Have you played since they added the Legendermain skill line?
Yes, but I'm not talking about thievery - but stealth-related combat. I don't think stealth and detection works as well as it does in Skyrim - and obviously you can't have instant-kill stuff in a PvE/PvP game, so they're not as powerful as I like assassin stuff to be.
Archery, however, is even weaker in terms of feel and flow. I think Skyrim does archery better than pretty much any other game - and I love using a bow
About the Lore, his biggest annoyance is that Cyrodiil is not a jungle, something that was retconned by Bethesda themselves when they made Oblivion. The rest is rebuked by someone later
in the thread.
Indeed.
While I'm by no means an expert on lore in TES - I do recognise when something breaks the spirit of a particular style - and I think ESO feels very much like a typical TES game in terms of the lore.
I've read maybe 50 books or so in TES games, as I sometimes get the urge to immerse myself - and I tend to like them fine, with a few being really cool. I've had the same experience with ESO, more or less.
I'm much more into reading journals and quest-related stuff, though, and I can say for sure that ESO is just like the other games in that way.
In terms of dialogue and NPCs, it's actually better than most TES games for my part, as I tend to care about the quests and the characters - which was rare when I played Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim (there ARE exceptions). I seem to recall liking Redguard more in this way, but I could be imagining things. For Battlespire, I don't remember anything about the writing. I just remember it running like a particularly drowsy dog on my top-end hardware.
Of the post-2000 TES games, I think Morrowind failed the most when it comes to engaging me in the quests and the NPCs.
Oblivion had several embarrasing moments and was also quite bad in that way. The only reason I'd rate it above Morrowind for writing would be the notable exception of the Dark Brotherhood questline, which I thought was brilliant when I played it.
Again, to me, Skyrim is the best TES game overall - and also in terms of dialogue and NPCs for the singleplayer series.
Then again, I was never much of a fan of Bethesda writing. They have a very inconsistent style - I find.
That said, it's been ages since I played Morrowind. I can't rule out something really great happening during a conversation - I've just forgotten about it.
It's also fair to mention that I do NOT like "weird" alien stuff - and I absolutely hated the cliffhangers and those awful little worm/caterpillar beings.