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Most Balanced Preview I've Seen So Far (Dracoboar)
Hengist
Member RarePosts: 1,315
Dracoboar Best and Worst of Early Gameplay
With all the confusion, I thought I'd label the title with the guy who did it. Seems pretty reasonable, he hits on both good and not so good, and it's a pretty even preview. Even if you disagree with parts of it, no matter what side of the fence you reside on, I think this is about as balanced as I've seen, especially from someone who it sounded like played several characters into the double digits.
Comments
Its not bad. Not the best one i seen but not bad. The problem i have with some of these is they provide no real specific examples of what they are talking about. They have some explication not real detail. He has some but not enough to paint the picture, or least not always. He does a good job with the combat abilities, not comprehensive but good. But for other things I am kind of like "Meh i can see where he is going but I see no real reason to believe he has something real behind it."
I think he makes a rather good point in an elegant way when he says {paraphrased } "Look I just told you two core things that I really liked about basic gameplay/environment (combat abilities and story) so how messed up must these other ancillary things be for me to be telling you levels 1-10 is hard to take?"
They really don't have much time. They need to start opening up the NDA in March. They got maybe three, at best 4 more weeks of NDA.
If they don't open it up after that they are going to get killed in the PR department. If they don't open up NDA roughly 2 weeks prior to start of early access there will be hell to pay.
The ironic thing is, if they had done this NDA lift a long time ago, they would have known exactly what systems need work.
Instead, they now have <2 months to address all the criticisms and negativity that inevitably surfaced.
What does the NDA have to do with the criticism?
They are getting feed back from the closed sessions, and the weekend betas, do you really think if there was no NDA they would not hear the same feedback?
He is basically assumed that Zenimax was surprised by the reaction of the reviewers. This would imply that the closed beta guys are giving considerably different feedback (or it was ignored).
Most likely he is assuming this because of a leap in logic that if Zenimax had a lot of feedback like this they would not have lifted the NDA in first place and thus naturall the feedback must be different.
Yes its an assumption. And yes there are about two leaps of logic in there. But while not sourced or proven. It is not entirely unreasonable. It is just on very shaky ground.
They knew what the problems were but will not be able to address things. The only thing they might be able to do is drop things.
Meh either scenario is possible. Don't underestimate stupid. Also I think people underestimate how different in house testers can be.
But either way I think its moot. The course is basically set whether devs want it that way or not. I dunno what changes, but I do know Zenimax is locking things in and miracle patches never happen.
Rift had far bigger problems than ability animations... though wouldn't comparing it to GW2 or at least something a little more recent make more sense, and maybe to something other than a healing ability would be a little fairer?
Apart from my nitpicking it was a pretty good preview, even if i disagree on a few points (mainly combat).
Though zeni only have themselves to blame for making the first 10 levels so boring.
I never claimed to be making a FACT statement. It is obviously my opinion- I said it! So I'd appreciate it if you please don't throw this "Leaping logic" stuff on me, Okay.
The point I'm trying to make is that I think it would have been much better for Zenimax to lift the NDA long ago. ESO has its problems, that is known. The fact that reviews have been mixed across the board supports this. If such reviews came out early on, it may have been clearer Earlier or sent a stronger signal exactly what needs work. Internal feedback may not always be as powerful as public feedback and reception once something is out in the open.
He is basically assumed that Zenimax was surprised by the reaction of the reviewers. This would imply that the closed beta guys are giving considerably different feedback (or it was ignored). Most likely he is assuming this because of a leap in logic that if Zenimax had a lot of feedback like this they would not have lifted the NDA in first place and thus naturall the feedback must be different. Yes its an assumption. And yes there are about two leaps of logic in there. But while not sourced or proven. It is not entirely unreasonable. It is just on very shaky ground.
I never claimed to be making a FACT statement. It is obviously my opinion- I said it! So I'd appreciate it if you please don't throw this "Leaping logic" stuff on me, Okay.
The point I'm trying to make is that I think it would have been much better for Zenimax to lift the NDA long ago. ESO has its problems, that is known. The fact that reviews have been mixed across the board supports this. If such reviews came out early on, it may have been clearer Earlier or sent a stronger signal exactly what needs work. Internal feedback may not always be as powerful as public feedback and reception once something is out in the open.
Uhhhhh, no offense intended, but that's a massive leap, and I won't call it logic.
IF (and that is an assumption) Zenimax is listening, then they would have heard from internal testing, that there were issues with the first 10 levels, I can comfortably say that I think that message was given via earlier betas. I don't however have any idea if they listened to it.
Lifting an NDA a long time ago would have done far more harm than good. If you have the previews you do today, can you imagine what would have been said by the same hacks as the game was getting developed? That's the kind of publicity that no game needs.
Sorry, I just don't see any correlation to dropping an NDA earlier would change the degree to which Zenimax is listening to user feedback. In fact I'd argue they could have gotten the same result by just adding more new people to beta.
There is nothing wrong with a leap in logic.
All intuition does it. It can be extremely powerful. Its just risky.
Sometimes, companies are less inclined to change things unless they see the effect in the real world.
Case in point: FFXIV ARR. The heavy criticism that prompted the remake came AFTER launch.Listen to it or not, they probably have a pretty big list of other major issues to deal with. The starting zones being 'boring' is a pretty big subjective issue. I for one didn't notice a problem because I didn't expect to play Skyrim; it's an MMO - and it could be a lot worse.
At this moment in time (4-5 weeks away from launch), bug fixing is probably their biggest concern.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Why can you comfortably say the internals told them this. Is this based on information or just that you find it hard to believe they wouldn't hear it.
If you just find it hard to believe, well the power of self -selective narratives and self-reinforcing clique behavior can be incredibly powerful. It is far easier than you may suspect to get a group of testers who tell some monkey in a business suit what he wants to hear.
The best testing outfits purposely cultivate people who make them partial uncomfortable. But many times this does not happen and you easily get a bunch of yes-men or even worse fanboys.
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Well your preview is certainly 3+ times more informative than most.
99% of the feedback they'll get will be smoke blowing, Kumbaya singing, this games is amazing, praising. Those who had or have negative reactions won't even bother to post them but instead post them here or other non-ESO friendly sites. One look at the beta forums proves this to be true.
Keeping the NDA up is the worst thing they could of done precisely because of superconducting's post.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I completely agree with the part on the mob phasing. I got on my nerves very quickly to see people next to me hitting the air because i couldnt see their copy of the mob i was fighting.
Also someone in another video mentioned that grouping was useless because quests objectives didnt share between players in a group. They need to change that as well. Even WoW changed that not too long ago.
I could be the minority, but comparing the starting area to WoW (the biggest MMO currently) to ESO, I find some issues with the starting level argument.
In WoW, you spawn in the new area and begin kill / fetch quests and I would wager that most players don't bother to read any of the quest dialogue. In this sense, ESO starting zones are vast improvements.
I think the issue is that people are expecting multiplayer Skyrim. Good or bad, this isn't multiplayer Skyrim. It's an MMO. ZOS has made an attempt to find a good balance between the two, but they can never please everyone.
The absence of MMO features like scrolling combat text, minimaps, meters, etc, give the game an TES feel.
Quest markers, theme park-ish, soft targeting, etc make the game an MMO.
You have to appreciate it for what it is trying to do, instead of being critical of what it is not. I guess if people can't do that, play Skyrim or Wildstar when it comes out.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
If the game didn't open up after level 10 I would say you have a valid point.
But according to the reviewers who bother to play more than 5 hours and players on this board it does.
Like it!