Tag: questing

It feels good to come home

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With the troubles in the past 4-6 weeks, mainly consisting of sickness in the family and our china visit, it has been quite some time since i visited Elder Scrolls Online in a normal way- that is to say logging into my main character and continue questing where i left off. Even when i logged in, i wasn’t able to do much because of short sessions, the longer ones have been reserved for guild evenings.

There’s something that became very apparent in this time: MMORPGs need some commitment to enjoy them in their full capacity. At least for me, when i lose momentum in a game, others become more alluring. Lately, i’ve found myself wanting to play The Secret World or Lord of the Rings Online- i’m not counting EVE in here, because that came as a surprise and i do think two MMORPGs work very well together. Nonetheless, yesterday i decided to spend the night in Tamriel and i’m really glad i did.

Birthday cake

My first mission was to get the birthday cake, although i don’t need it much- i’m outleveling content anyway, so there’s actually no need to get that 100% bonus. But on the other hand- why fret about it? It’s only going for a week and a boost is fine- after all, it doesn’t say “you have to skip content if you use it” in the item description- i can still go for those zone achievements i want to clear before moving on. As a matter of fact, i’ve only now set my first steps into Greenshade, so there’s still a lot of zone to cover.

Getting the birthday cake is quite easy- you’ll get ingame mail, a voucher for one of these. You’ll need to seek out Chef Donolon at the docks of Vulkhel Guard, who will tell you to get a few bananas, honey and…rye, i think, which you can buy from an NPC nearby or loot from the usual places like baskets etc. When you return with those ingredients, he’ll make the cake for you and it goes straight into your collections tab. I’m not sure if one has to use it to get the experience bonus, but i did it, just to make sure. After that, i could go out and seek adventure again.

Screenshot_20160405_230605

Silatar

It took about five minutes to make me fall back in love with ESO again, as its storytelling is really good. All i really did yesterday was one quest- The Witch of Silatar. I lost track of the storyline, but i guess this is about the Wilderking wanting me to get to know the assassin sent by the Veiled Heritance, Aranias, sent to Greenshade to kill the Wilderking.

But it doesn’t do this in a direct way, no. The quest NPC, Spinner Maruin, wants to tell me a story- a story i can take a part in. I would visit Aranias on the island of Silatar (which she created, by the way) to relive some part of her past as her friend- a friend she never had in her real past. She had to go through this all by herself.

After i asked nicely, Maruin told me to sit by the fire- a few lines of dialogue later, and i’m on Silatar, which is strikingly beautiful. This is enhanced by the fact that the first thing i do with Aranias is racing to a lighthouse- this seems so innocent, so beautiful, at first, but takes a bit of a darker shade when she roots me as soon as i might come close to her.

Still, it was this moment where i thought, again, how great the experience in Elder Scrolls Online is- this is a crafted story, not a thrown-in quest. The island of Silatar, for instance, is only visited for this quest. While it’s not big, i guess it tells us something about storytelling in a game when the developers create a zone of about the size of a city just for one quest.

Screenshot_20160405_232347

The story goes on and it’s mainly about Aranias, a young Altmer with incredible powers- after all, she created the island we’re standing on during this quest in a day. The motives for her behaviour are loneliness as well as a will to “earn” her parents’ love who really don’t like seeing her daughter creating islands or lifting ships from the sea. Her parents then leave for the Summerset Isles to get help for her daughter and return with High Kinlady Estre from the Veiled Heritance who makes Aranias kill a bosmer woman. In the story Maruin tells, we are able to help, so this is not what happens in our quest, but what happened in reality. I don’t want to get too deep into the details here because spoilers, but this is an interesting quest and i’m very much looking forward to playing it again on another character and take more screenshots of Silatar.

This love for detail and good storytelling is what makes stand Elder Scrolls Online stand apart from and above many other MMORPGs- there are others, of course, who have great storytelling- Lord of the Rings, FFXIV, SWTOR and TSW to name a few, but while Elder Scrolls Online might not be able to have the storytelling greatness of The Secret World, it’s actually the phasing that makes the quests more interesting- when you complete a quest, the zone changes, so you can see an impact. The game then doesn’t turn into a singleplayer experience because of its megaserver technology- there are still many players who have their map- or the part of the map you’re in in the same state as you have. That’s just so much better than the instanced storytelling of SWTOR, for instance.

