ESO Beta Impressions

Like the phoenix I rise from the ashes of unproductivity and laziness, ready for the coming flood of vociferous creativity!  And also gratuitous lexical chest-puffery.  Yes, after a long silence I like to break out the $5 words.

Moving on past the odd ways my ego likes to manifest, there are folks in this world who find writing therapeutic when they’re depressed or having a hard time.  I’m not one of those people; when I’m in a tough spot trying to articulate my thoughts is just too exhausting.  But shit is better now, these things happen etc etc etc.  I’m slowly learning to celebrate my successes instead of beating myself up for failures.  For example, instead of dwelling on how I didn’t go to my capoeira class for a few weeks, I’m trying to celebrate the fact I went on Monday.  Its not important that I haven’t been writing before, what matters is that I’m writing now.  Right then.  Here's a picture of my Skyrim character as a bard.



Two beta weekends before the most recent one I received a key to play Elder Scrolls Online.  My theory is they have some kind of social media search algorithm that looks for people who are super desperate because I made with the puppy eyes on Twitter and ended up with a beta key.  Whatever the reason, it turned out I didn’t play that much on my first beta outing, nor in the second.  I did play enough to decide that I liked the combat - it’s far less clunky and inconvenient than Skyrim combat (I say that with love, Skyrim).  The addition of MMO-type action hotkeys makes battles much more dynamic and fun rather than something you have to do so you can take the person’s stuff.  Personally my Skyrim playstyle is to avoid outright conflict altogether, either by stealth-murder or casting Frenzy spells at large groups so they thin each other out and thus I have fewer enemies to deal with.  This is partly because I am an honor-less p’tahk and partly because I find combat so cumbersome.  But I quickly found myself wanting to get into combat in ESO so I could see what my abilities do.  I also like the fact that your default attack is bound to mouseclicks instead of constantly cycling through a cooldown.  Although I quickly found that spamming clicks doesn’t make your character move faster.

On the flip side of that, the presence of other people in the game quickly made me realize that my normal sneaky habits were not going to be as useful.  Sure, you can try to sneak up on that flame atronach but chances are someone else is going to clomp in front of you and beat them to death while you’re still quietly approaching.  In fact, lets talk about other people for a second.  I’m not going to lie, when I first started playing I was mightily annoyed that there were all these idiots in my Tamriel disturbing the heartbreakingly gorgeous landscape.  After playing for a while I was still annoyed but resigned, and I have to admit playing ESO with a friend is quite fun.  If I have to deal with feckless strangers so I can play with a group of people I actually like, I am ok with that.  All the Elder Scrolls games have been partially social experiences for me - when I was playing Morrowind in college my friends and I would drink beer and talk about our conquests (and the hilarious bugs we encountered) for hours.  Same thing with Oblivion and Skyrim - talking about playing those games is almost as fun as playing them.  So actually playing an Elder Scrolls game with friends to me is worth the trouble of dealing with the faceless hordes.

The question is, then whether or not ESO is truly an Elder Scrolls game in the way the single player games are.  What is the Platonic Form of an Elder Scrolls game?  Open exploration, random awesome occurrences (I once found a ghostly headless horseman in Skyrim.  No quest, he was just riding around.), memorable locations, great lore, fun sidequests, and I suppose I can stop there though I could probably go on.  Possibly to the NPCs who are pretty much identical to The Silence - once you’re not looking at them anymore you completely forget they even exist.  They exist only as “That Guy Who Wanted Me To Do That Thing” and possibly not even that.  Seriously, the only Elder Scrolls NPC that ever stuck in my mind was the vampire who was the count of Skingrad.  Anyways.  The exploration is definitely still there - I spend half my time doing quests and the other half just picking a direction and running just to see what was over there.  I was rarely disappointed when I did so, although I did wander into some zones that were far above my character’s level.  The towns don’t have quite the same amount of sticking power to me that the single player games do, but they’re still pretty.  The lore is definitely still there - there are lorebooks hidden around the world that makes exploring more rewarding, and a lot of the sidequests are made richer the more you know about the world.  For example, I did a quest that involved some Argonians who believed the Dark Elves were trying to poison their Hist tree.  Seems pretty simple, but having knowledge about what the heck a Hist tree is and the history between the Dunmer and the Argonians made it much more interesting.  Although that quest bugged out for me at the end so I couldn’t complete it.

