The Elder Scrolls Online

Bruman_sl said:

Proof? There's lots of indie-style kickstarters that talk about some different features, new stuff, and they never reach any level of funding.

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Lol that's only because hardly anyone looks on kickstarter. People are sheep, even the greatest ideas only get a few million on kickstarter and that's only because it gets reported on by IGN or whoever and then everyone checks it out.

The problem with games (not just mmos) is that if you had to make an mmo for 100 million and your life depended on it, nobody here would take a risk on something untried either. Making the WoW clone quest grind is the only tried and tested method so that's what they pick. Nobody can afford to fund a game themselves, the money always has to come from some investors and they are tools who don't care about gameplay. They just want to bet their money on something that worked in the past. That's the problem with the entire games industry since about 1993 or something.

Painful to watch that video.

Dahkoht_sl said:

Those saying devs do care , they just can't post because they might get their wee feelings hurt , explain this one.

Ponytail and Butler and Co put up front page , official company polls on what direction EQN should go on various issues , with most being useless polls , but two were about classes/racial restrictions and guns/ninjas in EQN.

Regardless about how you feel about the actual issues look at how the polls turned out - the running away winner out of 4 choices on each is the opposite of what they are going to do.

So a major mmo company puts up its own poll because "they care" and want us "involved" then choose to go the opposite way on every decision so far.

Devs once may have gave a shit and cared , now most are in their positions by luck and or ass-kissing and choose to appease whatever bean counter they need to.

A NFL QB ( even if the worst ) is still a bad ass athlete and skill player compared to 99.999% of the population criticizing them.

From what I see in the past 5 years , most of these mmo devs are where they are because of luck , and give me no reason to not think some other joe on a message board could be a better designer than them.

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Well, as I said in the last part of my post, the problem isn't the lack of Dev's caring, even at the highest levels. It is the fact that most of the people in the position of making the decisions that matter are talentless hacks, I count Butler and co. among that group.

Bondurant_sl said:

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en...of-the-week-40

Their marketing is really awful.

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Was that video a joke?

Bondurant_sl said:

http://en.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comm...test_devspeak/

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Not sure how that's relevant to the discussion? Other than that one of the wildstar devs is acknowledging that the fans usually care more / are more rabid than the people who are "just" getting paid to make a video game.

Wait the guy in the video was involved with Warhammer ?

( sorry haven't been following this one as much as others once I shelved my beta account until something world changing is done with the game )

If so , it's an even more sad video , because it's an almost more pathetic version of Barnett's shtick , which anyone involved with WAR should have learned their lesson from.

Antarius_sl said:

Not sure how that's relevant to the discussion? Other than that one of the wildstar devs is acknowledging that the fans usually care more / are more rabid than the people who are "just" getting paid to make a video game.

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It totally isn't, this link is now travelling safe to Wildstar thread, sorry.

Denaut_sl said:

So the reason we ended up with all those crappy clones is that the people with the good ideas are generally not the people with the money or the ones in charge. The gaming industry, online games specifically, do not suffer from a lack good fundamental talent but instead its problems stem from absolutely abysmal leadership and management.

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Can't argue with that.

Bondurant_sl said:

Their marketing is really awful.

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What are you talking about?! I can't wait to get my hands on the OFFICIAL ESO snowboard! I'm jonesing to spend $500 for this ugly piece of shit, which doesn't include a copy of this instant classic.

The Bethesda Store - Ebonheart Snowboard

Denaut_sl said:

What I am saying is not that I've never seen a good idea from the internet, just I have never seen a good idea from the internet that I hadn't already seen, heard, or thought of.

Your observations of published AAA MMORPGs are totally 100% right. Having personally spent years working on 2 of the games in your list I can tell you that the people with their noses to the grindstone doing the actual day-to-day work all had tons of ideas to vastly improve the quality of the gaming experience, many of which have been echoed on this forum and forums like it. I can also tell you that those people with the good ideas were almost all universally ignored when they brought up deep, fundamental problems in the way things were being done, even when they offered solutions to those problems.

So the reason we ended up with all those crappy clones is that the people with the good ideas are generally not the people with the money or the ones in charge. The gaming industry, online games specifically, do not suffer from a lack good fundamental talent but instead its problems stem from absolutely abysmal leadership and management.

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This pretty much nails it. In my experience the developers who are yes men and like to play office politics get promoted into management positions and those who actually speak up and point out the problems and want to offer solutions to try and make something great usually get ignored and left in positions where they really don't have much of a voice. I'm sure that it's like that in most companies even outside the gaming industry but it's worked that way at every gaming company I've been at. Companies also have problems where they are afraid to fire people and promote failures into higher positions. It's crazy.

That?s interesting about the PM you received, Utnayan. Naturally, I don?t know if it?s true, but assuming it is, I feel for Wheeler and other devs who aren?t getting to put their vision 100% into what they are making. Let?s be real, though: This is a huge project with many millions of dollars and 100?s of employees involved. Have you ever worked somewhere where some of the employees didn?t feel that management wasn?t giving them a fair shake?

I am in agreement with you, that I doubt this game looks anything like it was originally envisioned. I?m sure that Firor pitched a much more RVR centric, MMO styled game than what is coming out. I?m sure that there are big money investors with their own focus groups who have panicked and demanded, ?MOAR Skyrim!? I just hope that people like Wheeler and the other talented devs involved can manage to sneak in some really good systems and we can see this game evolve into something great. As it is, from everything publicly shown, this game is pretty good, but I agree, not as good as it SHOULD be. I?m still planning to play it, based on what I?ve seen, because it?s better for my tastes than anything else available at the moment, and I have high hopes for its evolution.

Utnayan_sl said:

I cannot believe Sage spent two years re-doing one zone over and over again for 2 years, ignoring his entire team (After his promotion) and still has a job.

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The funny thing about this is that you should basically redo a zone over and over for a while until you get the game right. This is also known as pre-production and you do it with a team of like 10-15 people so it isn't so expensive. Unfortunately, the way it usually goes is that kind of stuff happens when you have a team of 100+ people. That is very, very bad.

Now I want to see the PM to see if matches up with what I've heard from someone else.

Are you saying Sage got promoted and messed things up? Or did a lot of people? I don't know a lot about Sage.. isn't he from UO? It will definitely be fun to read a post mortem someday.