The Elder Scrolls Online

Blackwulf

Blackwulf

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Hmm. Utnayan mentioned another forum (somethingawful) a few posts back and I went to check out what he's talking about. I gotta say - that forum is kind of the reverse of this one. Tons of people flaming the shit out of Utnayan (he's even temporarily banned over there for posting a quote of a PM, I think.) It was kind of refreshing. It was interesting to see a couple posters there who admitted to being ZOS employees and one of them talked about being in the industry for 15 years and how this is the best game he's worked on. Sure, it could be bullshit, but it's nice to see a bit of optimism with regard to my favorite pastime.

I get the jaded outcries of, "I hate all you MMO devs cause you crushed my dreams too many times!" Maybe I'm just more resilient than Utnayan, and I can brush it off and get excited still. I'm not a kid, either - hit 40 in December, and started this genre with MUDS (MUME, ArcticMud, anyone!?) I had plenty of good times in plenty of games; no need to let my less than achieved expectations make me an internet hater.

Anyway, Utnayan, your posts on SomethingAwful were a pretty hilarious read. Keep up the good fight, hehe.
 
Cinge

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Blackwulf_sl said:
Hmm. Utnayan mentioned another forum (somethingawful) a few posts back and I went to check out what he's talking about. I gotta say - that forum is kind of the reverse of this one. Tons of people flaming the shit out of Utnayan (he's even temporarily banned over there for posting a quote of a PM, I think.) It was kind of refreshing. It was interesting to see a couple posters there who admitted to being ZOS employees and one of them talked about being in the industry for 15 years and how this is the best game he's worked on. Sure, it could be bullshit, but it's nice to see a bit of optimism with regard to my favorite pastime.

I get the jaded outcries of, "I hate all you MMO devs cause you crushed my dreams too many times!" Maybe I'm just more resilient than Utnayan, and I can brush it off and get excited still. I'm not a kid, either - hit 40 in December, and started this genre with MUDS (MUME, ArcticMud, anyone!?) I had plenty of good times in plenty of games; no need to let my less than achieved expectations make me an internet hater.

Anyway, Utnayan, your posts on SomethingAwful were a pretty hilarious read. Keep up the good fight, hehe.
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Ut has a lot of angst to work through, especially when it comes to developers that have somehow stolen his childhood, killed his dog, raped his mother and then pissed in his cheerios.

But on the flipside, hanging on some random guy on SA of all places saying he is a worker and "its the best I have worked on" is asinine.
 
Blackwulf

Blackwulf

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cinge_sl said:
Ut has a lot of angst to work through, especially when it comes to developers that have somehow stolen his childhood, killed his dog, raped his mother and then pissed in his cheerios.

But on the flipside, hanging on some random guy on SA of all places saying he is a worker and "its the best I have worked on"is asinine.
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Yeah, haha. Too true!
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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I actually learned to just stay way from the MMO section entirely over there from here on out. It was basically just posting about how people are really tired of the BS in the industry. It was the same PM posted here. Obviously a couple workers from ZO post there, I give them credit to the point where they know what is going on, but need to deflect just like anyone else. At least they admit flat out they work for the company unlike a few others. The guy who said he has never worked on a better game is one of their web site guys
rolleyes.png


The same defense of SWTOR happened over there because some of the devs posted there. The same with Age of Conan, The Secret World, etc. (Although I ended up liking some of the content in that game, especially the haunted mansion and amusement park. That was some very original design, especially with the flashbacks in the Franklin Mansion.

You, however, are still are most likely a shill. Not because you are looking forward to the game, but because it is pretty easy to see through your posting style. (What appears to be an opinion shared by others here) You are keying in on features that do not matter in the grand scheme of things. It's either you have an alternate agenda, which after what Draegen posted about you on F13 is highly likely, or you are clinging on to features that simply do not matter in blind hope. Only once you were called out did you start posting about some negative things you didn't like, but always steered right back to the former glorification about two or three posts later. 200 players on screen at once, DAOC frontiers style design (Which a solid majority of DAOC players did not like), with meta server technology backing it all up to force a very non static view of the entire world for the sake of accessibility. On one hand, it creates more folks to be able to play with others - which I do not think anyone would deter. The fact of that however bring quite a bit of downsides - including the feeling of either a longer version of a Call of Duty match up in Cyrodil, or a large scale zerg fest which would be inevitable.

People will be playing the weekend Beta's soon enough as they continue to build the game and actually implement features they hope to get too before content lock.

