skyrim was the only Elderscrolls game that didn't set you on a specific character class and keep you there. Picking a class and then using your choice of weapons armour and skills to customize it sounds.... exactly like The Elderscrolls. | |
So there is open pvp where one guy can become emperor? On a "megaserver" whith what, a million players? Oh boy, the bile-spewing by PvPers and the 1000 vs. 100 battles will be golden. Captcha: "I know nothing!" A little sour today, captcha? :D | |
Everyone is saying that the environments and designs look like TES, and I cant help wondering if they have actually played any of TES. In ESO, Skyrim and the bits of Cyrodiil I have seen in screen shots look accurate, so do most things that appear in the previous games, minus Durzogs and Morrowind architecture. I have played since Morrowind and I like to think I know a bit about the TES sense of style. The problem I see is that everytime Zenimax online come up with something new they steal a world of Warcraft sensibility; instead of the great Elder scrolls tradition of stealing things from the Lord of the Rings, I say that in the most loving way, but look at a picture of Whiterun next to Edoras. | |
I'm not turning it into anything, just saying that "civilized" is kind of a semantic qualifier since everyone will interpret the term differently. Also, you've kinda proven my point. So we've been "civilized" for the past 5000 years, yet only the past 200 or so years have we had either steam power or electricity. Yet you complain about fantasy stories where they go for thousands of years without developing steam or electricity. | |
When we have fantasy worlds that have existed for tens of thousands of years, yes. I complain. You're overlooking major innovations like gunpowder, navigation, microbiology and such, but I think we're on the same page. | |
both Morrowind and Oblivion had a class system. | |
You know, I'm sick of all this "car" and "road" bullshit. Why haven't we invented teleporters yet? It's almost like major advancements in technology require inspiration, happenstance, and material to all come together in a previously unobserved formation. Our Bronze Age lasted, what, three millennia (someone check me on this)? And these people have magic and gods, where would the inspiration come from? Anything a machine could do, magic already does better. | |
Daggerfall too, for that matter, and I would assume Arena also, though I did not play that one. Irrelevant, of course since taking a class did absolutely nothing other than giving you a starting skill package that you were free to deviate from, and because most people ignored them in favor of a custom class. | |
Looks good, but why can't it be released as just Elder scrolls 6 with a nice single player campaign. Also anyone else getting gw2 vibes from the look and feel of it?
Not to be picky, but Morrowind has classes. I figure it'll probably be something like that where you pick classes and those get a stat boost initially as well as maybe governing what starter gear you get. | |
I get why people say it seems odd to them that fantasy settings don't advance, but I personally I don't see why a fantasy universe should advance in similar fashion to the real world. It's not like real life cultures all advanced in similar ways independent of each other. Native Americans didn't bother with the those entertaining "wheel" playthings until someone brought them some work animals to actually use it with. Oh yea, and they didn't have work animals. A lot depends on circumstance, and lifestyles have persisted to some extent for thousands of years in the real world. There should be changes in the culture after 1,000 years, but it's not like we went from domesticating the horse to transporter beams that fast in real life. The Great Pyramid of Egypt was built 4,570 years ago and I know people who don't even have a flatscreen. | |
9 races huh? Someones getting the cut and I didn't see any khajiit. I guess they are already planing ahead with expansion packs. | |
OT: Sounds like they are restricting PvP to Cyrodiil. And what the heck is this about 'everyone is on even footing in PvP.' Looks like another MMO to avoid to me. But then again I haven't liked an MMO since Ultima Online and the original Planetside.
The Chinese Xia Dynasty was founded in 2070 BC. It marked the founding of one of the worlds oldest civilizations(Though societies and even kings existed long before it in China.) And off the top of my head it's probably the longest lasting civilization(Though not under the same dynasty nor always with the same founding principles. But Chinese civilization itself has definitely been around since then.) They were also involved in some of the biggest advancements in human history. 18,000 years before it was founded there was evidence of pots. Which is a good marker for when societies have begun to form. Pots mean that they are forming sedentary societies. They are growing crops that need to be stored. Basically this means that villages are starting to form and civilization is essentially beginning. 18,000 years later we get the Xia Dynasty. After the Xia Dynasty united China it took them: So as a historian. I would have to say no. I wouldn't expect that a medieval fictional civilization would advance that quickly at all, especially not when juxtaposed against human history. You can't use the past 200 years as a metric by which to judge technology. We have made more progress in the last 50-70 years than the rest of the human timeline combined. Even 600 years ago people were developing the steam engine. They would work on it and then die. Someone else would pick up the idea 30 years later, find that persons research and try to learn everything from it. Then they would die and maybe 50 years later someone would work on it some more. It took hundreds of years of work before the Watt Steam Engine was finally worth manufacturing. The reason its different now is because the internet connects research in a way that previous societies did not have. Information is freely available to almost everyone in the 1st and 2nd worlds so rather than one person digging up information from a library 50 years after someone died; we have hundreds working on similar projects often sharing information between them. You didn't have to ride by horse for two years from China to Europe, copy everything by hand, and then try to teach the important bits to yourself because the education system wasn't specialized enough for you to have learned it elsewhere. So anyways sorry for the extreme tangent. Getting back to the actual subject; it makes perfect sense that the societies in Elder Scrolls and Game of Thrones would barely have advanced at all. What does not make sense however its that the Elder Scrolls armor looks pretty much exactly the same. In a real society given 1000 years there would be pretty clear stylistic variations. The armor might still be made from ebony or iron but it wouldn't look the exact same 1000 years apart. | |
I so want this to be good, I really, really, really do. Please be good, please be good. You certainly *look* good, TESO... | |
For one, they should have employed Bethesda's concept artists. This is even more generic fantasy than world of warcraft! And besides that, it simply looks plain ugly. Even if I was a fan of payment based MMO's, I still wouldn't play this because it's ugly, has no defining features, everyone is a hero in the main quest, and I get put into the same region with different people by the server. Oh and there's classes. Ooh wow, clicking makes you attack! Look at them, innovating it up. | |
It's even more so jarring, when you consider that North America was technically speaking still in the stone age, until it was discovered by Europeans. One thing you can consider to be hindrance for technological advancement in the Elder Scrolls universe is the existence of magic. Most forms of higher education centers around studying advanced spells. Even the Dwemer technology was partially magic based. With all the attention focused on magic, nobody is looking for alternatives. | |
I'll start with a question; has anything other than Blizzards own decisions caused subscriptions to drop? Short Answer, No. What this shows is that no MMO will remove WOW from the Iron throne for a long long time. On the other hand this game looks promising; whether I pay attention to it depends on what payment system they implement. Although the graphics do look really nice and the game play doesn't look as bad I thought it would. They did well with implementing the Elder Scrolls combat system into such a potentially hectic environment. | |
I quoted you, but it goes to a number of other commenters who said the same thing. This excuse only works in high-magic universes. TES might be one (played some of the games, but never cared enough about the lore to make a definitive statement), but the Game of Thrones universe isn't.