Just like Laeloria, Silatar and the story of Aranias (which will continue in the questlines of Greenshade) will stay with me and became one of the reasons for my liking of Elder Scrolls Online. I’ve reconnected with the game yesterday and it feels good.

Travel Log: wrapping up Grahtwood

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Yesterday i finally had/took the time to wrap up Grahtwood, the level 16-24 area for Aldmeri Dominion in Elder Scrolls Online. Nuria has been in Grahtwood, well, for almost 2 years, i suppose, as it was one of the characters i created back when the game launched. I can’t tell you how many hours of /played it took to finish it, but what i am able to tell you is that it was a memorable experience.

I do remember when i first got there. Not in too much detail, but i remember how difficult i found it to be. It’s not often that you’ll find standard open-world content difficult in MMORPGs- here, coming to Grahtwood with a fresh level 16 character, it was as much an unwelcoming place as the quest lore made it out to be. It was grim, and i’ve found some quest very confusing- i can’t remember which one, anymore, but somehow, something put me to a stop in the game. I know i loathed the inventory minigame even more back then, because ESO was still asking for a subscription at that time and i felt it was one of those time-wasters designed to make you sub longer. Around that time, i decided to discontinue playing the game.

When i returned a couple of times to check the game out again, i did what i always do: create a new character to play because i had forgotten about the old one. So i didn’t see the Grahtwood anymore, until our guild decided to side with the Aldmeri Dominion and i was looking at either continuing Nuria or create another new character. As i have been playing the game in our premade group up to level 8, i felt i could tackle a level 19 character of the same class- after all, there had been a skill reset in the meantime and i had a general idea on what to do with the character.

Laeloria

It wasn’t easy, though. I still had to struggle through getting to know the character and the situation she found herself in. And, after all that time and despite really liking the Daggerfall Covenant zones and quest-related stories, it’s Grahtwood where i fell in love with the game again. And it was a quest.

The watcher in the Treehouse, again.
The watcher in the Treehouse, again.

Laeloria. I don’t know what it was about this quest- i guess it was all a happy coincidence. First, i saw the building you can see in the background of the screenshot above. I made a mental note to take a look later. While travelling around, at some point i saw a Treehouse and decided to climb it, as i knew it would offer some kind of view. Arriving there, i received the quest- freeing some captured soul from Coldharbour- and the Watcher told me more. How someone already ventured in to free that soul, how she told him to watch the beacon and pay attention if/when it turned to a red light. I was enthralled, because i wondered if it would, indeed, turn red and thereby ending the century-long wait for that Watcher. So now Laeloria was more than a building i wanted to explore at some point- it was encased in the lore of the Watcher and the liberation of not one, but two individuals and finally even in the mystery of the beacon. That’s a normal side-quest, mind you. It’s not even a very uncommon theme here- freeing people from a dangerous place often is the motivation for the player character to venture in, after all. But for some reason, all these elements clicked for me. Better yet, that wasn’t even all there is to Laeloria.

Statue of Azura in Laeloria.
Statue of Azura in Laeloria.

Azura, a Daedra that’s not even viewed as being as evil as the others, is in this whole scheme, as well. As is a demon, but i didn’t like that one very much. It’s this quest that will me- or my character, at least- have a “special” connection to Azura from then on. Now, i don’t know anything much about the lore of Elder Scrolls games and Elder Scrolls Online in particular- it’s a gap i plan to fill at some point, also because of this quest and Azura.

Exploring Laeloria was very satisfying and i wasn’t disappointed, of course. After all that tension building up around this place it did deliver on it, after all. Did the beacon turn red? Well, you’ll have to take a look yourself.

Grahtwood

The zone has to offer much more and it’s actually quite diverse, even though the theme never changes from being a wood. There are Bosmer villages made of trees and acorns, i guess. There are Altmer villages, ruins and embassies, there are open spaces as well as dark woods/rough terrain. It’s not easy to navigate while still being open enough to not make it an annoyance.

There’s a dungeon, of course- Elder Hollows, and it is nice to look at, indeed. The main storyline in Grahtwood revolves around preventing a revolution in Bosmer ranks and getting Ayrenn to do some kind of ceremony to prove she truly is a fitting leader for the Dominion. There’s a bit of betrayal, drama and magic mystery involved, as well as a funny twist on vegetarism- Bosmer don’t eat plants and you’ll be reminded of that several times – i really liked getting through the questing in Grahtwood.

