why is Darkfall not massively successful? I am not sure but clearly there is something that needs to be explained here that doesnt sound like sillyness
I'd think it ties to players having the ability to effect others experience TBH. FFA PVP has never really been all that popular in the MMORPG space. It's been seen as a problem going all the way back to UO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I've been wondering the same myself for months. Since DF has all the Skyrim sandbox features that ESO is so criticized for not having, why not DF, indeed?
Could it be that there is a disconnect between mmorpg,com forum theoretical MMO design and the reality of what people actually want to play? ... that couldn't be it could it?
I never played DF so I can't intelligently talk about it. Does Darkfall force you to PVP? If they do that could be the issue. I personally do not like to be forced to pvp. When I do pvp I want to choose it and walk into a pvp zone if possible or put on a pvp flag. I want to be able to turn pvp off like in AC.
I played AC at release but I don't have my rose color glasses on. AC also had FOTM builds and items and were nerfed over time as the developers caught wind of them: Unarmed was > than any other melee skills and Life Magic -- which allowed you to drain mobs you had no business fighting, through walls was also the FOTM. And then. of course, Item Magic, which allowed you to create portals and buff your weapons and armor... so at release and for many months thereafter - many more months than ESO has even been around, BTW -- Unarmed + Life Magic + Item Magic was the de-facto preferred "class" ... but hey, everyone invented it independently and simultaneously and no one told them to do it
And then there was the infamous Hoary Mattekar Robe that was so OP'd they stopped spawning it (although it came back in a lesser nerfed version months later) but allowed anyone who was in on where to get it while it was still dropping, to keep it in its original OP'd glory--- sucks to be you if you didn't get one...
Like I said, rose colored glasses that allow you to see the infinitely better past now that everything has gone to hell
I am not just looking at the good parts of the game and leaving out the negative. I remember all the problems you describe but it was all so much fun was it not? lol I remember smiling and having fun playing that game despite the few problems it had. People attacking through walls, I just shook my head and moved on. They really were just cheating themselves of a rich gaming experience. The big difference is I am NOT having fun playing all these new games. Most of them just suck for lack of a better word. I did have unarmed and item magic but no life magic. I opted for bandaging skill which was actually a way better way to heal yourself quick if you were skilled enough. I did not pick up life magic until about level 76.
It was my first MMO...how could I not remember it fondly? Even when I was totally pissed off because I couldn't hurt golems with my sword (blunt damage swords.... and lol at bunt swords... didn't come in till much later) I was having fun. But I actually remember my second MMO, DAoC, much more fondly. Something about the potential of organizing and executing very large PVP events really hooked me, and it still does.
Come to think of it, it's not unlike the way I remember my first and second sexual partners. The first (Hi Debbie, wherever you are!) I can't think of it without smiling at the same time I cringe at my two minutes of fumbling ... mysteries without any clues.... always loved that line form "Night Moves" Second time maybe not as memorable but I have nothing to cringe about when I think of that one...
But life goes on and I still enjoy it. Same for MMOs... enjoying ESO just as it is
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I've been wondering the same myself for months. Since DF has all the Skyrim sandbox features that ESO is so criticized for not having, why not DF, indeed?
Could it be that there is a disconnect between mmorpg,com forum theoretical MMO design and the reality of what people actually want to play? ... that couldn't be it could it?
I never played DF so I can't intelligently talk about it. Does Darkfall force you to PVP? If they do that could be the issue. I personally do not like to be forced to pvp. When I do pvp I want to choose it and walk into a pvp zone if possible or put on a pvp flag. I want to be able to turn pvp off like in AC.
1. Its the forced PVP.
2. Aventurine kinda build a bad reputation for itself during the first DF development and release. Especially when it comes to a specific person at Aventurine, which I will not name.
I've been wondering the same myself for months. Since DF has all the Skyrim sandbox features that ESO is so criticized for not having, why not DF, indeed?
Could it be that there is a disconnect between mmorpg,com forum theoretical MMO design and the reality of what people actually want to play? ... that couldn't be it could it?
