I've played a couple of weeks of ESOTU now, and have made some new observations of the game mechanics and skills.
Crafting gets real time-consuming real fast. Ironically, I suppose. Something ESO has developed which is very different to Skyrim is a trait system, where newly crafted armour can be imbued with an intrinsic bonus trait by addition of a special crafting ingredient. Traits range from increased durability to increased experience gain, and obviously there are some slightly different traits specifically for armour or weaponry. However, to make use of these traits you have to research them. And not just once, oh no, you need to reasearch each trait individually for each item. And to perform that research you have to destroy an item which has that trait. And you can only perform research on one item and trait at a time. And (the best bit) minimum research time is 6 hours. This time then doubles for each additional trait on that armour piece. Does that make sense? I'll try and simplify using my experience as an example.
You have three helmets and some gloves in your inventory. All medium armour, all with traits. To keep it simple, the gloves have Trait A, and the helms 1, 2, and 3 have Traits A, B, and C respectively. So, I research Trait A for helmets, destroying helm 1. This takes 6 hours. Then I decide to research Trait B for helms, destroying helm 2. This research takes 12 hours. I decide to research Trait A for the gloves, which destroys them and takes 6 hours. Finally I research my third helm trait, C, which takes 24 hours. Additional traits will cost 2, 4, 8 days to research, and this is not game-time, this is real-world GMT. Obviously the clock ticks even when you're not logged in, otherwise you'd never get anything done.
The biggest annoyance with this is not the time it takes, but having an inventory full of items you want to hang on to for research. I had something like 4 belts stashed away waiting for the couter to reset. Of course, the more you do it the longer it takes. The reason for wasting so much effort? Well mainly because it gives you a lot more flexibility with later crafting, but also because with enough traits unlocked you can craft special Item Sets, which MMO players will be familiar with - done the full set of this armour to gain a huge bonus to this, that and the other. But you've got to put in a huge amount of time/effort, so when you can finally craft that 5-piece armour set you really feel like you've earned the right to make some money from it.
I've also had a brief foray into the world of PvP, which is entirely Cyrodiil-contained and has some excellent mechanics going on which RTS players will find very comfortable. It feels less like Capture the Flag or Leauge of Legends, more like an actual military battle, complete with an unofficial command structure (i.e. the guys who have experience and commanding voices organize the swarms of bloodthirsty guerrilla soldiers, who are jointly led by their own pack-mentality). Can be a little slow to start, there are 'quests' pointing you to this farm or that hold, and my advice is to 'begin' all of them, then ride around until you find a cavalry of your alliance and just join the crowd. Chances are you'll storm into that farm at some point so long as you stick with them.
If you don't fancy any PvP action then you have the option to just wonder around. Unlike other MMO PvP matches, where you're dropped into a Hunger Games style arena to play Capture the Flag against Team Bad Guys, ESO's PvP arena is Cyrodiil. The entire country of Cyrodiil. You can check your map to see where the battles are taking place, gallop around your alliance's territory looking for spies or stragglers from previous battles, or explore the unique quests and locations within the area. Even if you just want to harvest some rare crafting resources, ESO sticks to its guns leaving the PvP experience truly up to the player.
No comments:
Post a Comment