zephie's game journals
one thing i will not forgive this game for is turning me into a monkey and making it suck. because i become monkey so i can fit into tight spaces, but the game forces me into third-person so i can see that i'm monkey, to prove that i have gone monkey, and the camera is too sensitive to collision, so in squeezing through those tight spaces it just rapidly switches between first and third-person. you know what i'm going in on the monkeypart of this game - as well as that, i simply did not stay monkey long enough. at first it seemed like it would be a fun monkey platforming monkeysection but that was not the case. i can assure you there is reason to stay monkey aside from just squeezing through holes. and no monkey noises? ermm are you effing kidding me? all-in-all this quest gets my lowest possible monkeyrating: "Bad". Do better, ZeniMax
i think the deal with this part of the game is doing a bunch of sidequests to populate a hellcity, and that they all involve big choices of some kind. here it was i had to either kill a catguy or someone who was not a catguy, which is obviously not much of a choice. a character did say something about every choice i make affecting the city in some way, which initially i doubted because it's an MMO
also i guess i shouldn't be doing just the main quest? because i run into characters you would encounter during faction storylines and they bring up events from those storylines, and i haven't even lined those stories yet! this game doesn't really seem to even try with keeping a coherent timeline - i ran into one of the main main-quest guys in a different place, wearing a different outfit, and talking about different stuff than the incredibly pivotal story events he was currently occupied with elsewhere. i was also confused about why all the most important people in Tamriel were mentioning the "tales of my heroic exploits" and the incredible reputation i have, when i've only been hanging with the main characters, doing low-profile sidequests and pickpocketing people. i get having the freedom of going where you wanna go but i think the research i'm having to do to not get the story out of order is more than it should be? this isn't just like if episodes of a TV show weren't numbered, it's like if episodes were made up of a bunch of different scenes from different seasons, and you had to know beforehand when to hit pause on one episode, then which part of a different episode to watch next
just about every player i saw had a companion following them and eventually i thought, should probably look into that, so i did her quest and now this is my new catwife Ember. she's impatient and you lose rapport with her if you go fishing, so i'm eagerly waiting for them to add another Khajiit companion 'cause if i gotta choose between the two well there's plenty of fish in the sea if you know what i'm saying yup i tell you what..
back off budy
absolutely everything in this game inexplicably takes place within the same year due to Simpsons rules and letting people do whatever whenever, which already makes the timeline enough of a mess. but "twice in a month" when the first time was only a couple quests ago... i guess even if in the game's world it only seemed like a day or two that's still technically within a month. but i've done enough complaining about the timeline, there are more pressing issues at hand such as my favorite catguy Razum-dar fast approaching his deathbed due to Khajiit years evidently being an hour long
i have hit my favorite point in playing any MMO, and to a lesser extent most RPGs where i start to obsess over game rules and what i consider fun/fair for me. this is an Elder Scrolls game which means any question from someone looking to start playing it will be met with most people saying to mod it, at least to some extent. with a singleplayer game there's more of a choice, not just in terms of what mods you use but if you even use mods. because two people playing Skyrim are expected to be having somewhat different experiences, in large part from how they choose to customize their own game. but two people playing ESO are both just playing the video game The Elder Scrolls Online Designed By ZeniMax Online Studios. there's a level playing field they have to keep because of leaderboards and PvP (and microtransactions), so obviously add-on capabilities are much more limited, and paradoxically this results in less choice in whether you use them
when the sky isn't the limit with modding and you're constantly being shown other players' progress (if not having to compete against them outright), "vanilla" turns into "suboptimal". i complain about this game's handholding already, but the add-ons increase it tenfold. added menus to minmax every aspect of your inventory/skills/crafting, on-screen notifications that tell you exactly what to do in combat and when to do it, map overlays that show you locations of every possible collectible/resource, etc etc. and if you're a top-level epic raider PvP esports guywhatever you are pretty much expected to use all these things that turn the game into not even a game at all and actually just a data entry job
if the majority of a playerbase uses these add-ons (they do) then that essentially becomes what the game is - what the video game The Elder Scrolls Online Designed By ZeniMax Online Studios is. things get designed and balanced around the capabilities those add-ons bring; this game apparently has a big problem with combat mechanic cues, which the developers don't care about improving because "everyone uses the add-ons anyway". i played RuneScape and you are the big fool of the hour if you don't use the RuneLite client to make the game as mind-numbingly, existentially boring (but efficient!) as possible, so much so that the most powerful and widely-used add-ons get implemented into the official client
so i engage in my patented OCD-brooding over this for a while before remembering i'm playing this game despite it being an MMO. hell the second the game starts telling me that to progress further i gotta do some multiplayer dungeons where i have to look up the mechanics and spoil everything for myself beforehand or else i'll get yelled at, i am extremely out. the only people who would ever see or have the chance to care about my progress anyway are whoever stumbles across this website, and here i also have the opportunity to spell out the game i'm playing, not what all the other players around me are playing. and i think for now, what i want the game i'm playing to be, is a little more immersive, and less handholdy. i'm going to try turning off quest markers for a while because i think it would be more fun :) and knowing that i'm about to be told exactly where to go anyway makes me less attentive to dialogue
Man. well that'll have to do i'm not gonna open an Add-on Door just for this and then suddenly i'm downloading every "immersion" add-on i can find. i don't wanna design a game!! i wanna play one. oh and they still show on the map, you can't turn that off. whatever then lmao ignore the last paragraph
right after this i did a quest where a guy was in danger of being killed but wouldn't leave without his wedding ring. you can offer to help find it, you don't have to, so it'll be a nice extra challenge i thought. quest marker appeared on top of a basket right next to him. i'll say it again - Man
finally some damn Gaming around here
there's a card game inside the game. i mostly started it so the NPCs in big cities would stop yelling at me about it when i walk past. every RPG should have a card game, and the more the focus is on collecting cards rather than actually playing the better. unfortunately this one looks like they want you to play it, and playing it looks like this. a shame!
i guess it's cool. it's definitely the most confusing RPG card game i've played which got annoying when i couldn't figure out why i kept losing but needed a win to complete the quest
there's that mention of my "fellow adventurers" ok i'm sufficiently immersed now