Which brings me to hilarious Elder Scrolls bugs.  While they are a frustrating but endearing part of the single player Elder Scrolls game, I really hope that won’t be true for ESO when its released.  A game that’s played online, where your character and progress are saved on a server instead of your hard drive, with no save files to edit for that matter, simply can’t survive being buggy.  I encountered a few glitches this beta weekend, most of which were resolved by reloading the UI.

Let me tell you a story.  Playing Skyrim the other day with the Dawnguard expansion I came across an interesting bug wherein Durnaviir got stuck in the ground and was flying around like a land shark.  Hilarious, no?  Except then he flew under Shadowmere, broke free of the ground and carried my horse off into the horizon where the poor thing probably fell to his death.  Really funny in a single player game where you can reload a save or open the console and fix it, but this situation would be incredibly rage-inducing if you’d just spent a bunch of non-reloadable gold on a horse only to have it carried away by a stray dragon.

The only real complaint I have about ESO has to do with the story, and its not a big enough complaint to keep me from enjoying the game overall.  At the very beginning, starting in a prison as usual for an ES game, you are presented with your Destiny.  You, and you alone must release a powerful prophet from this hellish prison and save the world.  It is very hero’s journey, and very in line with the single player installments.  But its not a single player game, and its pretty clear that while this Prophet dude is telling me all about my Great and Momentous Task he is telling a gajillion other people the same exact thing.  It really breaks the immersion and feels like all of the players are in their own bubble Tamriel universes that intersect each other only at certain points.  To illustrate - I grouped with a friend and we went to do a story quest that I had already done, but he hadn’t.  When we entered the building where it was to take place he disappeared and I was left behind.  I felt like I was in that Stargate SG-1 episode where Sam, Daniel and Mitchell all get stuck in a parallel reality.  He was walking around in there but I couldn’t see him.  The Prophet was talking to him, but to me he was just sitting in a chair muttering.  It was jarring to the point where I’m hoping at some point in the story we find out that the Prophet can be in multiple places at once and individually interacting with all these people is part of his master plan to raise an army of maniacs.  And when you find out he just shrugs and says “What, you think I was putting all my eggs in one hero basket?”  And then the body of players would become a single protagonist in an effort towards a goal.  But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

However, my gripes are not going to keep me from playing because honestly I don’t expect immersive stories from MMORPGs, so even though the Elder Scrolls factor was in play my expectations weren’t very high.  But it did get me thinking about how one could make a truly immersive and rich multiplayer story, one where the player isn’t a special snowflake (who clearly isn’t special at all) but a part of a whole.  I don’t know if its possible, or if people would even play it, but its definitely something to think about.

In conclusion, I will be playing this game.  I've already pre-bought the Imperial Edition and I'm happy about the early access because I have some seriously cool names I want to lock down.  I think it has the soul of an Elder Scrolls game and it never felt boring or grind-y.  I hope they get the bugs ironed out before release though, or I'll just make sure to stay away from the land shark dragons.

Skyrim Mods Cont. - Ponies, Squeaky Noises, and Dangerous Cheese.

Mods are great for enhancing gameplay in Skyrim, of course.  For anyone playing Skyrim I would seriously recommend spending some time poking around the Steam Workshop as there are hundreds of awesome mods by incredibly creative people.  And if you're an aspiring game designer, its also a great way to get your talent out there whether it be in design or level building.  The possibilities are multitudinous, up to and including making the game world completely batshit nuts.  You would not believe how detailed some people get - I had a friend in college who wrote a mod for Morrowind that imported all the books from Arena and Daggerfall so he could collect them again.  Clearly they can feed into ones' obsessive habits in hilarious ways.  Speaking of hilarious, there was a distinct lack of silliness in my last post.  NO LONGER.  Here are some of my favorite mods for humorous times and awesome screenshots.

Fall of the Space Core - This mod is different from the others in that it was designed and published by Valve, not a random user, as a celebration of the collaboration between Bethesda and Steam to make the Skyrim Workshop.  This little guy will be amusingly familiar to those of us who played Portal 2, and can be found falling to the earth near Whiterun with a jubilant cry of "Spaaaaaaaaaaace!"  He's now sitting next to my bed in my airship house and whenever I go in there I hear him chattering about how awesome space is.  Its hilarious and precious.  There's a little easter egg that I wasn't aware of at first, but once you gain access to the Atronach Forge in the Mages College you can use your little friend to make yourself a "Dohvacore Helmet".

Roflcopters.  Roflcopters for days.

