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The impossible task
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Do you not Think Zenimax has reserched ALL these issues ?
Don't you think they have discussed the outline of ESO a million times Before choosing the game they have now developed ?
Do you not think a Company creating a game Worth millions in developer costs checks the market for the best buisness model ?
I'm completly certain that they do, they could still be wrong however, but not likely
This is a case where actually having, you know, played the game would have helped inform the discussion. ESO *is* largely skill based - your class skills are a minority of what you use. ES games historically did have classes - the series started before Skyrim. Skyrim did have de facto factions - you couldn't join the Thalmor, for instance; you had to follow quest arcs for the guild stories and the main story line. It didn't have PvP, of course, but PvP isn't part of Skyrim, is it? All ES games have heavily featured questing. And you gain experience from numerous other things in ESO than questing (and those other things are being enhanced as the game progresses.) Granted, it's slow to do the idiotic MMO "Stand in one place and do the same thing over and over to level" thing, but I view that as a feature rather than being a bug.
So, of your 4 items, 3 of them aren't even really relevant - they're either in the game already or they're not in Skyrim. The fourth item is a matter of degree. I find there to be a lot of exploring and open world feel. Without level scaling you will have tougher opponents here than there, which will force a sequence on you. If you want a coherent story arc you also need to encounter things "in order."
So, in this case, you're asking the wrong question, Given that you're in a game with other people, and given that stories get told in a certain order, why would you decide to make social gaming *even harder* by fracturing the game world so much that there is no way that two people would be at the same logical place and time to be together? Take the current world, and now make the other people with you not only have to be at the same phase, but also at the same level. It would almost never happen. So the net result is that your MMO would become just a single player game - which is why they didn't do it.
So it's not that it's impossible; it's that the things on your list are either already done or they're bad ideas for a MMO.
It has classes and I do not need to stop playing a game that is skill based to understand that its possible to make a game that is skill based.
morrowind, obvilion and Skyrim do not have classes in anyway that matters to the game play. If you start to compare the classes in morrowind with the classes in ESO you will be a card carrying fan boy
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Many of the features I have described here ARE IN THE GAMES THAT THEY OWN! So for a game developer to not know what Skill Based system is really sad even more so when said gaming company fucking owns games with said features!
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possible =/= easy.
Else, I see no reason why you shouldn't just run your own game company since you think it's that easy.
Half of what you're suggestion requires major coding and design overhauls. Having no factions would be easier, but still not as simple as turning off a switch. This would also kill pvp (unless they had a method later in the game to choose a faction to support).
As they say, the devil's in the details. Everything sounds simple and like a great idea until you have to actually think about the reality behind implementing them. There is also nothing you can implement in games that doesn't come with some tradeoff. It's all about balancing what you lose with what you gain.
The irony of this, is even if you did all these changes, people would still complain it doesn't 'feel like skyrim'. There are certain fundamental changes a game undergoes when being designed as an MMO. It kind of sucks, but that's how it is.
Bottomline: unless TESO has sold lots of copies / retained many subscribers - and maybe it has but you get the idea that it hasn't set the world on fire - then pretty much nothing is going to happen.
Yes there are lots of things in the pipeline but the first two priorities will be:
I have no issue with people saying easy instead of 'impossible' the word 'impossible' really gets my blood boiling because I play MMOs with those features on a regular baises and those games are created by tiny teams..I mean fucking tiny. which I might add makes even the word 'easy' questionable
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ESO's classes don't matter anymore than classes in Morrowind did. In Morrowind, your class had noticeable effect on when you leveled, but no effect on what you could do. In ESO, it's exactly like choosing a race in that it give you access to a specialized skill set while most of your bread and butter is still going to come from the skills that everyone has access to. In both, it's not unimportant, but it also ultimately has no impact on the game if you don't want it to. Neither is a pure 100% skill based system, but both are far more skill based than not, with the classes being little more than templates to aid new players.
I played Morrowind for several hundern hours back when it came out.
I only learned it had classes this year. So in ESO can you play the game without even knowing there are classes?
reagardless, I am assuming that you agree that creating a skill based system is not 'impossible'
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None of which are server based MMOs, which are a completely different type of game, and require a completely different design. I am quite certain that if translating all of those qualities over to an MMO was as easy as you are trying to say, than someone would have done so by now, and it would be considered a norm for the genre. The fact that no one, not even EVE, has ever succeeded in pulling all the elements together in an MMO is quite telling; something always gets dropped because it's just not doable. And even when the elements are carried over, they usually see some modifications, such as classes in ESO that give access to unique skills or spell points in DDO instead of x/day spell slots. So using the world impossible is not all that farfetched; after all the tries that people have made over the years, and still no success in porting over the entire experience, its clearly no where near as easy in execution as it is in theory. While technically not completely impossible, no one has yet shown how it is possible to translate the theory into actual practice, rendering it functionally impossible for most discussions.
this is getting hsyterical
are you saying a company like zenimax would have to do far to much research to find out that there are skill based MMOs?
really?
not only that are you saying that a powerhouse like zenimax could not figure out that a skill based system would like work just find on a server and it being a server vs a single player game is unimportant?
are you trolling me?
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You are the only troll here.
Where is your quote about Zenimax saying that it is impossible to make a skill based mmo ?
Ignoring classes in ESO is just as easy as it is in Morrowind. Treat it like the choice for race and proceed to play in whatever manner you choose to paying no heed to either the racial or class skill sets. The fact that the community of players tends to emphasize the class part doesn't mean a failure on Zenimax's part to create a skill based system nor require every single player to accept that focus. Just find a guild that doesn't care about classes, and while you'll never likely forget that the classes exist, they will have little enough impact on playing the game that you won't care.
so all skills in the game are open to me from day 1?
a skill based game means two things, one, no classes and two, you can skill up in any skill in the game without making a major change to your character.