As I have said before, the judgements aren't based on a personal level. I am sure Matt Firor is a decent enough guy. When it comes to game development, he cannot keep his workers on task, has already blown copious amounts of money, and isn't making the game he wants, rather making a game from features of everything else out there and framing it in an IP where it doesn't belong. Hence the stop/starts based on the latest fad. He has already stated that the genre won't innovate, and that is a terrible person to have in charge of an MMORPG based on a popular IP. There will be no doubt it sells, and I am sure it will turn a profit. That's a given based on IP alone. Whether or not it will negatively impact the good people at Bethesa remainds to be seen, but I do know quite a few people are worried about it's impact, and rightfully so. With that said, Zenimax hasn't made good hiring decisions as of late (Vogel leading another studio) and I question their process. My only hope is that they leave Bethesda alone.

I guess in the end, no one should be surprised. This cycle has rinse and repeated itself over and over again. With everyone so starved for a decent MMORPG to come out, they keep jumping from one game to another clinging to hope that this one "won't suck". I would be more optimistic had I not already heard how horrible the dev cycle is right now, or at the very least, having information to put out after 7 years in development. It also doesn't help seeing pointed questions being asked that should already have answers too, and seeing Paul Sage completely deflect the answers of such questions where most roll their eyes. I have yet to see a game which ever amounted to more than shit with a dev cycle such as this. If you can point one out I would be interested to see it. Combined with everything else, it's fairly easy to see the writing on the wall. I hope I am dead wrong and they pull a rabbit out of their hat, if only because at least that way, it won't dent the IP for Black Marsh (Speculating)

Until then from what the Admin of this forum says, it sounds like your Shill-ness was called out pretty heavily over on F13, and you came to another popular MMORPG site to start it up again. This industry is upside down. They need more people calling others out on the carpet here more than ever if anyone ever wants to start seeing some quality launches and fresh faces to do so. At least then maybe there can be some accountibility held to thoe that continue to find these positions because of a previously shipped title, while no one looks at the opportunity cost.

Also, I find it interesting you cannot read the posts over there right now unless you pony up 10 dollars. What is the username you registered?
 
Erronius

Erronius

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Utnayan_sl said:
If CCP can design a new FPS to coincide with their space game cross platform, that is something innovative that hasn't been done before, and is exciting.
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I agree with this, but I think it is even more remarkable when you consider that CCP is far from perfect and that they've had their own trainwrecks. But you have to give them credit for still taking some chances on game design and thinking outside of the box, even if they have shit themselves on occasion.

sakkath_sl said:
The problem is that this forum is full of people who are so innately negative that they feel that taking a dump on threads is a good way to spend their time. It's so bad that when someone actually positive posts everyone swarms around to openly mock them which I seriously can't understand the motives for.
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I wouldn't say that is the problem at all. The problem is that we've seen time and again that Developers and Studios will blow smoke up the asses of gamers, telling us that their product will be the most incredible game since Oregon Trail, when in realityAT BESTtheir productMIGHTbe mediocre. At worst, we'll see shitheaps of terrible coding, server architecture less stable than a Jenga game made of dildos, games released in an alpha state, horrible content or simply little or no content at all, and promises of miracle patches. We've had more than a few Devs outright lie to us. To an extent you have to expect that Devs must sell their game to gamers, that they are under pressure to sell their product and pimp it, but a lot of these guys make career politicians look like saints.

Make no mistake - the people you refer to as being mocked for posting a dissenting view, aren't getting mocked for that, if they are being mocked at all. What we want to know is, where is your basis for thinking that a game is unicorns and rainbows? Surely people who disagree must have a reason for feeling that way, right? If you or whoever can't put in front of me actual palpable reasons for WHY I should be enthusiastic about a game in development, then rest assured people will be called out on that.

I haven't had to voice my own concerns about this game yet, because for the most part it has all already been covered, but up to this point I haven't really seen anything that would make me enthusiastic about the game either. I feel like I did for WHO, AoC, STO, TOR, and a slew of similar games. More than likely it will be another studio building everything upon their IP license, whereas the game itself will will be a melange of features similar to several other MMOs and not in and of itself be revolutionary, and in the end only be noteworthy for the IP. Now if you disagree and have actual reasons for why you feel optimistic, then please, by all means share those reasons with us, because I haven't really heard anything so far. EDIT: and yes, you've mentioned some things, but most disagreed with your reasoning in that regard. This has been known to happen from time to time.

Blackwulf_sl said:
I get the jaded outcries of, "I hate all you MMO devs cause you crushed my dreams too many times!"
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Honestly, I don't think you do. Ut may like to hold specific and particular Devs responsible for their failings and take them to task whenever possible, but I would wager that most of us really don't care when all is said and done, and are willing to judge individual games by their own merits. In regard to TESO, we've all looked at what is available, and I'm sorry to tell you that a lot of us aren't exactly blown away. Now if it looks like TESO is going to be the second coming then I assure you that we will all bust nuts left and right and rush out to buy the game, but few of us are going to do so just because we HOPE that it isgoing to be successful.
 