My Little Pony Race/Companion/Horse & Dragon Mods - The second link goes to the Skyrim Nexus, so I never did install that one.  But I have seen some of the Youtube videos and Oh My God.  It replaces all the dragons in the game with giant flying ponies.  How this never became a meme I will never know.  The first one looks pretty funny too, but I'll admit I haven't installed it either.  Why am I recommending it, then?  Hilarity, that's why.  I am admittedly not a Brony, or whatever the lady equivalent is since I can't keep up with the kids' slang these days.  I did give the show a fair shot, but its too high-pitched and colorful for me.  Some of the episodes were cute, but its just not my thing.  I was incredibly judgey in my younger days, but after I made myself write out a formal apology to my Aunt and Uncle for bagging on Harry Potter I try not to hate on things without giving them a chance.  In this case, I almost had a seizure.  But I can see why people like it.  Anyways, ZOMG Pony Dragons!

Squeaky Toy Weapons - Haven't we all had fantasies of bludgeoning our enemies to death with neon-colored inflatable weapons?  Just me?  Well, then.  Installing this mod gives you the option to craft weapons that are loud in every sense of the word.  The colors are bright enough, but on a muted Skyrim landscape its even worse, and they also make a squeaking sound when you swing them.  Imagine the dialogue!
"Ah, great warrior!  Noble Dragonborn!  We beseech you to venture into the caves of Inevitable Dismemberment and vanquish the mighty Demon Lord Skrivven the Unbegotten and Foul.  By the Nine, save us from his sulfurous breath and stultifying monologues!"
"Right, no problem guys.  See this thing here?" I say, unsheathing my Hammer of Magenta Frostbite, "I am all over this.  Lord Whats-His-Tits will either die of irritation or embarrassment.  You don't mind if I look his corpse, right?"
"Um, of course not great Dohvakiin.  How did that thing fit into your scabbard?  WITCHCRAFT!  TALOS WORSHIP!"

Exploding Chickens - Exactly what it sounds like.  With this mod installed, every chicken upon the moment of its death will burst into a giant fireball.  Tiny passive landmines.

Project P.E.W & Thu'um/Fus Arrows - The author of the first mod says he takes no responsibility for your sanity and with good reason.  It replaces the twang of a bowstring with a high pitched "Pew Pew" sound.  Another great pranking mod - if your roommate plays just wait until his desktop is alone and unlocked and install away!  If you can get their Steam password.  There is that.  My little brother did this to me once and replaced my wallpaper with a picture of Nicholas Cage.  I thought I had a very specific and odd virus.  The second mod puts the power of "Unrelenting Force" into arrows you can craft.  With it you can shoot a guard from many yards away and he goes flying across the village square with everyone pearl-clutching and shouting behind him.  Brilliant.

Call of Madness Shout - An extra shout provided by the wardrobaly challenged Sheogorath!  Yeah the cut is dapper, but those colors are all wrong for you, sir.  In any case, the first two words of the shout are not that exciting.  The first one functions like the Wabbajack staff, turning enemies into other things like sweetrolls or more powerful enemies.  Or bunnies.  The second word summons Sheogorath himself to fight with you, which can be fun.  But the third - oh the third word.  The third word summons a rain of cheese from the heavens, each wheel of which explodes when it hits the ground.  You have not lived until you have seen exploding cheese rain, I tell you.

Finally, if you really want to take leave of your sanity, download the Kenny Loggins music mod, which will replace all combat music in the game with "Danger Zone".  You're welcome.

Back to Skyrim: The Moddenning

It has come to my attention that some of my lovely internet friends have not yet played Skyrim and are planning to start soon.  To this I say - Hurray!  Welcome!  Prepare to have the next few weeks of your life dominated with thoughts of ingots and cheese.  And sweetrolls.  And "Will someone for the love of god kill that damn Talos evangelist in Whiterun?!"  Also possibly "If you don't shut the hell up about the Cloud District, Nazeem, I will cut off your head, stuff some basil down your neckhole and have my storm thrall barbecue your ass for dinner."  Oh right, I already did that.  It was incredibly cathartic.

You can't see my face, but there is a look of savage glee happening.  Anyways, I will take any excuse to talk about Skyrim especially since I picked up Dawnguard and Dragonborn on Steam this weekend.  Steam my love, your Black Friday sale touched me in all the right places but I also must pay bills.  You naughty delicious crumpet, you.  What's that, darling?  You need another title to spruce up your library?  Let me get my credit card and to hell with the cell phone bill!  