If you are saying Elder Scrolls is a skill based game then there are several problems.
1. it means the worlds worst PR ever created was done by zenimax in misleading its customers.
2. making a game like ES single players is more and more starting to look like it actually is possible instead of 'impossible'
agree?
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Skill based MMOs very rarely work exactly the same way that skill based single player games work. It being server based vs a single player game very much matters. There's a reason that most skill based MMOs tend to skill trees with either level requirements or specific skill requirements to unlock higher skills vs how the ES single player games handle skill advancement. Server and bandwidth limitations mean that some controls have to be built into the system in order to accommodate thousands of people. For a single server to to keep track of thousands of Morrowind style characters, the server by itself would end up being 1/3 of the cost of what most games today cost for development, and they would still have to take bandwidth availability into consideration, as not everyone has easy access to high bandwidth transmission modes. ESO works like most major skill based MMOs, with skill trees, skill morphs, and level limitations. You can find the Morrowind kind of skill based advancement, but they tend to be smaller MMOs with more limitations and compromises in other areas of the game. Older games may have pulled it off by focusing less on graphics and more on the actual game, but you won't see a return to that, because too many people insist on picture perfect animations even if it means draining resources away from the content and world.
horrifically false.
Darkfall, Wurm are two examples of a skill based system that works nearly exactly the same.
please do not be offended when I say this but its appears to me that the one community that knows the least about the MMO and gaming space is the ESO community as well as the developers Zenimax. I mean the level of inexperience and ignorance (not the insulting use of the term) is extreemly high.
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Not all skill based systems give you access to all skills immediately, not even in single player games. ESO is clearly not what you want in a skill based system, but it is still driven by the same basic mechanic that the single player games use: skills go up as you use them. If you look at what are generally considered skill based MMOs, and even in skill based single player games, you will find that the structure ESO uses is pretty common. The completely open ended skill progression is far from the only game in town for skill based games.
Your second point would be fine if it didn't ignore that single elements aren't the problem in recreating the single player games. It's the entire package that creates headaches; every little change has ripple effects that impact the entire game, and some changes are necessary.
Never played Darkfall. And Wurm, for all that I love the game and play it myself, highlights a lot of the overall problems perfectly. Yes, the skill system mimics the single player ES games quite well; just don't look too much at the rest of the game. Comparisons in the other subsystems don't hold up nearly as well, and most of the comparisons are not going to end up in Wurm's favor. It is a very good game for what it is designed to be, but it has definite limitations in what players can expect to get out of it.
yet another example of inexperience.
I am sorry but I am unclear why anyone would think the skill based system in Wurm has any affect on lets say the graphics or whatever 'other parts' you are refering to.
This again shows a huge lack of understanding and experience. I am a developer myself (and not a very good one) and even I can see that skill based system would not affect like things graphics or combat as an example.
Why do people in this community go to extraordinary lengths to try and win and debate and in so doing making themselves look much less intelligent then they actually are?
Or have I very simply completely missed your point.
what other part of Wurm does the skill based system affect in a negitive way?
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which game that calls itself a Skill based game does not?
please provide evidence for your claim.
and again, if ESO is a skill based game then Zenimax was terrible as community communication
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It could it might it should have.
Even if it was posible to do Zenimax aint the studio that can do it.
Their lack of skill is what made ESO such a bad mmo in the 1st place, their lack of fast paced game breaking hotfixes is another.
I find Skyrim a good RPG but Morrowind was a shitload better !
But that is my opnion !~
Maybe...maybe if Bethesda would have done ESO themselves instead of sister company Zenimax.
I say Zenimax just cant do this on their own even if it was posible !
Time and resources spent that could be spent elsewhere, whether it be by devs, the server process or the bandwidth. And I would argue your point that combat is not negatively impacted; it may not be directly hurt all of the time, but it sure isn't helped by it. Item creation is also heavily impacted by how the skill system works, and overall game play very definitely is shaped by the nature of the skill system. It doesn't have to have a negative impact to have an impact, and Wurm's skill system very definitely has an impact that shapes the rest of the game.
In the end, Wurm's system works for Wurm, but Wurm is nowhere near replicating the single player ES games. ESO's system works for ESO, and ESO does a far better job of replicating that experience than most any other other game I've seen to date. Just because it's not the type of skill based setup you prefer doesn't make it any less effective or misleading. It's a minor change from the single player game that if you can live with the game as a whole won't bother you; if you don't like the game as a whole, than that one change is pretty much icing on the cake of dislike.
wait...lets step back a second.
The only reason I am on ESO forums is because someone said its an 'impossible' task to make ESO more like ES.
Instead of going down this insane rabbit role of trying to explain how ESO is not a class system but rather a skill based system and how developing a skill based system negitively affects other aspects of the game because of engery and focus (despite having just trying to convice me that ESO is skill based!) how about this win win response.
'whoever said making ESO more like ES is an impossible task is simply wrong, however, we like the game as its designed now and as a result we feel the choices made to make it as such is a good one.'
much easier..you win and I win and then I have nothing else to refute.
I am not here to trash your game, I am not here to suggest its design is flawed. The only reason I am here is because of the use of the word 'impossible'
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/sigh
You're good. I responded. Again.
Please Note: I'm done arguing with unreasonable people with an agenda and/or those that fail to see logic.
Argue if you must, discount my post with anti-logic and/or Hyperbole. I won't be responding any longer.