I never played DF so I can't intelligently talk about it. Does Darkfall force you to PVP? If they do that could be the issue. I personally do not like to be forced to pvp. When I do pvp I want to choose it and walk into a pvp zone if possible or put on a pvp flag. I want to be able to turn pvp off like in AC.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
why is Darkfall not massively successful? I am not sure but clearly there is something that needs to be explained here that doesnt sound like sillyness
I'd think it ties to players having the ability to effect others experience TBH. FFA PVP has never really been all that popular in the MMORPG space. It's been seen as a problem going all the way back to UO.
That could very well be true. In addition to 'hard core PVP' not being as popular it also breeds toxic players.
I do wish more people would focus on the real reasons why Darkfall was not a huge hit instead of using it to bash whatever features they are in the mood to bash (for example, open world systems dont work because darkfall didnt make as much money as wow).
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
the most sandboxish MMO by far that I have ever played has pve servers.
There are sooooo many myths that gamers have and 'pvp MUST be in a sandbox' is one of them.
and your right, Darkfall was forced PVP and that did keep a lot of people away
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
and your right, Darkfall was forced PVP and that did keep a lot of people away
PVP in general just turned me off because of all the hacking and the ganking. PVP just seemed like a waste of my time when all I wanted to do was PVE alone or with a group of guild mates.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
There are sooooo many myths that gamers have and 'pvp MUST be in a sandbox' is one of them.
Indeed. Let's see what happens with EQN...
But why do most, obviously not all but definitely most, sandboxes go the forced PVP route? I also don't know the answer to that by I'm thinking that developers are assuming that the ffa PVP and sandbox fans are one and the same group... otherwise why do they do it repeatedly?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
and your right, Darkfall was forced PVP and that did keep a lot of people away
PVP in general just turned me off because of all the hacking and the ganking. PVP just seemed like a waste of my time when all I wanted to do was PVE alone or with a group of guild mates.
agreed.
I did like large scale battles and war etc but the random PKing was just annoying. I can see how it would be enough for people to want to quit. I have a lot of paitence in games so I just played the long game.
The combat, the world where amazing to me.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
That was never the case in the good MMOs. In all the ones I played, grouping was harder and more involved, so it got more rewards, but if you didn't want to group, you could progress, just not as fast. Which is how it should be, that's basic game design and social engineering.
There's no evidence to say that people don't like grouping anymore. In fact, most themeparks these days die in record time primarily because there's no social glue in the games keeping people together.
Out of curiousity; which themepark games have died lately?
STO, Champions Online, Neverwinter, SWTOR, Rift, AoC, TESO all had their numbers PLUMMET within a month of launch. In several cases it bankrupted partner companies, forcing them to fire staff, merge the servers 3+ times, and go FTP.
In the case of AoC and SWTOR, the failures were so high profile and well documented that it shocked the industry.
Well to be honest all of those games you listed are actually doing very well now and have a strong player base. So you must mean they have died because they dont have 10 million subs?
AoC has been down to 3 servers for 3 years. I wouldn't call that doing well.
They've found their niches, to be sure, just their niches are extremely tiny compared to the budget the games originally had. Some of them had to axe all their employees just to turn a profit (SWTOR).
They "died" because they had an advertisement budget twice the size of their development budget, and came out of the gate looking to be WoW killers, and now have less subs than pre 2004 MMOs.
AoC was made by Funcom who has always been a small company. Also, Up until about 2 years ago, if you went on AoC you'd immediately see about 20 different groups looking for classes to come to their raids. It wasn't dead and it still isnt. Im sure Funcom made their money back and way more. Was AoC WoW? nope and never meant to be...it was rated M and was never meant to bring in young audiences so from the start it was niche, but made good money being that.
The same With TSW. Always meant to be a niche and now it's doing well with it's Freemium hybrid model.
A lot of revisionist history in these posts.
Funcom was as big as any pre WoW MMO company, having already had the successful Anarchy Online under their belt, and a number of singleplayer games.
Funcom was absolutely supposed to be a WoW killer. It was advertised everywhere, including The Big Bang Theory. Prime time television. They swung for the fences, and for a large number of reasons, the game died almost immediately. They were hurting for money so much that their partner company filed for bankruptcy. They merged servers about 3-4 times and were forced to go FTP just to find an audience. From about 50 servers down to 3 in less than a year.
TSW had similar struggles for different reasons. It was originally going to be a COOP singleplayer game but Funcom tried to shoe horn MMO features into it to justify a monthly fee. It didn't go well.