I’ve seen strange places like that “Garden of Flesh” in the Reliquary of Stars and followed gruesome tales of unreturned love. Memorable, i guess, is the right word. In the end, after getting that quest achievement, there were 2 delves, 3 Skyshards and one “eye” left to explore- that’s what i did last night.

In retrospective, with a zone as large as the Grahtwood is, the slow leveling in Elder Scrolls Online and all the real-time involved here- even if i were only counting the time since i returned to that character- it truly feels like an epic experience, a journey. So now, i’m off to Greenshade- looking forward to explore that place. I’ll leave you with some shots i took during my travels.

 

What SWTOR needs

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…in my opinion, of course. It’s quite a silent week for me, this one, at least in regards to writing here. The reason being that the nursery school teachers in germany are on strike indefinitely, which means at least this week, possibly going into next week. So our son is home and i stay with him- which in turn means that the time i usually write something is blocked. In terms of playing, his being sick at the moment doesn’t help. It’s nothing too bad, bad his sleep is uncalm. So, well, not much of a gaming week here.

That is a bummer, because you know these times when you can’t wait to log into a game? I’m in one of these phases. Doesn’t matter if it were FF14, SWTOR or ESO- my current trinity- i’m really enjoying my time in those games i play- although it has been SWTOR, exclusively, in the last week.

While i like the game very much and am surprised at how good its design fits both my preferences and my available time to play, there are some things i miss in SWTOR. So here are a few pointers.

Planetary storylines should be their own thing

I do realize that this is what later on happens anyway, after the class stories are finished. But i wished quests in SWTOR came three-fold: class quests, planetary quests and sidequests. With 12XP currently going on a seperation like this would help a lot in making use of the experience bonus in place while still following the main theme of the individual planets. If there is a way to tell the planetary story apart- or experience/read it ingame without doing every quest there is on a planet, let me know. I’m unaware of an option like this.

Is that...a gate?
Is that…a gate? Also, while we’re at it: please add a keybind for hiding/displaying nameplates!

If planetary quests were highlighted in some way, i guess my approach to quicker levelling in SWTOR while still experiencing more of the story would be to finish the planetary questlines first and the class stories after.

Mentoring

Ok, i don’t know anyone in game (yet – made contact with Shintar, though), so this wouldn’t be of much use for me except maybe in flashpoints, but every MMORPG, in my opinion, needs to provide the option to experience content together in a ‘challenging’ and ‘worthwhile’ way for friends to play together. It would certainly help social guilds in planning and executing social events that make use of available content.

A little help for the srubs
A little help for the srubs

If there was the ability to set your own level, it would also help with the 12XP issue of “levelling too fast” since you could do both- level quickly and experience the stories you’d want to experience.

Usable decor

Shortly after the FC meeting in FF14, i went out of our guild house (or whatever they’re called), saw a fountain and clicked on it. To my surprise, something happened. That, of course, was after we sat on couches while discussing FC-related stuff in our house. In SWTOR, as far as i can tell, usable objects are in the majority. Sure, you can read mail, store items, gather resources and probably do other things i don’t know about. But sitting on a couch is done by jumping on the seat and using the /sit command- success varies. It might be an engine thing, but it’s a bummer that housing is mostly limited to “looking nice”.

Account or legacy wide friendlist

This is a stealth-edit. When i tried to contact Shintar, i added her to my friendlist. For a while afterwards, i kept wondering why i didn’t see her online anymore. Then i realized that i was on a different character, so i’ll have to add her 6 or 7 republic chars to each and every friendlist of my characters- if she’d want to do the same for me, it would involve even more work. I appreciate the ability to sometimes play with a “secret” character if you don’t want to meet anyone (especially useful for guildleaders), but it would still be a great help if there was at least a faction-wide friendlist for accounts/legacies.

That’s all?

I’m pretty sure there’s more. I could join the chorus and wish for more open planets. I had a disappointing experience the last time i played Soofoo on Tatooine. I saw a gate-like structure on the edge of the spaceport/first town and, of course, went there to explore. I was out of the gate for a few meters/yards when i got the warning: “exhaustion zone. Turn back”.

See, open space! But don't go there....it's exhausting.
See, open space! But don’t go there….it’s exhausting.