Composure regained, let's talk about Skyrim.  I will keep this free of story spoilers, by the way, but there may be some loot and reward spoilers.  Of all the PC games I have played, I believe the Elder Scrolls series is truly incomplete when played on a console.  This is, of course, because of fan-made mods, which have been around since Morrowind.  There are some amazing mods to be had in Skyrim, but some of them I stumbled across by accident or had to be told about so I thought I would share my favorites.  Before I do that though, a couple notes on how I play Skyrim and how I use mods.  For the most part I play in the 3rd person perspective; I like watching my character run around and sometimes the 1st person view feels claustrophobic.  There are exceptions of course, like when I'm trying to move things around in my house, but 3rd person is my preferred view.  I also (again, for the most part) don't install mods that aren't lore-friendly or will make my character over-powered.  The exception here is mods that are purely for silly entertainment purposes, which I don't use while I'm playing the game proper.  Except for Fall of the Space Core, because LOL.  This post is devoted to mods for gameplay enhancement and the next one will be for silly fun times.  Also there won't be any mods from Skyrim Nexus here that aren't available on the Steam Workshop.  I couldn't get the Nexus Mod Manager to work properly on my old computer and haven't bothered with it since I upgraded.  I'm sure there are many awesome mods on the Nexus, but this list will be long enough with just Workshop mods.

One more thing - I have not played one of the most astonishing mods I've heard of in any game, which is Skywind.  Here's the website for it, and it is just what it sounds like - bringing Morrowind to Skyrim.  The project is particularly epic in that the creators don't just want the world of Morrowind available to wander around in, they are trying to remake the whole game in Skyrim.  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  The mod is in an alpha state right now so you can walk around and interact with people but the quests and storylines aren't loaded in yet.  I had moved on from Skyrim when I first heard about this but now that I'm back I plan to install it very soon and I will let the Internet know how awesome it is.  Ok then.  Let me wipe the drool off my keyboard real quick.

Mods for Improved/Expanded Gameplay

Bandolier: Bags and Pouches - This mod is exactly what it sounds like, a way for you to make extra storage bags out of the leather you find to expand your carrying capacity.  There are a variety of bags, satchels, bandoliers, and vial holders to chose from but personally I only have a couple equipped because I don't want to clutter up my character's silhouette.  The added capacity is by no means ridiculous and there's a finite number you can equip depending on where they're placed, so I don't consider it to be cheating.  It makes sense to be able to make little pouches with all the leather you find, right?  Right.  The items are made on the tanning rack with the exception of the buckles and dark stained leather so you can't get a bunch of cheap leather and max your smithing out on it which I appreciate.

Stronger Daedric Artifacts - The mod creator thought, and I agree, that while the Daedra are supposedly these hugely powerful beings capable of mighty and terrible deeds, their representations in the physical world are kind of anti-climactic.  The quests are leveled so you can start finding artifacts right away at lower levels, but the items are too so you might find a Dagger of XYZ Jealous and Impotent God that is beat out by a plain orcish dagger.  That's silly.  The mod increases the value of the items (if you want to sell them because you are a incomprehensible creature) and their damage/armor ratings, tweaks the enchantments a bit, and gives them unlimited charges.  It might be a little cheater-ish but I felt it made sense with the world and gave the Daedric quests more oomph.  The increased damage/armor and enchantments won't make your character into some kind of unstoppable god; the picture above features Dawnbreaker which I have since stopped using because I made something better, despite the fact that the thing is gorgeous.  I'm a bit on the fence about the unlimited charges, but not for the reason you might think.  Between the perk that makes bound weapons trap souls and all the dungeons I loot I have SO MANY souls, you guys.  My inventory is spilling over with them and I only have 2 items to charge them with, a sword and a bow.  I'm about ready to stop using Mehrune's Razor because I can't charge it and when I find soul gems in dungeons its not like I'm not going to pick them up.  That would be crazy.

Alchemist Farmhouse - Want a house outside of the busy streets of Whiterun?  The solitude of a small island and some space to cultivate your reagents in peace?  Most importantly, are you tired of Lydia stuffing bread into her cranky useless gob while you're trying to sleep?  Enter the alchemist's farmhouse, a humble little place on the lake SE of Whiterun.  Its appropriate for a low-level character, its homey, there's plenty of storage and a nice little garden outside.  There's even your own smithing area with smelter.  And no Lydia.

The Asteria - After trying out a few house mods this was the one I ended up sticking with.  Its a Dwemer airship that floats above the lake SE of Whiterun.  The creator gives a defense of its lore-friendliness in a book that can be found in the house.  It has everything you would expect in a house mod but also it is so pretty.  I love this house.  It makes steampunk noises, there's a telescope and steering wheel on the terrace, and really just a mind-boggling attention to detail.  Also, its a damn airship!

