The Elder Scrolls Online

Also, whoever said massive layoffs are happening over there is full of it. They are hiring more people currently according to my source.

I talked to two different people there. No layoffs have happened. They seem to be hiring more people for the console releases. Whoever that dude is, he is just bullshitting for now.

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He also did go on to say that with all the bugs, dupes and poor launch state - they need to worry it doesn't sink before the console versions ship.

RobXIII_sl said:

My only question is this: In game, are you Tuco or Tucos?

And are you still playing? Wait that's two questions...

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@Tuco, char name Tucos (as in, Tuco Sorceror).

I was on last night.

Got my refund Fairly easy to do. If you want to get your money back just email support and they will take care of it.

First refund request for a video game in my entire life.

Rescorla_sl said:

Only reason I ask is because IMO vanilla out of the box Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3 were not very good single player RPGs.

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I doubt you and I could come to terms or have a fruitful discussion on Elder Scrolls games or RPGs in general.

Are you VR1 yet?

Menion_sl said:

I take it you bought directly from Zenimax.

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Yes but it won't matter who you purchased from. They ask you for your name, email, key (if you were given one) and answer to your secret question. I am guessing this should be for everyone.

Abefroman_sl said:

Did you just e-mail them asking for a refund? I don't see how they can issue a refund if you purchased it through a 3rd party.

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Yeah I just emailed their customer support and they emailed back with a few instructions which basically amounted to saying sorry their game sucked, here is your refund. I would have to say they must be getting lots of requests because it looks like a fairly copy/paste email. I would assume if they are allowing you to refund the purchase through them directly, they would allow third parties to do it. Whether they want too or not remains to be seen. Depends on how good their customer service is. Amazon would be a better shot than say, Green Man Gaming.

Rescorla_sl said:

What are these design flaws in ESO that you think the original TES devs like Howard disapproved of?

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This one I know 100%. He disapproved of the entire project being made to begin with. His fear is that it will tarnish the IP with a buggy uncontrolled mess where his people were not in charge of it. Looks like he is becoming more right every single day.

Only reason I ask is because IMO vanilla out of the box Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3 were not very good single player RPGs.

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And yet, I finished all three of them to the hours of 100+ having a blast without mods. I had played all other TES games before Oblivion. Oblivion was the first one I finished to completion. Skyrim I was absolutely hooked. Fallout 3 was fantastic in my opinion. I didn't beat New Vegas. I haven't even played any of the mods and I know I am missing out. The combat experience system in Oblivion was ackward I'll definitely agree, but the content itself to me was fun and the expansion was hilarious. In fact, I thought Oblivion had better questing structure than Skyrim. Some of the areas were fantastic. Like being thrown into a painted world, or solving a haunted house quest. I liked Skyrim for the "Who the hell is this... oh random quest" that would pop up. What I didn't like about Skyrim was the dynamic bloat of quests when they used a random quest generator. I cannot remember if Oblivion had this or not, but the quests in that game (Especially the side quests) seemed hand designed.

IMO the only reason the TES franchise was so successful is because Bethesda purposely delivered a basic sandbox world filled with lore and an underlying RPG system. The mod community are the ones who provided the polish and made the game actually fun to play.

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Obviously this didn't happen until Morrowind. It's a good business model. Mods will continue to sell boxes long after the shelf life. Publishers who think they should shit-can the modding community because they may lose out on DLC revenue are idiots. But the game has to be popular and sell well before that develops in the first place. And without mods, both games you seemed to dislike in vanilla did very well. Sequel over Sequel. Before mods had a chance to hit the streets. That isn't to mention that the majority of it's success came on consoles, of which you cannot mod jack-shit.

I just don't see how that same design philosophy that works for a single player game can be used in a MMO.

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Think Star Wars Galaxies Meets TES. With the people I have spoken with, none of them wanted a theme park content locked level treadmill MMORPG out of this IP. They wanted Skyrim on a server. And it could have been free to play with house items and what not to buy, and various quests to go on throughout Skyrim. Just a living breathing world you log into and log out of. Instead, it turned into a money grab.

Kedwyn_sl said:

Personally the games are excellent without mods and most people agree with that considering the VAST majority of sales are for consoles and not PC where the modding community exists.

Skyrim : The Elder Scrolls V Statistics | Statistic Brain

Regardless, even the tiny 14% of PC buyers I'm fairly sure that only a small fraction of them mod the game. Claiming the game is only fun with MODS or that they some how impact sales of games in any meaningful manner is dubious.

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Completely 100% agree. The only thing I would question with the PC sales though, to be fair, is if they counted digital sales. Skyrim was on top of the charts for God only knows how long on steam even at full price. It would be interesting to see how many units were purchased via digital sales through Steam, Amazon Tony, and GMG (And others) With that said, it obviously came no where near the amount of console market sales.

Rescorla_sl said:

What is it exactly I am defending this time around?

I'm beginning to think anytime I post in this thread it immediately causes some people to forget how to understand basic English.

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Yeah I don't see you as defending anything this time around. I see someone asking why Todd Howard would disapprove and asking for design examples within TESO. When you get into the design of the game itself, that's really when all is lost though. The guy didn't want the game to be made, at all. Because it flies in the face of what TES and the IP have been about from inception. So I guess the answer is the entire formation of Zenimax Online and turning TESO into a non sandbox theme park MMORPG.