for the last 20 minutes I've been rewriting my comment and been trying to make it sound not so... harsh... but I give up
are you for real? you're basically saying that a company with people on their payroll that were around when the first mmo's were made aren't able to produce a half decent intro into a game and now giving us the choice to skip that super-boring content - so we should praise them for that? w.t.f.
and to top it even off you're saying that all the years they were designing an elder scrolls mmo and didn't notice that something was missing that makes an elder scrolls game and needed fans to tell them... that like... um... you know... an elder scrolls game without first person combat wouldn't be like... um... an elder scrolls game. and these poor souls were even forced to make detailed skins for weapons and armor now! so, of course we should praise them for listening to the community because they need us to tell them how they need to do their job.
Funny that you don't mention how that 'Good Guy Developer' is forcing you with their artificially restricted fraction set up to make you pay BEFORE the game's even launched to play with your friends. And let's not forget that CE that let's you save 17k to 42k gold in game if you pay 20 bucks more. Yeah... Good Guy Developer for sure.
It is a company making a game. I don't think it is good or bad. Who knows, the change to the starting location may even hurt the game in the long run beyond the good it did for marketing. I do appreciate the hands being added and disagree about its necessity as a feature but I don't think it changes the fact that companies as a whole can't be good or bad, they are amoral.
Business is good. They want our money and we want them to make a good game so that we are willing to give it to them.
What is with all those people who keep forgetting that this is a business?
Of course a company might listen to its customers if they think it will lead to selling more copies. So they are not acting stupid after all the starting area critisism. This doesn't immediately mean that they are one of the best MMO developers. Talk about setting the bar low
is Zenimax one of the best companies that has developed an MMO?
No, they designed intro content and it was bad (and surely they should know that the first 10/20 hours is what make of break a MMO for a lot of people) so now they just give us the option to just skip the content the media and players had such a problem with
One of the best - would mean they designed the starter experience and it was (generally) loved - or they took note of criticism and improved - not just made it skippable
I am not sure why i answered this question
To me some articles on the site these days, such as this one, seem to just be blindly throwing overly positive statements about a company or game in what I can only assume to be some kind of paid advertising - either that or the people writing these kind of things have lost touch with reality.
"All because a simple (and in my opinion not so important) feature wasn’t being included"
Actually it's a pretty important feature and a differentiator!
I agree with ZeniMax doing a really great job, and they deserve the recognition. I only hope they will continue to keep up the good work and attitude towards players opinion, but there's also a big risk here. Blizzard messed up with WoW because, trying to get even more money, listened the kid players complaining, and they made the game pretty straightforward.
I don't think there is a perfect recipe for properly balancing everything in a game like this, to be honest...
That photo should be for the Zenimax is the best company to ever make an MMO comment in the article.
There is no defense for such a comment and really makes the entire site look like it now has no credibility at all. Such articles should be for blogs and propaganda sites like Infowars.
Seriously to even THINK that a company that hasn't even RELEASED an MMO yet is the best ever.......my god. This is the saddest thing I have ever seen on an actual gaming site before. If there was a hall of shame for gaming articles, this would be the centerpiece.
Um, isn't this just a blog for one of the contributors to write his opinion?
I don't think you can judge them just yet, dudes this game is hyped and in beta. The real judgement will come when players scream for more content or bug fixes, take away lagg problems and so on.
It's at this time the should be judged, not before. If they fail to deliver what players want or takes to much time with updates, then nobody will call them "A good guy developer".
This is there time of judgement not before, am I wrong? The only thing that has been given so far is a game in beta.
Game developers are like politicians, they will say anything to get you to buy there game and what happends after thats when there true colors will show, are the good or are they bad?
As much as i like what ZMO have done i dont actually believe they are listening to the player base instead they are bowing to the media outlets.
ZMO and other developers knows more than 50% of beta testers and future players dont visit all the forums. Out of the 50% that roughly 25% wont post and will continue to sub even if they arnt completely happy with everything in game. Whether they cant be bothered or simply take the game for what it is they simply dont. So generally they dont make such big adjustments before release because that remaining 25% arnt enough to effect game and sub sales initially.
However media outlets tend to reach near enough all 100% whether it be through forum, magazines, videos etc. So they have much more chance to effect pre sales and initial subs alot harder. The proof two of the biggest things changed, First person view and the starting areas were changed when the media were given permission to test and talk about these features openly not months before hand when the players and testers brought it up.
So in fact its much more likely they changed both features as they were worried about the negative effect the press were going to have on initial sales and subs as they was alot of negative about both at the times.
wow...seriously? Are things so bad that something like this needs to be written?