Denaut

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The angst you see on the MMORPG forum (from me included) isn't present so much elsewhere, such as The Other Games forum, which is much more forgiving.

It is partially to do with the people that post here, and mostly to due with the state of the genre. For most of us, MMORPGs are beloved because of the unique game-play experiences they are capable of bringing. We all fell in love with them at some point due to that uniqueness. Some of those things have transferred into other genres, but MMORPGs as a group have stagnated like fetid swamp water.

From my perspective, as a developer, the frustration is a bit more close to home. I've worked on 3 AAA MMORPGs and heard stories about countless others, and the story is almost always the same... large piles of wasted money. I've since switched to working on MUCH smaller online games, 6-9 month development cycles with small team sizes of like 6-10 people, usually I am the only designer, and even then my time is split somewhat (usually to write new pitches and consult on our other projects).

What surprised me the most about these small projects is that there isn't a whole lot less design work to do than for a giant AAA one. You still generally need all of the same stuff; a combat system, ability system, economy design (although this is focused on monetizing FTP), stats and stat formulas, plus a few other things that escape me now. Now, CONTENT can still get expensive (especially the art), but that scales linearly and predictably if you've got an otherwise solid game with a vertical slice in place.

We do this in an environment where a $1 million would be a huge budget, and time after time I see budgets 50-100 times that size do absolutely nothing with all that money. They make nothing interesting, do nothing interesting, and just rush out the same old boring nonsense. My angst comes from knowing what the studio I work for could do with such a budget, and I get pissed off when I am so routinely unsurprised by new games. Sometimes I think I know what Cassandra felt like. Iknowthere are people at those giant studios with talent and fantastic solutions to common MMORPG problems, and I can't help but imagine what those people could do with some control over the game they slave away on.

I've mentioned something similar in another thread (or was it this one?) about how the skills needed to secure funding, and the skills needed to ship a good game are entirely different; which is why you see so many failures and only the occasional success when those two happen to line up. The same is true about the people that often end up in charge of these projects, they are often there because they are good at getting themselves in charge of things, not necessarily good at actually being in charge of things. Two separate skills, and it really shows.
 
Mr Creed

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I agree with the last few posts here, anyone still having a positive outlook on this game is avoiding a critical look at the facts and details that are known about the project. "Hoping" it will end well is fine before you have facts, but we're part that point because all released info paints a picture of a game that is merely a melting pot of rehashed ideas from the last decade of MMORPGs with the elder scrolls IP thrown in.

Imo the problem is those project dont take an IP, analyze what the cornerstones of that IP are and design from there. Instead, they take an IP and slap it on an amalgamation of gameplay of the last couple of MMORPGs. That most of those features are just plain wrong for the IP is ignored entirely. Case in point, artificially factionizing the world Elder Scrolls simply because most MMORPGs had hard factions. And if you care to look and think about you'll find more examples like that. If anything Elder Scrolls would be more fitting to an open faction system like EVE or EQ1 have (had?). But no, gotta have your set teams or your plan of taking your PvP from DaoC/WHO wouldnt work. God forbid they design something new that actually fits the IP they are working with.

And for any that didnt know, Ut has turbulent past back on FoH and is pretty calm recently. If you overlook his vendetta against specific devs he usually makes good points.
 
Mahes

Mahes

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I am in agreement with pretty much everyone who shows concern with this game. Very little has been shown to me that makes me feel confident that this game is the game that will keep me busy for a year. It has a great IP, but that is about it. They make a few claims that intrigue me, but at this stage of development I should be excited about where this game is. I do not yet feel that excitement. This is what concerns many of the posters on this forum. Say what you will about how players react to releases, but on this forum most posts(Especially the last few before this one) are pretty well thought out with plenty of reasoning to support thier opinion.

I ask this simple question of every game that is to be released:

1. What features of the game intice me to want to switch from my current game? Sell me your game.

The 200 on the screen at the same time is a good example of such a feature. However this feature means nothing if the game is not actually fun and innovative to "some" degree. Just placing monsters on a screen and allowing me to hit them until either I am dead or they are dead no longer cuts it in this industry. Imagine if when Pac-Man came out, 40 other companies made the same game except with different colors and instead of a circle witth a mouth, it was a square. Yes, there were a few after market versions like Miss Pacman(Which actually did do better than the original), but for the most part companies did not keep attempting to use the same concept over and over again.

