The tutorial island I think if you were to rush through it could be done in 20 mins, and if you know what you're doing maybe an hour.
I figured out where it is on the map...I think it takes about 10 minutes to cross. The entire width of Tamriel is 40 times it's width. If we say that the jog they do is about 10 mph... that's about 66 miles wide... however based on how the system is divided by factions I doubt you'll be able to cross between factions so you likely can't go to that entire area with one character, but I dunno.
Crafting is "ok" not the best I've seen but basically
3 sections you have is "create, deconstruct, or refine"
Refine let's you take things you may have harvested or gotten from deconstruct and turn them into things usable for crafting
deconstruct...deconstructs and gives you some items from the process
create gives you a menu of the type of crafting there is, and then subtypes. Selecting it will bring up a race select menu which you can only create your race's stuff at first. Hovering over the race will tell you 2 raw material types you need to for the objects, it's different for each race apparently, and then you are given 5 boxes to to place items into... the first two are labeled primary and secondary and they pretty much are for the 2 materials they told you. Obviously only the first box matters and it should autofill the second but doesn't... you have to use 2 mats of equal quality to construct whatever you're going to construct so once you select the first item the 2nd is mandatory. The remaining 3 boxes are for "additives" which basically changes quality and has the ability to add properties. The more of any given type of item that you have the better the quality apparently... I didn't check how this works out, but yeah not really necessary...
This is the same for 4 out of the 5 crafting arts, "Weaponsmith, armorsmith, enchanter, and alchemist," and provisioner I haven't found yet.
- Leveling up -
As you level up you get equal number of pts to HP, Magic, and Stamina. You then also get 1 attribute point to distribute per level that you can add to change that balance. At level 2 you have 120 in all area at lvl 4 you have 160 at base.
You also get 1 skill pt per level and you gain 1 skill pt per 3 sky shards you find...so far.
Skills sets are divided up int types, then subtypes. The types are "Class, Weapon, Armor, World, Guild, Racial" so far that I have found.
There are 4 classes that you can select during char creation, Dragon Knight, Night Blade, Sorcerer, Light Bringer? I forget the last one...
Night Blade's Class subtypes are "Assassination, Shadow, Siphoning"
Weapon Class subtypes are "Two-handed, One hand and shield, Dual Wield, Bow, Destruction Staff, Restoration Staff"
Armor Class subtypes are "Light, Medium, Heavy"
Armor Class subtypes are "Soul Magic"
Armor Class subtypes are "Fighter's Guild" and probably a Magic guild...I see the building but have not found a person by which to join
Armor Class subtypes are "Nord Skills" I assume this changes based on character creation choice lol
Each subtype is also divided into Active and Passive. The subtypes themselves level up as you use them as does each skill.
All skills aren't immediately available. They are gated behind character level AND subtype skill level
You have to spend a point to get a skill and start leveling it up.
Each skill apparently has a "morph" that once it reaches a certain level (it's max) you can spend another point to morph it into a modified version of the skill in one of 2 ways (It's possible some skills have more ways, but i've only seen 2)
- Other miscelaneous -
There are 296 books to collect apparently that tell the lore of tamriel. I have the entire list, but I don't feel like typing all that out or cropping the pictures >.>
There are currently 7490 achievement points to attain. I have no idea what they do. From a brief glance achievements usually give multiple points per completed thing... It looks like 5 and 10 pointers are fairly common.
Is there housing? Apparently not yet...
Can you interact with everything...not really. There is plenty you can interact with, but it is far beneath what Elder Scrolls generally allows you to do.
Basically all the parts that make me dislike ES as a series regularly have been removed, bad GUI, poor syncing, first person view, 1 animation for attack rather than cycled through in a combo... but equally the things that I most wanted to play an ES game for, the item interaction and the housing has also been removed.
If I had to describe it through other games I'd say it's a lot like Guild Wars 2 and DCUO mixed together, but with plenty of things that make those things stand out removed. It's superior, in terms of overall gameplay than both of them, but overall the experience feels hollow with no chances taken to explore what can be done. It's best aspect is definitely it's combat system which is cool and adds a layer of depth once you figure out all the rules to it, but once you do it pretty standard attack attack attack, wait for enemy to pull a heavy hit, take the action indicated by the FX to stun them, hit them with one of your big hits. The only real difficulty that you get from it is if you mess up and miss the block on some of the enemies that hit harder or have more hp. The other danger is that you'll find yourself often in conflicts with 2 enemies and if you are not careful you'll end up in fights with more.
I don't think that a strong core gameplay is good enough when everything else bland and nothing stands out.
- A problem with the writing -
I'm gonna try not to "spoil" anything. Yesterday I came across this quest, it's part of the main questline, where I think it matters what you choose and doing one thing or the other alters something in your game world. I'm sure though. The choice is enemies are attacking the city. You need to pick who you help. The person you get the quest from gives you her emotional connection to which one you choose, but more importantly you also have an emotional connection to the choice because it is the people you just got done saving and working with. The problem is the choice is this...
Help defend a fortress filled with trained soldiers behind fortress walls who you have no connection to.
OR
Help defend the docks willed with untrained refugees that you just spent several hours working with and there are no defenses for the docks besides them.
This to me is one of the stupidest choices I've come across. On every level there is no reason for you to go and help defend the fortress from a story perspective that I can think of save for one... the character that you are playing is a chicken. From a gameplay perspective the only reason I can see for you to take the choice to defend the fortress is to see what happens if you take that route. I don't think anyone would ever really take that option...
IF this is the type of writing for quests overall in the game... it seems to me that this might be a problem. Can any of you come up with a reasonable explanation as to why you would choose to defend the fortress in this situation?
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