In fact, it went so poorly, that Funcom said they're never going to make another MMO. The games are still swimming along now, slowly earning back their investments, but if either of them were successful, Funcom wouldn't have sworn off MMOs.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
There are sooooo many myths that gamers have and 'pvp MUST be in a sandbox' is one of them.
Indeed. Let's see what happens with EQN...
But why do most, obviously not all but definitely most, sandboxes go the forced PVP route? I also don't know the answer to that by I'm thinking that developers are assuming that the ffa PVP and sandbox fans are one and the same group... otherwise why do they do it repeatedly?
honestly I think the answer is that the cost of these MMOs are so high developers are afraid to take risks so they listen to posters and fall into the same myth.
that is my thought on it anyway.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
darkfall also has "full loot PvP" and "twitch" aiming. 2 other things a lot of gamers just don't like.
There's nothing fun about being jumped by 4 players and being killed and looted. At least that's the majority opinion of any system that allows ganking. (Age of Conan sold itself as brutal fighting ...had fatalities, tits and blood ... even they added town guards eventually for PvP.... killing their PvP community further by switching to instanced based PvP ...just like wow did, to spare care bears from having to encounter anything even remotely resembling PvP)
MMOs have consistently backed away from penalties associated with death ( Asheron's Call had Vitae... a penalty you had to earn back that made death affect exp gains ...can't recall another game that's had a death penalty since)
I don't want to play a FPS with spells. As close as a game is to D&D style rolls and math based determiners the better.
Originally posted by Aztec I have not played this game since late alpha, early beta since it did not feel like an Elder Scrolls game when I played it. Has this been address and fixed? Also there were numerous other issues that did not not seem fixable to me like boss camping. What are peoples current opinions of the game in its current state? I want to know because I was thinking of trying it again. My main issue is does it feel like an Elder Scrolls Game?
As DMkano said very early on, this question is a mixed bag. TO me it plays like something mixed between Morrowind and Oblivion. At least as far as World and Quest focus. Skyrim took the series to New Heights in those categories, so it doesn't feel as worldly as it.
I think this will largely depend on what aspects of TES you're looking for in it. First thing I'd recommend is turning off as many indicators as you can, this helped with my immersion tenfold, as without the huge marks on all quest givers it feels as though I find them more naturally ala TES. I have also not followed a quest anywhere aside from when I"m on one, I just run around (Exploration feels natural to me in this game) and see what's in every corner of the world, so I am getting my normal TES experience, as that's how I play them.
YMMV as if you're looking for that homestead experience you can get in SKyrim, and to a lesser extent Oblivion, it's really not accounted for.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It does seem like an ok MMO, but yeah.. There's a lot of those.
That's about easily as I could have summed it up too. If I had to rate all the games that bare the Elder Scrolls title, this would probably be one of the lower ranked ones. I can't count Daggerfall or Arena because I never played those though.
However, as an MMO it seems to hit the typical points that most people would expect in an MMO such as questing, dungeons, crafting, gear, guilds, and designated PVP area. Like you said, there are plenty of those to choose from.
If ZOS keeps adding actual ES features into the game like they say they will then it's possible I will come back even if there they will still charge a sub. At least with more ES features I will probably feel like it would be worth it then.
Originally posted by Aztec I have not played this game since late alpha, early beta since it did not feel like an Elder Scrolls game when I played it. Has this been address and fixed? Also there were numerous other issues that did not not seem fixable to me like boss camping. What are peoples current opinions of the game in its current state? I want to know because I was thinking of trying it again. My main issue is does it feel like an Elder Scrolls Game?
compared to beta and launch, the game is better now. Its still riddled with some annoying issues but it is improving, slowly.
As for your main question. Does it feel like an ES game? in some aspects it does, in some others it doesnt.
The lame targetting definitelly takes away from the TES combat feel of the game. Also, i play for hours nonstop and i have never seen rain (besides rarely some sprinkles) or snow falling (besides a little snow that falls with the same patter in eastmarch here and there) not dynamic.... Unless they add dynamic weather and darker nights where you can use sources of light, the game still feels dull most of the time and not as alive as a TES world.
EDIT: i would like to personally see random dragons flying and attacking, like they do in Skyrim.... but Lorewise there arent dragons in ESO´s timeline so im fine without them, for now.