"So I ask you, is Zenimax one of the best companies that has developed an MMO? I think so"
Literally made my jaw DROP. Its like something off of Infowars.
Proving once again that no matter how much time and money you spend to try and make your player base happy haters are gonna hate. They cant't even bear to grudgingly admit that ZOS might actually be trying to make the game better for the player base in the slightest.
" So I ask you, is Zenimax one of the best companies that has developed an MMO? I think so...."
Aren't you getting ahead of yourself here? What MMO have they developed? Last I checked TESO hadn't released yet. How about we let the game release and let everyone have some real time in the game outside Beta Events? Then we can determine the kind of developer Zenimax is before we call them the "Good Guys".
Actually, I can't agree more... While I agree they worked hard and did a good job by the looks of it, lets just not haste on throwing medals before the game proves itself after launch.
Yep they really went downhill with that little Skyrim game that sold over 20 million copies.
Yeah, and man, look at all the customers McDonald's has every day. They must make the highest quality, best tasting food in the world! Or those Twilight movies, those must be great art, look at how many tickets they sold! And that Dancing with the Stars, it's definitely the best show on tv.
I absolutely hate this argument.
Pointless. So pointless. Logically fallible as well. So easy to break down and invalidate.
I'd hold off till, you know, the game is released at least.
Bioware was one of the "good guys" as well.
BioWare never listened to the community when the bugs or features needed to be fixed. Some of the bugs I reported during Closed beta are sitll in the game LOL
Well he did say "was" That being basically before EA bought Bioware and turned it into the mess it is today. SWTOR wasn't all bad but it was a creation of EAoware and IMO flawed by EA's approach to making money first and good games second.
Either stick to your guns about a feature they argued was a needed part of their game design and show you have a set or get rid of it for everyone entirely.
Using it to sell preorders says to me that that's all it was ever intended for and you should expect more of the same shady practices in the future.
Humm speaking of shady practices Your paying to alpha test a game for SOE the material designed in EQL by players will then (if its good) be used by SOE in EQN at a fraction of a cost it would cost them from art developers/designers. a Sure win for SOE as long aas they can get paying customers to do 50% of the work for them.
Zenimax announced TESO in May 2012 and then spent almost two years tweaking the game after the initlal flood of negative comments.
IMHO Zenimax invested more than they should in the IP and rushed for damage control in this 2-year period. They changed many things, but this only proves that they had no clear vision for their game from the start.
We'll see how it pans out. However I'm not very optimistic because they clearly had a DAoC type of game in their mind and after all the criticism tried to make it more of an ES type of game. Usually when you mix two different game types you get...a mess.
Zenimax announced the ESO in May 2012 and then spent almost two years tweaking the game after the initlal flood of negative comments.
IMHO Zenimax invested more than they should in the IP and rushed for damage control in this 2-year period. They changed many things, but this only proves that they had no clear vision for their game from the start.
We'll see how it pans out. However I'm not very optimistic because they clearly had a DAoC type of game in their mind and after all the criticism tried to make it more of an ES type of game. Usually when you mix two different game types you get...a mess.
We'll see.
I think they had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do with the game, but the path from point A to point B on such a long development is often filled with unexpected detours. In an industry where more often than not you have developers ducking their heads and charging right through community criticism, ZM has kept an open ear and proved that they can bend where necessary.
Does companies that listen to whiner make good games ?
People that don't like to take their time, explore, read, etc... shouldn't belong into a true RPG anyway, and to me The Elder Scrolls should be true RPGs. Try to make it something else and you'll lose the fans and the people that are looking for an RPG. I'm not sure that's a good move.
Making this kind of decision is what could ruin a good game. At least that's what I believe.
And you speak about Blizzard, most complains I've heard about Blizzard and WoW is all about that. And Trion is actually making the same mistake with Rift (where most old time player have gone, and the rest should leave soon).
I think Zenimax should think harder about that. They should make a better experience of this starter zone instead of making it optional.
How good something is depends on where you are looking from, and what you are looking for. The essence of the RPG is choice, both mechanically and narratively, and Skyrim offers few of either kind of choice.
I believe that's my point. And I included some examples.
Though I disagree about "the essence of the rpg is choice both mechanically an narratively and skyrim offers few of either ..."
Skyrim offers a huge amount of choice and what's more it allows you to choose without the game getting in the way.
Does it offer you a lot of scripted choice? Meaning, does every quest offer several variants depending on play style? no, no it doesn't. but if you are "role playing" then in many cases you can take matters into your own hands.
There are some chairs thrown into the way such as a player can't kill everyone (and I wish they adopted the morrowind solution here) but there are reasons they didn't allow that.