Except in fantasy universes, all too often there is a method of near-instantaneous communication (and even if it takes a few days to deliver a message, it's usually very reliable). Characters in fantasy works of fiction are very aware of developments happening a long way away. Also, fantasy universes also have a common language and culture - something that, in the real world, contributed heavily to the development of science and philosophy in Medieval Europe. The gripe is that fantasy universes are not just "iron age Europe with some magic thrown in". Characters often exhibit modern sensibilities and beliefs, and there are often "scientist" characters with advanced knowledge (and, much as they are a staple of pop-history, "lone geniuses with knowledge hundreds of years ahead of their peers" did not exist in history). Fantasy societies have the capacity to develop scientifically at a faster pace than ancient/medieval real world societies, and yet they don't. | |
I'm not saying every piece of fiction is the same. But his example was Game of Thrones, where such communication definitely does not exist. The other more pertinent example is Elder Scrolls. And having played through both Oblivion and Skyrim, there does not seem to be any form of instantaneous communication there either.
Again not a universal thing. Qunari have their own language and culture. In Westeros they are pretty divided as well(does not take much to get the lords in the North to start chanting 'king in the north.') And the elder scrolls dudes were apparently divided enough to have an insane and on going civil war. So id say cooperation ain't their thing.
Presumably they could develop along different lines but still be developing. You'd have to give me examples of games/books/tv you're thinking of. But the way I see it they don't develop technology because its not relevant. They approach problems differently because they have different tools. In Neverwinter Nights the intelligent people tend to learn magic because it is the most obvious and powerful path apparent to someone who is smart. Thus they look for magic solutions and aren't likely to discover something like electricity. Something like electricity would help everyone in a city, but the ability to generate light and heat help the person who knows how to do that. Thus the intelligent person has no reason to spread their power. Unlike an inventor who needs to convince businessmen and citizens to support his idea and make a power plant before he can enjoy the fruits of his labor. The intelligent mage has no such need. This would presumably be the same mechanism at work in the elder scrolls. Also elder scrolls seems to have different cultures and I'm pretty sure the elves have their own language or something?
I wouldn't say they are necessarily ahead of all their peers. But there are definitely people like Leonardo Da Vinci, who pioneered ideas on tanks, flight, and changed the way we view medicine by viewing the body as a complex machine. All long before those ideas became either accepted realities or were even though of as possible. | |
Not in the sense the term is usually meant they didn't. What the vast majority of people understand "class" to mean is a definition of what your character can do. If you're a fighter, you wear armour and hit people with a pointy stick but can't do magic. If you're a rogue, you wear light armour and do stealth type stuff but can't take much damage, and so on. TES has none of that. All you do is choose which skills will be better when you first start the game. It has no effect on what you can actually do or how you have to play. In fact, due to the way levelling worked it was often better to pick completely different skills from the ones you actually wanted to use. So yeah, they had a class system in the sense that the word class appeared at some point, but that's it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the kind of class system most MMOs and RPGs have, so it's really rather disingenuous to answer complaints about introducing that kind of class system by claiming there was already a class system.
Much longer ago than that even. Steam engines existed 2000 years ago, and possibly even earlier than that. It just took a while for anyone to work out any practical use for them.
Morrowind had instantaneous teleportation and fast moving levitation. Removed for gameplay/engine reasons in Oblivion and Skyrim, but in the lore a very fast courier service would clearly be possible. | |
I'm... Not sure what to think, to be honest. The universe which TES is set in intrigues me, but MMO's (or anything which needs a constant payment plan) has to be damn good for me to pay up for it (yay for being a poor uni student). | |
Actually it's the Imperial who are not playable in the game, since they are loyal to the evil empire and don't belong to any of the factions. | |
True, but I was mostly talking about the modern steam engine in it's iteration that allowed for the industrial revolution.
Wouldn't that be for powerful mages though? The kind who I doubt would be very interested in carrying letters around for people? It would be like going to school for 10 years to get your PhD in engineering and then the job you get offered is carrying letters around for people. | |
Oh hey. Actual gameplay. And not just the creators talking about what they were hoping to do, calling the videos of that "gameplay" is just so...I was worried they weren't actually showing anything because it was going to be fucking horrible. This actually looks good. I'm surprised. | |
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I've mentioned this more than once in posts about TESO. Made noise about it with regards to The Old Republic too. It's been a millennium, and nothing has changed? Drives me nuts.
I didn't mention it in this post because I thought maybe people were tired of hearing me complain about it. :)