If you went into ESO thinking it was going to be Skyrim online you would come out saying "It doesn't feel like and Elder Scrolls Game!". But for anyone that had a realistic understanding that in an MMO some aspects of a single player game would not translate well then you went into it and appreciated all that Zenimax and Bethesda did to make it Elder Scrolls Online. The lore is there and done better than any MMO out to date (except for maybe FFXIV). The exploration is there.... I love the little events that trigger as you explore the world.... just wish there was more variety.
I have had many people say this almost verbatim and it does not help. No it does not feel like Skyrim nor does it feel like Daggerfall or Morrowind or Oblivion. It failed to capture the essence of what ES is in general. IMO it is not that it is an online game vs an offline game lost in translation issue. I got the feeling when playing the game that the person that made the game had never even played Elder Scrolls. All they did was copy their neighbors term paper (the lore) and slapped an Elder Scrolls sticker on and said, "Look it is an Elder Scrolls Game because the name is in the title!" Would, coulda Shoulda, Bethesda alone should have made this title and it would be on the top of the charts. This I am 100% sure of. You cannot sell genius.
Zenimax company is Bethesda. This was not contracted outside of the company. Zenimax owns Bethesda and has been involved with Elder Scrolls since the beginning.
I see many say it failed to capture what Elder Scrolls is..... please tell me your concept of what the essence of Elder Scrolls is?
As an open system like Skyrim is a total nightmare to Balance for PVP! Not to mention to create group content around!
It's absolutely fantastic in a Single player setting and if someone wants to create FOTM builds to steamroll all content, then it's their Choice.
In an MMORPG setting this is not possible. Especially when you also have PVP to deal with. Unless you design a strickly seperate PVP skill system. But this is twice as expensive to develop and twice as expensive to maintain and thus a huge Financial risk. A risk sadly no Company is willing to take in todays economic climate.
And the compromise they did is still a great system that gives you a hell lot of freedom in class / skill customisation. A hell lot more than in the traditional themepark class systems, where you are simply locked into a single role!
Asherons Call is a MMORPG and it has a good PVP and PVE system that is not seperate and it has no classes just skills to choose from. It can be done and has been done well. There is good group content. AC STARTED IN 1999 and is still being paid to play. They have many skills to choose from that are all pretty cool so many people have diverse skill sets. Not everyone is the same. Actually it is very hard to find people with identical skill sets. Yes it is an old game but your argument that it is not possible just is not true. One could argue it is hard to do. No balance is needed in a true classes system or pure skill based system. We all find our own balance.
Gamers were a different kind of breed back then. Everything was a niche still and Broadband internet was still in it's infancy.
Sure you had some idiots and some hackers here and there. But it wasn't as bad as now, now it's mainstream. Back then the communities in MMO's were small and policing itself as result.
If Asherons Call would release today, it would fall flat on it's face, overrun by hackers and cheaters and tons of People creating FOTM builds to grief others. Giving the devs a super headache and a very hard time trying to balance all the mess that comes with an open skill system.
You just can't compare communities back then with today. Things have changed for the worse. Gaming communities are not what they used to be anymore.
PS. Don't get me wrong! I would love to see a sandbox MMO again With open skill system, but then completely without any form of PVP. As it's just otherwise not possible in todays gaming climate.
There are now just too many A-holes on the internet that lack any form of social skills, who should be locked up in a nut house, instead of let loose in the world. It's just a sad fact.
Here is the unresolved problem
Skyrim = the features people want
Skyrim = hugely successful if not the most successful single player game ever in an era where its not 'nitch'
Darkfall = contains the features of Skyrim many people want.
why is Darkfall not massively successful? I am not sure but clearly there is something that needs to be explained here that doesnt sound like sillyness
Because Skyrim was NOT FFA PVP. Skyrim didn't strategize souly on that concept. Darkfall did.
Im noticing that there is WAAYYYYY too much love for Skyrim and way too little for Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.
Skyrim was a watered down version of Oblivion that was a watered down version of Morrowind....and so on.
Skyrim also had more limitations that it's predecessors as well. You had to devote skill points into specific stats/traits in order to unlock skills. Wondering around the world wasn't half as much fun as wondering around Morrowind. Quests were pointing in your face where to go and you were able to auto-port to places you had been.