But i’ve made my peace with the zone design, realizing that maybe it isn’t really about the planets. When all those important people in the movies land on a planet, they don’t go hiking, after all. They are on these planets for a mission- so are we, the players. So i changed my stance and just view them as setpieces/backdrops where the action takes place. Still, i hope for more open maps sooner or later, and as far as i know, they’re there.

I’m still hugely enjoying my time in both FF14 and SWTOR, hope to be able to join the next fc meeting in FF14 as well as a guild in SWTOR soon.

It’s SWTOR week

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For now, i’m indulging in my fickle style of “playing” just about every (major) MMORPG there is while still trying to make progress. Double XP events like the current one in SWTOR help with that. Furthermore, i couldn’t resist the recent discounts and other sales there were: i own a stronghold, i took advantage of the offer when SWTOR released the Galactic Starfighter minigame and the most recent one giving two months subscription, Cartel Coins and the Shadow of Revan expansion. So, there’s a lot of incentive (read: spent money) to play SWTOR.

Lucky me, the double experience event lasts a week. I also have some stacks of XP potions that will allow me to further increase XP gain for about 50 hours. So there you go, reasons to play SWTOR. It’s not that i dislike the game, it’s interesting enough, but i couldn’t really connect to it before- i grow tired of the game quickly, sessions rarely last longer than an hour or two; and it’s not so easy to get immersed when you do one of these sessions once a month.

So i’m about to change that. I’m also going to take my own advice and make some decisions regarding MMORPGs- which ones to follow, which ones to drop. It’s not going to be easy, because i like all the MMOs i play, ranging from FF14, EVE, over to Lotro, SWTOR, ESO, TSW and so on. They all offer unique experiences. But since i made some recent investments in some games, i won’t be able to narrow it down as much as i’d like to just yet…so i’ll choose a setup for a week and review it afterwards. Expect the start of a new series on this blog in the coming days where you’ll be able to follow the exciting process of me trying to make tough decisions and cut down the MMOs i play to three at a time.

To make it short, for the coming week, the setup will be as follows:

Main game: Star Wars: the old republic
Side Games: The Elder Scrolls Online, EVE online

Anyways, back to SWTOR. My character, Soofoo (The Progenitor) is a republic commando of level 19. And yes, that’s my main. She just got access to the next flashpoint, Athiss. I’m looking forward to seeing it, because i really liked the group experience of the previous flashpoint. What i didn’t like was Coruscant- i found it to be too fragmented and too much playing in buildings. So Taris is an improvement in this regard.

Finally found out how to hide the UI
Finally found out how to hide the UI (ALT+Z)

So far, i’ve only been out there, questing, returning to the fleet when i saw that i had “93/100” commendations for fear i’ve capped out that currency and need to spend it soon. So i bought some equipment before heading to my Nar’Shadaa stronghold and take a look at SWTOR’s housing mechanic.

I have to say, i like the “hooks” system of housing in general. The total freedom of Rifts Dimensions and to even further extent Landmark paralyze me- yes, i could do just about everything within these systems, but mostly i don’t do anything- although i’d really like to, perhaps, build an inn of some sort. With SWTORs strongholds, i’m just going to think about what fits to my character- what would a commando specialized in healing call a home? For now, i’ve only placed a metal couch, but more will follow. I have to say the stronghold itself feels gigantic to me- there’s so many rooms to decorate, i’ll have to take a closer look and decide what to do with each room. I’ll take care of that when i enter the dungeon queue the next time and wait for it to pop up.

What’s interesting is that SWTOR now offers quite attractive side-activities that play very differently to the usual questing- housing is one, of course, another would be the crafting system, then there are the “space on rail shooter” missions which i find to be fun. Sure, they’ve been criticized for not being “free-roaming” space shooters, but they’re still a nice diversion and offer a lot of additional XP. And of course i could do some battlegrounds and get stomped. It’s not as broad in activities as FF14, but they spice up the gameplay.

I can’t tell much about the story yet, because i didn’t continue through it much yet and have forgotten about where i was when i last played. I know it’s the imperial agent’s story that gets much praise, but i tried the class and wasn’t impressed much (by the class gameplay). Still, i’m looking forward to my experience in the coming week- i’ll move things around come next friday (or thursday even- friday isn’t such a good idea, because in the evening there is the guild project and i can’t play another MMO anyways).