» Mon May 14, 2012 12:02 am First up we have the combat system. One of the awesome things about the Elder Scrolls games is the combat system. It's not the best combat system out there and it cops a fair bit of flak but it's fun to play and it's bloody immersive, especially in Skyrim. There's nothing quite like stalking through a forest, pulling out your bow, aiming slightly above a deers head and then letting the arrow fly and watching it arc through the air and take the deer through the eye. Nothing like walking through a dungeon with sword in one hand, flame spell in the other and dodging around the place as you hack and burn skeletons to death. Nothing like charging at an enemy with your shield lowered and feeling the thunk as arrows fly into it.
None of that will be in the Elder Scrolls Online. Instead we're stuck with the tired, old MMO standard hotbar combat. ZeniMax Online Studios is using the excuse that because this is an MMO it has to have this sort of combat. To that I say, bull. Darkfall used a first person/third person real time action combat system that was not unlike the single player Elder Scrolls games (though the game itself was terrible). Fallen Earth was basically a first person shooter and the closest thing out there to Fallout Online. DC Universe Online has an action combat system. Warhammer 40k was going to be a third person shooter before it was scrapped. Perhapes the best example of real time action combat though is the recently released TERA. So, ZeniMax, don't tell me it can't be done. Don't tell me you have to use that sort of combat system because it's the only one that works. Reportedly they're giving everyone an active block ability to try and make the game feel more like the single player Elder Scroll's games despite the combat system. It would hardly be the first MMO to do this, just look at Champions Online. It doesn't matter how they try and pretty it up though, it's still the same old MMO combat system that's being used for 20 years. TOR also tried to mix things up by removing auto attack but it's still the same system.
I have to wonder who they're trying to appeal to with this system. It can't be the single player Elder Scrolls fans, the main demographic who's going to be interested in trying this game out. Is it for current MMO players? ZeniMax said they wanted a system that was familiar to MMO veterans. Ok, fair enough. Why are they going to come play this game though when they've already played it and have been playing it for years? It's called World of Warcraft. It's called Everquest, Warhammer Online, Aion, Rift and The Old Republic.
Next we have them not including iconic Elder Scrolls features. The most obvious is the class/ability system. As you all know, in the single player Elder Scrolls game you're not restricted by class choice. You can play a plate wearing archer who casts fire magic, a stealthy rogue who runs around with a two handed hammer etc. That's gone in the Elder Scroll Online and you know what, it's a fair call. An MMO like that would be way too hard to balance. What's not a fair call though is replacing it with the standard class system used by other MMOs, which by all reports I've read is what they're doing. They can't allow everyone to level up every type of skill tree and learn all spells but they can at least allow some sort of class customisation. Something like in Rift or like what they're going to do in The Secret World would work. Another iconic Elder Scrolls feature, or at least what I consider iconic, is the ability to own your own home. Who doesn't love their Breezehome in Skyrim? Who doesn't love their Wizard's Tower in Oblivion? Player housing is one of the most requested MMO features, is included in a lot of current MMOs and is fast becoming an MMO standard and yet they're not going to include it in the Elder Scrolls Online because it'll be too hard to implement? Are you kidding me?
The next thing I want to talk about is the armour design. Now there are screenshots of the game out there (ones that I would be banned for linking to) that show a female character. This character is wearing full plate armour. There is something very wrong with this plate armour though. Something very un-Elder Scrolls. There is a giant patch missing from the front of her armour that is there for no other reason than to expose her cleavage. One of the great things about the Elder Scrolls games is that despite being fantasy they never fell into that tired cliche of women running around in metal bikinis. Realism over sixism. Armour looked the same on female characters as it did on male character, aside from bumps for the briasts, depending on the armour (which admittedly is unrealistic but you take what you can get in this genre). If my female character put on plate armour she'd be wearing armour that fully covered and protected her, just like if a male character wore that armour. It's the same for robes and leather armour in the game and it's great. So why oh why have they seemingly ditched it for the Elder Scrolls Online? Why oh why have they fallen back on the tired fantasy cliche, a cliche that's especially prevalent in MMOs, of women wearing stripper armour? Plate binkis. Robes with huge pieces cut out of them to expose clevage and legs? Once again I have to ask who ZeniMax is trying to appeal to here? Is it the MMO crowd again? They already have pleanty of MMOs with women running around in this sort of clothing, do they really need another one? And besides, if they really want that sort of stuff they're more likely to go play TERA than anything else. Is ZeniMax perhapes trying to appeal to the modders? It's no secret that nvde mods, six mods and revealing armour mods make up the most downloaded mods for the Elder Scrolls games, as well as the Fallout games. Looking on the Skyrim nexus right now the most popular mod is a mod that makes female characters in the game naked and it has 502, 823 unique downloads. If you're really trying to appeal to these people though are you going to go all the way, ZeniMax? Will we have full frontal nudity? Graphic six scenes? A spell that summons a tentacle monster that has its way with female NPCs?
It's not just the sixist armour though, it's the armour and weapon design in general. None of what we've seen so far look Elder Scrolls. It all looks way too high fantasy. Like World of Warcraft type high. It actually reminds me quite a bit of the gear in Kingdoms of Amalur. Can anyone look at any of the screenshots of the game that are out right now and say "yes, that's an Elder Scrolls game"? That, combined with the other things I mentioned, leaves the game not feeling like an Elder Scrolls MMO at all. In its current state it looks like nothing more than a standard, cliche fantasy MMO. Reading about what the games going to include it's like they decides to try and make Dark Age of Camelot 2 with a World of Warcraft skin rather then an Elder Scrolls game. I had high hopes for an Elder Scrolls MMO. I thought it could be the game that could give the genre a much needed shake up and offer MMO players something different and unique to play. Sadly it seems that's not to be the case.