Morrowind had none of that...
Skyrim is, in my opinion, the worst of the Elder Scrolls games.
Im noticing that there is WAAYYYYY too much love for Skyrim and way too little for Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.
WEll yeah what do you expect on these forums? People like what's getting marketed, not necessarily what's good, or people wouldn't be playing all these WoW clones.
But no, I'd say Oblivion is by far the worst of the 5. Skyrim at least has an interesting setting and less level scaling.
Zenimax company is Bethesda. This was not contracted outside of the company. Zenimax owns Bethesda and has been involved with Elder Scrolls since the beginning.
I see many say it failed to capture what Elder Scrolls is..... please tell me your concept of what the essence of Elder Scrolls is?
What I meant to say is that Bethesda Softworks Division in specific clearly did not have enough input into this game or it would have come out fine. Zenimax is the large corporation and Bethesda is one of its divisions. My guess is that Zenimax did not give critical development choices to Bethesda studio as they should have. Now the CEO and executives of Zenimax have to pay for their bad choices. This is only a GUESS on my part but and educated guess as I understand business well. In other words, Zenimax put the wrong people in charge of this games development.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
There are sooooo many myths that gamers have and 'pvp MUST be in a sandbox' is one of them.
Indeed. Let's see what happens with EQN...
But why do most, obviously not all but definitely most, sandboxes go the forced PVP route? I also don't know the answer to that by I'm thinking that developers are assuming that the ffa PVP and sandbox fans are one and the same group... otherwise why do they do it repeatedly?
honestly I think the answer is that the cost of these MMOs are so high developers are afraid to take risks so they listen to posters and fall into the same myth.
that is my thought on it anyway.
Maybe so. And right along those same lines... when people are asked to mention which sandbox MMO is being played by a lot of players today and has stood the test of time, which one do they invariably mention? Eve... could be that Eve is to sandboxes what WOW is to themeparks and for good or bad, its ffa PVP is emulated.
Also, it's hard, for me at least, to imagine an entertaining form of emergent gameplay - and emergent gameplay is what sandboxes are really all about -- without some form of player vs, player conflict. The one possible exception I see to that is EQN if they manage to pull off the mob AI so advanced that the mobs themselves create the events by massing and reacting to player trends.
We shall see...
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Skyrim = hugely successful if not the most successful single player game ever in an era where its not 'nitch'
Darkfall = contains the features of Skyrim many people want.
why is Darkfall not massively successful? I am not sure but clearly there is something that needs to be explained here that doesnt sound like sillyness
And where do you get that skyrim is the most successful single player game ever? Its only in the top 20 for sales not really sure how you come up with a statement like that.
did I say that it was the best selling or did I say 'and most likely'. The reason I used the words I did was because I was not sure because I didnt look it up.
thanks
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Im noticing that there is WAAYYYYY too much love for Skyrim and way too little for Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.
WEll yeah what do you expect on these forums? People like what's getting marketed, not necessarily what's good, or people wouldn't be playing all these WoW clones.
the love for Skyrim over the older versions is not because of what you two assume.... its because it is the better excecuted version of the TES games. The older versions might be more in depth (both the world and the lore), but they are also both clunky and not as good looking. ESO, as a long term commitment, should take the best features of all TES games.... including Skyrims superior excecution of those features.
Comments
I'd think it ties to players having the ability to effect others experience TBH. FFA PVP has never really been all that popular in the MMORPG space. It's been seen as a problem going all the way back to UO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I never played DF so I can't intelligently talk about it. Does Darkfall force you to PVP? If they do that could be the issue. I personally do not like to be forced to pvp. When I do pvp I want to choose it and walk into a pvp zone if possible or put on a pvp flag. I want to be able to turn pvp off like in AC.
It was my first MMO...how could I not remember it fondly? Even when I was totally pissed off because I couldn't hurt golems with my sword (blunt damage swords.... and lol at bunt swords... didn't come in till much later) I was having fun. But I actually remember my second MMO, DAoC, much more fondly. Something about the potential of organizing and executing very large PVP events really hooked me, and it still does.
