My one criticism of the gameplay as has been presented in the betas I've attended is that I've felt ESO to be too quest driven in the sense that it makes it feel very linear to me. There is not the sense one had in Skyrim that you could wander around minding your own business doing your own thing only bothered by the occasional wolf or dragon. I've felt duty bound to pick up the quests as they crop up and once they're in your journal you know you just have to complete them. This may just be an initial impression on landing in a new land that I know nothing about but personally I'd prefer to be left alone a little more so that I could slowly develop my character, clearing out the odd mine now and then. Just now I'm feeling a bit pressurised to achieve things in the game.

Just a personal viewpoint trying to make sense of the slight disquiet I feel when I log in. Anyone else feel the same?

There's plenty to do, I just think people aren't educated enough on whats possible. You're kind of thrown into the thick of things.

Here's the variety I've encountered so far:

• Random encounters (rescuing people from bandits, helping start a camp fire, saving a conjurer from an oblivion portal)
• Caves and world bosses (these have that skull and sword symbol..usually contain a world boss and sometimes a skyshard)
• Miscellanious quests (saving towns that have been overrun, solving mysteries, generally things that aren't attached the MQ, guild quests or regional questline.)
• Crafting, enchanting and alchemy
• Cyrodiil PVP (contains its own set of quests, scouting, killing and man made objectives by fellow players)
• Group dungeons
• Fishing

That's what I can think of, off the top of my head. I'm sure once you get a guild dynamic involved as well, the game would very much be enjoyable!

Hmmm.... somewhat..

But this was more because i rushed a little bit through the game.

With this beta i begun a new char.... the developement of this char took a little bit longer as in the last beta.

Tried the crafting system.... was going to find a way to optimize my char to my needs.

But there was this pressure to rush the developement a little bit.... cause the beta will end soon.

if the game is released i will take my time to exploreand develop my char....

Moin

Oli

Can you explain what makes you feel pressured to do the quests? I don't mean to be rude, I just don't feel that way myself, and would like to see it through your eyes.

For me it feels much like any quest-based game (including other TES games). You grab up some quests, and then do what you want. Do you want to pursue the quests? Cool, get right on that. Would you rather wander around looking for resources and crafting? Free to roam, my friend! Want to dive into that cave you saw across the river? Enjoy!

Maybe the stories seem urgent in the quests, and make you want to do them? I'm not sure. I think the only thing that might make me feel somewhat "pressured" to do quests is that it's essential to leveling. You basically cannot grind (unless you have a ridiculous amount of free time on your hands...and don't eat or sleep...) to level. Sorry, I just don't really see it.

Its an MMO, NOT a TES game. Or rather, an MMO with a [censored]load of TES stuff in it. closest your gonna get if you want TES with mates. I heard the game opens out at later levels but you gotta remember its an MMO with TES vibe, not TES with an MMO vibe.

Great, ZOS ruins the intro to the game world for these people and they're still not happy...

At first I found it was pretty linear... but you really have to wander around and pick up several side quests. They will send you all over the place, although many appear slightly bugged at the moment. I also felt impeded by high walls, cliffs, and mountains. Kind of forces you down set paths making exploring a bit tedious. But you kind of get used to it and find little ways to travel through small openings and such.

If you just go from quest to quest, here are the things you will probably never find:

-Random encounters on the road (and off it)

-Public dungeons with their own content, stories and skyshards

-Crafting stations for special set items

-Lore books

-Skyshards

-Daedric fissures/anchors

-etc. etc.

For the quests they should of just given us the general area for everything.making us have to search for whatever it is.right now it's pick up quest then it shows you exactly where each item is that you must collect.

Didn't they add the option to remove quest markers? I could have sworn that was added.

I don't think linear is the word, as you can run around and go where you like. I think the reason you're compelled to do quests here is because there are simply so many more here than there were in Skyrim; they're almost overwhelming. You could run one direction in Skyrim for ten minutes and not even encounter another person. ESO is a populated world. There are NPC and other players all over the place, all with things to say and do. I guess that's the main reason for not having that lone adventurer feeling. There's always someone pestering you to do something.

Its more linear than WoW. ESO followed the linear quest hub model. Even WoW level quest hubs started to open up in mid level and then went back to the treadmill at endgame.

My only gripe with all of this is along the lines of quests. I'm not a huge fan of quests, but if I try just exploring and killing things I seem to take at least twice as long to level due to kills giving like 50 exp and quests giving more like 4000 lol.

They seem to have tweaked it a little bit, but would be nice if they made the turn ins worth less while upping the actual kill exp. I'll say that when mmo's do that it honestly makes me feel like I HAVE to quest, thus enjoying the quests and the game less because I'm not doing it because I want to.

no this game is not linear. it does not have quest hubs. you can find a few quests in town but to do a majority of the quests you have to explore. if i walked into Davon's Watch and can see twenty NPCs with a ? over there heads then that would be a quest hub. As mentioned before in an earlier post ZOS makes everyone go to the first main city for your faction. you can choose to start your adventure there or go back to the "starter islands" which is how it was originally designed.

I think they should make everyone go to the starter islands or give us the option to skip it like cold harbour. That way i get to go through the beginning of the game story wise and other people who only care about rushing to endgame can get out of my way.

Try turning off the quest giver indicators in the interface settings, and map a keybinding for quickly toggling the UI on and off. I've found this helps a bit, as I never know which NPCs have quests and which don't.