For me, the next great game could come from one simple premise. Take EvE and make it into a fantasy based system. This would certainly be a large challenge, but if done right, you could have a game that would last 10+ years. Alas no company wants to take the risk, and so we see games that use everybody else's ideas in an attempt to win over thier fan base. Small wonder as to why the players on this forum have less and less faith in any new release..
 
mkopec

mkopec

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Utnayan_sl said:
WORDS
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But thats the problem UT, you're a hypocrite, because you rail on these companies, and their devs and still go out and buy their game.(And play for months as in the case of SWTOR which you railed against vehemently) So in essence you are part of the problem because you are voting with your wallet, we all vote with our wallet.

Sadly you will buy this game as well.

Hilarious last post on somethingawful...

"And thus was born the ultimate mmo class...the DEVSTALKER!"
 
F

Fogia_sl

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And therefore, this shall be named the MMO-centipede era. Let's pray the loop will be completed one day, so the beast can stop growing and die, albeit slowly.
 
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Draegan_sl

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mkopec_sl said:
But thats the problem UT, you're a hypocrite, because you rail on these companies, and their devs and still go out and buy their game.(And play for months as in the case of SWTOR which you railed against vehemently) So in essence you are part of the problem because you are voting with your wallet, we all vote with our wallet.

Sadly you will buy this game as well.

Hilarious last post on somethingawful...

"And thus was born the ultimate mmo class...the DEVSTALKER!"
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Someone buying the game really doesn't do much. SWTOR and TES are going to get sales no matter what. Him buying the game doesn't make him a hypocrite. SWTOR was a pretty fun game, for the most part, if all you want to get out of it is a few storyline play throughs.

I mean who really cares, look at SWTOR now. You think Bioware is happy with it's performance? Voting with your wallet is mostly not re-subbing honestly.
 
Y

Young_sl

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Back on topic gents.. take it to the ladies powder room.

New ask us anything posted yesterday, talking about combat:

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/new...nything-combat

How important will the 'holy trinity' be in PvE endgame/raids? Will dedicated tanks and healers be required, or will lighter armored characters be able to utilize the dodge system well enough to serve as competent tanks? Will healers need to focus entirely on healing, or will a more offensive spellcaster be able to sustain his group via spot heals? - By Lynx

Let's have some fun here. This is what one of our internal testers sent out on Wednesday, February 27th. This email is unedited other than removing the ending of the letter which would sound a little too self-congratulatory of the tester.

Yesterday in the lunchtime dungeon test, our group of four (all at level 12) included:
? 1 Templar with light armor and healing staff, abilities focusing on healing
? 1 Templar with light armor and dual wield, Templar abilities focusing on healing
? 1 Dragonknight with light armor and destruction staff
? 1 Sorcerer with heavy armor and dual wield
This was with no real consultation with each other while making characters, other than ensuring there was at least one healer. For the sake of the dungeon we really could have used a true tank (the closest we had was the sorcerer wearing heavy armor and using unstable familiar to get the monster's attention, with no real "keep myself alive" abilities), but as a group we were (eventually) able to take down the Fungal Grotto bosses. More to the point, with four players making independent choices in abilities and gear, three of the four made builds that defied the standard templates - and yet felt perfectly viable in actual play. The players were each able to build a character to their own taste with class abilities as a supplement, rather than the rigid defining aspect to the character, and have effective characters.
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And many more in the link..
 
mkopec

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Well I see it as being a huge hypocryte. You rail against a game for months beforehand, call the devs no talent ass clowns and still buy the game?
 
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AlekseiFL_sl

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Draegan_sl said:
Someone buying the game really doesn't do much. SWTOR and TES are going to get sales no matter what. Him buying the game doesn't make him a hypocrite. SWTOR was a pretty fun game, for the most part, if all you want to get out of it is a few storyline play throughs.

I mean who really cares, look at SWTOR now. You think Bioware is happy with it's performance? Voting with your wallet is mostly not re-subbing honestly.
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I do the same Shit as UT and Draegan point, I mean I know Swtor from Alpha to later betas wasnt ready, had the game engine issues as well, same with not haveing Features for launch day 1 that ever other AAA MMO should have.

But cause im Huge Star wars nerd bought it, and semi expected would probally not play it, past 60 days of live launch, due to knew once did most of the better stories there would be no end game etc, it would be about 6 monthes after launch till they got game to the state it should been at launch.

Im huge elder scrolls fan too, so unless it 100 percent sucks will probally buy it for 1st 30 days even if know most design or lack of is going to make game not be Viable long term.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Blackwulf_sl said:
... and how this is the best game he's worked on.
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Note that you should always interpret those kind of quotes like a military evaluation.