Come to think of it, it's not unlike the way I remember my first and second sexual partners. The first (Hi Debbie, wherever you are!) I can't think of it without smiling at the same time I cringe at my two minutes of fumbling ... mysteries without any clues.... always loved that line form "Night Moves"
Second time maybe not as memorable but I have nothing to cringe about when I think of that one...
But life goes on and I still enjoy it. Same for MMOs... enjoying ESO just as it is
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1. Its the forced PVP.
2. Aventurine kinda build a bad reputation for itself during the first DF development and release. Especially when it comes to a specific person at Aventurine, which I will not name.
Yup. Forced PVP. Seems to be the way with sandboxes these days.... same with Archeage: another game that was likened to Skyrim by a columnist here just this past week.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That could very well be true. In addition to 'hard core PVP' not being as popular it also breeds toxic players.
I do wish more people would focus on the real reasons why Darkfall was not a huge hit instead of using it to bash whatever features they are in the mood to bash (for example, open world systems dont work because darkfall didnt make as much money as wow).
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Most games had different servers that had different rule sets like non-pvp or flagged pvp or regular pvp etc. Did DF have that? If they just had forced pvp then I know many that would not play the game including myself. I just never had to many good pvp experiences.
the most sandboxish MMO by far that I have ever played has pve servers.
There are sooooo many myths that gamers have and 'pvp MUST be in a sandbox' is one of them.
and your right, Darkfall was forced PVP and that did keep a lot of people away
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
PVP in general just turned me off because of all the hacking and the ganking. PVP just seemed like a waste of my time when all I wanted to do was PVE alone or with a group of guild mates.
Indeed. Let's see what happens with EQN...
But why do most, obviously not all but definitely most, sandboxes go the forced PVP route? I also don't know the answer to that by I'm thinking that developers are assuming that the ffa PVP and sandbox fans are one and the same group... otherwise why do they do it repeatedly?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
agreed.
I did like large scale battles and war etc but the random PKing was just annoying. I can see how it would be enough for people to want to quit. I have a lot of paitence in games so I just played the long game.
The combat, the world where amazing to me.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
A lot of revisionist history in these posts.
Funcom was as big as any pre WoW MMO company, having already had the successful Anarchy Online under their belt, and a number of singleplayer games.
Funcom was absolutely supposed to be a WoW killer. It was advertised everywhere, including The Big Bang Theory. Prime time television. They swung for the fences, and for a large number of reasons, the game died almost immediately. They were hurting for money so much that their partner company filed for bankruptcy. They merged servers about 3-4 times and were forced to go FTP just to find an audience. From about 50 servers down to 3 in less than a year.
TSW had similar struggles for different reasons. It was originally going to be a COOP singleplayer game but Funcom tried to shoe horn MMO features into it to justify a monthly fee. It didn't go well.
In fact, it went so poorly, that Funcom said they're never going to make another MMO. The games are still swimming along now, slowly earning back their investments, but if either of them were successful, Funcom wouldn't have sworn off MMOs.
honestly I think the answer is that the cost of these MMOs are so high developers are afraid to take risks so they listen to posters and fall into the same myth.
that is my thought on it anyway.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
darkfall also has "full loot PvP" and "twitch" aiming. 2 other things a lot of gamers just don't like.
There's nothing fun about being jumped by 4 players and being killed and looted. At least that's the majority opinion of any system that allows ganking. (Age of Conan sold itself as brutal fighting ...had fatalities, tits and blood ... even they added town guards eventually for PvP.... killing their PvP community further by switching to instanced based PvP ...just like wow did, to spare care bears from having to encounter anything even remotely resembling PvP)
MMOs have consistently backed away from penalties associated with death ( Asheron's Call had Vitae... a penalty you had to earn back that made death affect exp gains ...can't recall another game that's had a death penalty since)
I don't want to play a FPS with spells. As close as a game is to D&D style rolls and math based determiners the better.
also the graphics suck
As DMkano said very early on, this question is a mixed bag. TO me it plays like something mixed between Morrowind and Oblivion. At least as far as World and Quest focus. Skyrim took the series to New Heights in those categories, so it doesn't feel as worldly as it.