But no choice? I have a thief that's just a thief. I have a paladin that never touches magic other than healing. I have an "Elric" type character who only gets healing from food or his sword.
I can choose not to take a quest if it doesn't fit my character. I think one's mileage may vary depending on one's imagination and willingness to do/not do various things.
It certainly has as much choice as oblvion, with the exception of the spell making altars.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I believe that's my point. And I included some examples.
Though I disagree about "the essence of the rpg is choice both mechanically an narratively and skyrim offers few of either ..."
Skyrim offers a huge amount of choice and what's more it allows you to choose without the game getting in the way.
Does it offer you a lot of scripted choice? Meaning, does every quest offer several variants depending on play style? no, no it doesn't. but if you are "role playing" then in many cases you can take matters into your own hands.
There are some chairs thrown into the way such as a player can't kill everyone (and I wish they adopted the morrowind solution here) but there are reasons they didn't allow that.
But no choice? I have a thief that's just a thief. I have a paladin that never touches magic other than healing. I have an "Elric" type character who only gets healing from food or his sword.
I can choose not to take a quest if it doesn't fit my character. I think one's mileage may vary depending on one's imagination and willingness to do/not do various things.
Which brings us to the difference between RP, and an RPG. You can RP anywhere and anytime. A chat room, an empty field, with others, by yourself. An RPG actually provides you with choices, and then gives you different consequences which can actually be observed within the game depending on which choices you made. Skyrim rarely does that. It does a couple of times, but for the most part it provides you with quest lines which you can either do, or not do, and if you do them they always go exactly the same way, narratively speaking. It isn't a real choice set if it consists solely of "Do X and get consequence Y" or "Don't do anything, and get no consequences."
On the narrative side of things, RPGs are like interactive novels or movies, where your choices alter (even if only superficially, in most games) the course of the narrative. Recent Elder Scrolls games are more like collections of short stories, where the only choice you have is whether you are going to read every story, or skip some of them.
And that's just talking about choice in terms of narrative. Choice in terms of mechanics is also extremely limited in Skyrim. Hell, any game in the Mass Effect series has more compelling RPG mechanics than Skyrim, and BioWare is not known for it's gameplay quality. It's kind of sad to me, given that mechanically speaking Daggerfall was one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and now Bethesda churns out games which in terms of gameplay are little more than glorified shooters.
Though I do understand the point you are trying to make. The first time I played Skyrim (on a rented console copy while waiting for the PC price to drop) I did literally nothing but the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests, along with a few of the Daedric ones, because I have found those consistently entertaining in every Elder Scrolls game which included them, even those where I found the game as a whole to be somewhat lacking. Those quests fit the kind of character I like to play. But you shouldn't have to, in an RPG, know everything about the outcome of a quest chain in order to decide whether it fits your character to pursue that quest chain. You should actually have choices during the quest chain so that you reach an outcome that fits your character without having to search out spoilers first.
Which is somewhere where, at least in the early going, ESO excels. I don't know how many, if any, of the choices will have long term consequences, but there are a *lot* of choices scattered throughout the various quests, which clearly have a huge impact on the characters involved. (Even if that impact is mostly implied, and we never actually see the consequences.) There are more meaningful choices, in terms of implied narrative consequences, in the first fifteen levels of ESO than there were in Skyrim and Oblivion combined.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Originally posted by Righteous_Rock This is the mmorpg.com covers thier ass save face article. If this isn't icing on the cake before launch, then I might as well be playing mmorpgs with a bunch of dead dogs.
I lol'd. That pic is epic. And I reserve the right to not call Zenimax "TEH BESTEST DEVELOPARS EVAR!!!111128937!" until after the game is live. Frankly, so many changes this late in development screams more of desperation than listening to their fanbois. At least to me it does. But I'm old and crotchety.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Comments
wow... just wow...
for the last 20 minutes I've been rewriting my comment and been trying to make it sound not so... harsh... but I give up
are you for real? you're basically saying that a company with people on their payroll that were around when the first mmo's were made aren't able to produce a half decent intro into a game and now giving us the choice to skip that super-boring content - so we should praise them for that? w.t.f.
and to top it even off you're saying that all the years they were designing an elder scrolls mmo and didn't notice that something was missing that makes an elder scrolls game and needed fans to tell them... that like... um... you know... an elder scrolls game without first person combat wouldn't be like... um... an elder scrolls game. and these poor souls were even forced to make detailed skins for weapons and armor now! so, of course we should praise them for listening to the community because they need us to tell them how they need to do their job.
