- cross-posted to:
- mmorpg@lemmy.ml
- freegames@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- mmorpg@lemmy.ml
- freegames@lemmy.ml
Looks like it's going totally free to play if you get i before 7/27/2023. I've heard good things about TESO but would never pay for another bethsoft product so this works out nicely.
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The base game content is all included, and I think they folded the Vvardenfell DLC into the main game, but then there a bunch of major DLCs, dungeon DLCs, and minor DLCs, as well as a premium subscription that lets you access all the DLC except the most recent major one. The major DLC also all get bundled together so if you buy the most recent one you get the old major ones too IIRC.
The problem is that the way the story gets broken up after the base game is basically "Dungeon DLC starting an arc -> Major DLC covering most of the story arc except for the last third -> second dungeon DLC continuing the story a little -> minor DLC that's the last third of the major DLC's story." To be 100% clear, the bundle of major DLCs is just the major DLCs, not the dungeon or minor DLC that go along with them, meaning if you just have that all the stories are missing their starting context and end without resolving anything. When I was playing I managed to rush through all the other story content during a week of free premium, which was an absolute slog.
Also ESO's endgame fucking sucks: the trials (raids) are mechanically dull and DPS is a straight up gear check but the community pretends that being able to push one button a second in a fixed sequence is an elite skill (and they're extremely elitist over it, of course).
The base game is some of the best TES content there is, however. You get to wander around all the cool, weird places that the mainline games haven't touched in twenty years now.
the PROBLEM is that the ONLY WAY to get the bag that holds all your crafting materials infinitely is to SUBSCRIBE
Inventory management in ESO sucks in general. Characters have individual inventory slots with a scaling cost to expand them, the bank has a scaling cost to expand it, inventories in houses are limited and awful, it's all an absolute mess. I wound up just using all my spare character slots for inventory mules and trying to juggle that was awful.
And it's intentionally bad because premium doubles your inventory and bank capacity too IIRC. So it's creating a problem for the sake of selling the solution. ESO's monetization is awful and is basically aimed at trying to sell yearly expansions alongside a subscription service with extra anti-QoL shit like mount training (mounts are cosmetics, so individual characters have mount skills which you can get one point in per day, which you need to make them fast, able to run further, etc).
Imo everyone who likes TES should grab it free and play the base game, and then quit because the base game is roughly half of the total content, it's the most complete and coherent content since it wasn't chopped up to be sold piecemeal, and if we're being honest the DLC stories are kind of shit. Like three guesses what the Summerset storyline is. That's right: "the dumbass racism elves are being incredibly racist dipshits again, and they're about to cause the apocalypse through sheer stupidity, again." The Skyrim DLC arc is just "something something vampires, is anyone even paying attention? No? Yeah it kind of sucks not sure where we're going with this and oh hey you won let's just forget about this shit now." The Elsweyr DLC arc is just "Skyrim, the game, but in a jungle now." The Blackmarsh DLC arc is just "Oblivion, the game, but in a swamp now." And that's where I stopped playing, so I don't know what either of the last two are but I understand High Isle was dogshit.
Really no one's missing anything of value if they skip the DLCs. Just do a main faction story or two (I recommend the Aldmeri Dominion and Ebonheart Pact for the scenery if nothing else - Daggerfall is the blandest and most boring place in the entire game, only picking up in Hammerfell) and the Craglorn stuff, maybe the Vvardenfell story if you're nostalgic for Morrowind (the story itself is incomplete - it continues with the Clockwork City minor DLC and Summerset major DLC) and so dull I couldn't tell you what happened, but Vvardenfell's a cool place to wander around in), then quit while you're ahead and still haven't spent a dime on the game.