I think this will largely depend on what aspects of TES you're looking for in it. First thing I'd recommend is turning off as many indicators as you can, this helped with my immersion tenfold, as without the huge marks on all quest givers it feels as though I find them more naturally ala TES. I have also not followed a quest anywhere aside from when I"m on one, I just run around (Exploration feels natural to me in this game) and see what's in every corner of the world, so I am getting my normal TES experience, as that's how I play them.
YMMV as if you're looking for that homestead experience you can get in SKyrim, and to a lesser extent Oblivion, it's really not accounted for.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That's about easily as I could have summed it up too. If I had to rate all the games that bare the Elder Scrolls title, this would probably be one of the lower ranked ones. I can't count Daggerfall or Arena because I never played those though.
However, as an MMO it seems to hit the typical points that most people would expect in an MMO such as questing, dungeons, crafting, gear, guilds, and designated PVP area. Like you said, there are plenty of those to choose from.
If ZOS keeps adding actual ES features into the game like they say they will then it's possible I will come back even if there they will still charge a sub. At least with more ES features I will probably feel like it would be worth it then.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
compared to beta and launch, the game is better now. Its still riddled with some annoying issues but it is improving, slowly.
As for your main question. Does it feel like an ES game? in some aspects it does, in some others it doesnt.
The lame targetting definitelly takes away from the TES combat feel of the game. Also, i play for hours nonstop and i have never seen rain (besides rarely some sprinkles) or snow falling (besides a little snow that falls with the same patter in eastmarch here and there) not dynamic.... Unless they add dynamic weather and darker nights where you can use sources of light, the game still feels dull most of the time and not as alive as a TES world.
EDIT: i would like to personally see random dragons flying and attacking, like they do in Skyrim.... but Lorewise there arent dragons in ESO´s timeline so im fine without them, for now.
Zenimax company is Bethesda. This was not contracted outside of the company. Zenimax owns Bethesda and has been involved with Elder Scrolls since the beginning.
I see many say it failed to capture what Elder Scrolls is..... please tell me your concept of what the essence of Elder Scrolls is?
Because Skyrim was NOT FFA PVP. Skyrim didn't strategize souly on that concept. Darkfall did.
Im noticing that there is WAAYYYYY too much love for Skyrim and way too little for Morrowind, Daggerfall and Arena.
Skyrim was a watered down version of Oblivion that was a watered down version of Morrowind....and so on.
Skyrim also had more limitations that it's predecessors as well. You had to devote skill points into specific stats/traits in order to unlock skills. Wondering around the world wasn't half as much fun as wondering around Morrowind. Quests were pointing in your face where to go and you were able to auto-port to places you had been.
Morrowind had none of that...
Skyrim is, in my opinion, the worst of the Elder Scrolls games.
WEll yeah what do you expect on these forums? People like what's getting marketed, not necessarily what's good, or people wouldn't be playing all these WoW clones.
But no, I'd say Oblivion is by far the worst of the 5. Skyrim at least has an interesting setting and less level scaling.
What I meant to say is that Bethesda Softworks Division in specific clearly did not have enough input into this game or it would have come out fine. Zenimax is the large corporation and Bethesda is one of its divisions. My guess is that Zenimax did not give critical development choices to Bethesda studio as they should have. Now the CEO and executives of Zenimax have to pay for their bad choices. This is only a GUESS on my part but and educated guess as I understand business well. In other words, Zenimax put the wrong people in charge of this games development.
Maybe so. And right along those same lines... when people are asked to mention which sandbox MMO is being played by a lot of players today and has stood the test of time, which one do they invariably mention? Eve... could be that Eve is to sandboxes what WOW is to themeparks and for good or bad, its ffa PVP is emulated.
Also, it's hard, for me at least, to imagine an entertaining form of emergent gameplay - and emergent gameplay is what sandboxes are really all about -- without some form of player vs, player conflict. The one possible exception I see to that is EQN if they manage to pull off the mob AI so advanced that the mobs themselves create the events by massing and reacting to player trends.
We shall see...
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
did I say that it was the best selling or did I say 'and most likely'. The reason I used the words I did was because I was not sure because I didnt look it up.
thanks
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
the love for Skyrim over the older versions is not because of what you two assume.... its because it is the better excecuted version of the TES games. The older versions might be more in depth (both the world and the lore), but they are also both clunky and not as good looking. ESO, as a long term commitment, should take the best features of all TES games.... including Skyrims superior excecution of those features.