Funny that you don't mention how that 'Good Guy Developer' is forcing you with their artificially restricted fraction set up to make you pay BEFORE the game's even launched to play with your friends. And let's not forget that CE that let's you save 17k to 42k gold in game if you pay 20 bucks more. Yeah... Good Guy Developer for sure.
It is a company making a game. I don't think it is good or bad. Who knows, the change to the starting location may even hurt the game in the long run beyond the good it did for marketing. I do appreciate the hands being added and disagree about its necessity as a feature but I don't think it changes the fact that companies as a whole can't be good or bad, they are amoral.
Business is good. They want our money and we want them to make a good game so that we are willing to give it to them.
First ill play the game.
If i manage to reach end content and keep playing then the game will be worth it.
But so far they are good at listening to community and adding those last paint stamps.
Im holding my breath till 4 months after release.
Then we can judge company and the game.
So Zenimax PR got a column at MMORPG.com?
What is with all those people who keep forgetting that this is a business?
Of course a company might listen to its customers if they think it will lead to selling more copies. So they are not acting stupid after all the starting area critisism. This doesn't immediately mean that they are one of the best MMO developers. Talk about setting the bar low
No, they designed intro content and it was bad (and surely they should know that the first 10/20 hours is what make of break a MMO for a lot of people) so now they just give us the option to just skip the content the media and players had such a problem with
One of the best - would mean they designed the starter experience and it was (generally) loved - or they took note of criticism and improved - not just made it skippable
I am not sure why i answered this question
To me some articles on the site these days, such as this one, seem to just be blindly throwing overly positive statements about a company or game in what I can only assume to be some kind of paid advertising - either that or the people writing these kind of things have lost touch with reality.
"All because a simple (and in my opinion not so important) feature wasn’t being included"
Actually it's a pretty important feature and a differentiator!
I agree with ZeniMax doing a really great job, and they deserve the recognition. I only hope they will continue to keep up the good work and attitude towards players opinion, but there's also a big risk here. Blizzard messed up with WoW because, trying to get even more money, listened the kid players complaining, and they made the game pretty straightforward.
I don't think there is a perfect recipe for properly balancing everything in a game like this, to be honest...
Um, isn't this just a blog for one of the contributors to write his opinion?
Overreact much?
Bioware stopped being one of the good guys when they sold out to EA. That was way before swtor was even launched.
I don't think you can judge them just yet, dudes this game is hyped and in beta. The real judgement will come when players scream for more content or bug fixes, take away lagg problems and so on.
It's at this time the should be judged, not before. If they fail to deliver what players want or takes to much time with updates, then nobody will call them "A good guy developer".
This is there time of judgement not before, am I wrong? The only thing that has been given so far is a game in beta.
Game developers are like politicians, they will say anything to get you to buy there game and what happends after thats when there true colors will show, are the good or are they bad?
As much as i like what ZMO have done i dont actually believe they are listening to the player base instead they are bowing to the media outlets.
ZMO and other developers knows more than 50% of beta testers and future players dont visit all the forums. Out of the 50% that roughly 25% wont post and will continue to sub even if they arnt completely happy with everything in game. Whether they cant be bothered or simply take the game for what it is they simply dont. So generally they dont make such big adjustments before release because that remaining 25% arnt enough to effect game and sub sales initially.
However media outlets tend to reach near enough all 100% whether it be through forum, magazines, videos etc. So they have much more chance to effect pre sales and initial subs alot harder. The proof two of the biggest things changed, First person view and the starting areas were changed when the media were given permission to test and talk about these features openly not months before hand when the players and testers brought it up.
So in fact its much more likely they changed both features as they were worried about the negative effect the press were going to have on initial sales and subs as they was alot of negative about both at the times.
Proving once again that no matter how much time and money you spend to try and make your player base happy haters are gonna hate. They cant't even bear to grudgingly admit that ZOS might actually be trying to make the game better for the player base in the slightest.
Actually, I can't agree more... While I agree they worked hard and did a good job by the looks of it, lets just not haste on throwing medals before the game proves itself after launch.
Yet, you do no such thing...
My gaming blog
Well he did say "was" That being basically before EA bought Bioware and turned it into the mess it is today. SWTOR wasn't all bad but it was a creation of EAoware and IMO flawed by EA's approach to making money first and good games second.
Humm speaking of shady practices Your paying to alpha test a game for SOE the material designed in EQL by players will then (if its good) be used by SOE in EQN at a fraction of a cost it would cost them from art developers/designers. a Sure win for SOE as long aas they can get paying customers to do 50% of the work for them.
Zenimax announced TESO in May 2012 and then spent almost two years tweaking the game after the initlal flood of negative comments.
IMHO Zenimax invested more than they should in the IP and rushed for damage control in this 2-year period. They changed many things, but this only proves that they had no clear vision for their game from the start.