Kagrenac's Instant Fortress - This house mod gives you a Dwemer cube that you place on the ground to summon your house wherever you are.  It also has a lore-friendly reason for existence written by the creator.  Very convenient, but it's not as pretty as the airship so I ended up not using it.  Its rated highly and people seemed to like it - the tower itself is pretty impressive.  I suppose its all about personal taste.

Water and Terrain Enhancement Redux - If you thought Skyrim couldn't possibly be any more gorgeous, install this mod.  It is a careful redrawing of all the water to be more realistic and dynamic.  It also adapts a few other terrain and water mods and includes them bug-free with the original creators' permission.  As if we all needed another excuse to ride Shadowmere around looking at stuff and not doing the world-altering quests we have open.  I mean, look at the screenshots in the mod description.  Real lakes barely look as good.

Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers - Let's be honest - we all looked on the internet to find all these damn things so you might as well install a mod for it.  The world is so huge that quest is seriously frustrating to finish without help, and I don't like my games to be frustrating.  It doesn't give you the quest early, you still have to stumble across one and talk to Vex about it, it just tells you where they are.  I installed this mod when I had about half of the stones and it made the quest much more fun.  There are similar mods for the Crimson Nirnroots and Dragon Priest masks as well, and I fully support that.  Finding tiny things in a HUGE world with no help is the anti-fun.

Auto Unequip Ammo & Helmet - These mods are useful if you are very much like me - fond of playing in the 3rd person and completely obsessed with your character's appearance.  Who wants to run around with a bunch of arrows equipped but no bow?  Or covering that face you spent an hour customizing with a helmet?  No one!  Until I found this mod I would manually equip and unequip my arrows/helmet to fit wherever I was and what kind of weapon I was using at the time.  That is not an exaggeration because I am a crazy person.  Huge timesavers for borderline obsessives is what I'm saying.

Deacon's Dark Brotherhood Armor Set - The Dark Brotherhood was hands-down my favorite questline but where the Thieves Guild gave you a baddass set of Batman-looking armor at the end, all you get from the Brotherhood is another set of regular old armor with slightly better stats.  And a pair of gloves that help with lockpicking.  NAY, says I and so did Deacon here.  This armor set looks amazing, fits within your role in the Brotherhood and isn't overly powered in my opinion.  The enchantments are robust but it is definitely stealth armor; if you play your character like I do, which is throwing all your levels into magic and stealth skills you will not survive a skirmish with more than one or two enemies at a time using the armor.  It comes with a ring and amulet which I don't use because I've found better ones in the game.  I also like that the creator listed story reasons in the description for each enchantment.

 Smeltdown - Items to Ingots 1.2 - Now you have something to do with all the crap you pick up in caves besides running around trying to find a merchant with enough money to buy it all.  It feels like a feature that should have been included in the game really, since it makes sense to be able to melt down a two-handed sword you won't use to make a dagger that you will.  The smelter doesn't level your smithing so its not a cheap way to boost that skill, and you can't melt down everything.  Enchanted items, for example, cannot be turned into ingots which also makes sense.

Horses Ignore Combat! - The horses in vanilla Skyrim have absolutely no sense of personal safety.  They will run up to a pack of wolves while you're inspecting some butterflies and they're really gung ho about joining your fights.  In my case, even when I'm in 1st person perspective, this often leads to Shadowmere running in front of my sword and getting killed or charging into an AoE that I just set off.  Its annoying.  With this mod your horse doesn't give a flying flip about you or your bandit problems and will stay wherever you leave it no matter what trouble you're in.  So don't get off the horse in the middle of an enemy fort because it will not run away or defend itself.  The conclusion I draw from all this is that horses are just plain dumb.

So ends my list of useful Skyrim mods!  Come back later for the silly ones, because some of them are really good.  You'll notice there aren't any mods for companions here, which again is due to my own play-style.  I don't use companions and if one is assigned to me for story purposes I dump them as soon as I am able.  Even then I make them wait at the cave entrance and clear out all the enemies myself.  I am a dedicated sneak and one of my favorite things to do is cast Frenzy spells on groups and watch them kill each other.  Then I can go in and finish the last couple dudes off with a dagger to the back.  Companions just mess with my murderous groove - I killed the only one who can sneak worth balls because he was annoying.  And then took his clothes.  My character is not a very nice person.