In a performance evaluation, if you're not noted as the most forceful officer since Patton and hailed as the best strategist since Napoleon, that means your superior officer think you shouldn't be promoted beyond your current grade.
 
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Draegan_sl

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mkopec_sl said:
Well I see it as being a huge hypocryte. You rail against a game for months beforehand, call the devs no talent ass clowns and still buy the game?
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Eh, if you got the money and $50 means nothing to you, I wouldn't really jump on him for it. Technically he's a hypocrite I guess, but he still has a point.
 
D

Draegan_sl

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Young_sl said:
Back on topic gents.. take it to the ladies powder room.

New ask us anything posted yesterday, talking about combat:

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/new...nything-combat



And many more in the link..
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I've learned a long time ago that I don't trust devs playing their own game the way many people here play the game. I've seen some truly awful developers in game and at conventions playing their games, and half of them are clickers.

Also, they tested their dungeons 4 months before they panic and ramp up the difficult on every NPC in the game by 30% because they think one on one fights in an MMORPG should be challenging. This happens in almost every MMO, Rift, GW2, SWTOR etc.

(I'd rather see an MMO where you vs. 1 NPC is a cake walk, so the norm is you fighting 5 at once, like SWTOR was in the first 10 levels and then turned into boring time)
 
Utnayan

Utnayan

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Draegan_sl said:
Eh, if you got the money and $50 means nothing to you, I wouldn't really jump on him for it. Technically he's a hypocrite I guess, but he still has a point.
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Well, things have changed a bit too.

If I have nothing better to do, there might be something from a content perspective later on that catches my eye. For instance with the Secret World, it was the horror type stories I never saw and heard were worth playing through, so I bought the box and signed up for a month. (I cancelled the sub). With SWTOR what started catching my eye after the fact was the light side dark side options and messing with either side. I had the thing already pre-purchased before most of the crap news came out or I heard differently from the Anti-Vogel crew situated over at BW-Austin. With that said, it was funny because my family knows I am a rather large Star Wars fan, they knew about this game, and they never know what to get me since I usually would just buy things on my own, so they threw me some 60 day game cards. I have 2 left actually. Either way, we all know how well the game turned out.

In the end, there isn't a thing anyone can really do. Unless there is a coalition that groups together and starts boycotting games (Which quite frankly, isn't a bad idea) there isn't going to be one dent made from single wallet impact. And even if there was on a smaller single level scale, it wouldn't matter. The same people keep rinse and repeating the same jobs. I think I gave up complete faith in change within the genre when Zenimax hired Rich Vogel to lead up Battlecry after SWTOR's disaster.

It's the same people leading, with the same scam of funds blown out, and while it amazes me anyone is dumb enough to hire these folks again, it won't ever change.

And also agreed. I wouldn't believe a thing developers say until you play it yourself. Spin, spin, and more spin. Just wait to play the weekend beta and you may as well not even speculate. We all saw how well that "Each class in SWTOR has it's own unique story!" which then turned out to be about 105 of the actual gameplay with 90% of it being shared rerpeatable questing based on faction with a lot of re-use of content in each class faction's class quest anyway. Shady Marketing and double talk to be what TES Online is until November 12th when it's launched.

The industry as it stands aside from some very good ethical developers out there, is a shit pot of unethical bullshit behavior that will undoubtedly, at some point, cause another video game crash. To which executives will scapegoat that and saw the market age changed and everyone plays only tablet/smartphone games. Which couldn't be anything further from the truth.

Always another scapegoat.

You know it's getting bad when the folks on the somethingawful forums have a storng majority of developers posting there to deflect the same way they have been tauight from their producers, for the sake of keeping their job. Not knowing they are about to be shitcanned after launch anyway.
 
A

AlekseiFL_sl

shitlord
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Draegan_sl said:
Eh, if you got the money and $50 means nothing to you, I wouldn't really jump on him for it. Technically he's a hypocrite I guess, but he still has a point.
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This im sick of peps few players wanting everything free, or the cant afford 15 bucks per month crap, money means nothing to me.

Even if your paying 100 bucks per month for 1 mmo or muti mmos or accounts, Fiquire that shit out how many hours average per game, tell me 1 form of Entertainment you can do cheaper, bet you cant

I pay always either lifetime subs or Yearly cause they are cheaper per month and dont have to be hassled with re subbing crap.

I am so bored with almost all the MMO's atm would pay 100-1000$ per month for Elite AAA MMO yes can afford it easy.
One have tons of content actually coming out all the time, GM run events like on old Everquest Legends server where Game Gm took control of bosses weekly and daily.
 
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