We'll see how it pans out. However I'm not very optimistic because they clearly had a DAoC type of game in their mind and after all the criticism tried to make it more of an ES type of game. Usually when you mix two different game types you get...a mess.
We'll see.
I think they had a very clear vision of what they wanted to do with the game, but the path from point A to point B on such a long development is often filled with unexpected detours. In an industry where more often than not you have developers ducking their heads and charging right through community criticism, ZM has kept an open ear and proved that they can bend where necessary.
That's commendable, imo.
Does companies that listen to whiner make good games ?
People that don't like to take their time, explore, read, etc... shouldn't belong into a true RPG anyway, and to me The Elder Scrolls should be true RPGs. Try to make it something else and you'll lose the fans and the people that are looking for an RPG. I'm not sure that's a good move.
Making this kind of decision is what could ruin a good game. At least that's what I believe.
And you speak about Blizzard, most complains I've heard about Blizzard and WoW is all about that. And Trion is actually making the same mistake with Rift (where most old time player have gone, and the rest should leave soon).
I think Zenimax should think harder about that. They should make a better experience of this starter zone instead of making it optional.
I believe that's my point. And I included some examples.
Though I disagree about "the essence of the rpg is choice both mechanically an narratively and skyrim offers few of either ..."
Skyrim offers a huge amount of choice and what's more it allows you to choose without the game getting in the way.
Does it offer you a lot of scripted choice? Meaning, does every quest offer several variants depending on play style? no, no it doesn't. but if you are "role playing" then in many cases you can take matters into your own hands.
There are some chairs thrown into the way such as a player can't kill everyone (and I wish they adopted the morrowind solution here) but there are reasons they didn't allow that.
But no choice? I have a thief that's just a thief. I have a paladin that never touches magic other than healing. I have an "Elric" type character who only gets healing from food or his sword.
I can choose not to take a quest if it doesn't fit my character. I think one's mileage may vary depending on one's imagination and willingness to do/not do various things.
It certainly has as much choice as oblvion, with the exception of the spell making altars.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Which brings us to the difference between RP, and an RPG. You can RP anywhere and anytime. A chat room, an empty field, with others, by yourself. An RPG actually provides you with choices, and then gives you different consequences which can actually be observed within the game depending on which choices you made. Skyrim rarely does that. It does a couple of times, but for the most part it provides you with quest lines which you can either do, or not do, and if you do them they always go exactly the same way, narratively speaking. It isn't a real choice set if it consists solely of "Do X and get consequence Y" or "Don't do anything, and get no consequences."
On the narrative side of things, RPGs are like interactive novels or movies, where your choices alter (even if only superficially, in most games) the course of the narrative. Recent Elder Scrolls games are more like collections of short stories, where the only choice you have is whether you are going to read every story, or skip some of them.
And that's just talking about choice in terms of narrative. Choice in terms of mechanics is also extremely limited in Skyrim. Hell, any game in the Mass Effect series has more compelling RPG mechanics than Skyrim, and BioWare is not known for it's gameplay quality. It's kind of sad to me, given that mechanically speaking Daggerfall was one of the greatest RPGs ever made, and now Bethesda churns out games which in terms of gameplay are little more than glorified shooters.
Though I do understand the point you are trying to make. The first time I played Skyrim (on a rented console copy while waiting for the PC price to drop) I did literally nothing but the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests, along with a few of the Daedric ones, because I have found those consistently entertaining in every Elder Scrolls game which included them, even those where I found the game as a whole to be somewhat lacking. Those quests fit the kind of character I like to play. But you shouldn't have to, in an RPG, know everything about the outcome of a quest chain in order to decide whether it fits your character to pursue that quest chain. You should actually have choices during the quest chain so that you reach an outcome that fits your character without having to search out spoilers first.
Which is somewhere where, at least in the early going, ESO excels. I don't know how many, if any, of the choices will have long term consequences, but there are a *lot* of choices scattered throughout the various quests, which clearly have a huge impact on the characters involved. (Even if that impact is mostly implied, and we never actually see the consequences.) There are more meaningful choices, in terms of implied narrative consequences, in the first fifteen levels of ESO than there were in Skyrim and Oblivion combined.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I lol'd. That pic is epic. And I reserve the right to not call Zenimax "TEH BESTEST DEVELOPARS EVAR!!!111128937!" until after the game is live. Frankly, so many changes this late in development screams more of desperation than listening to their fanbois. At least to me it does. But I'm old and crotchety.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
Any mainstream news channel would be much more accurate. Since they are shameless shills for the US and it's corporate interests.