The Elder Scrolls Online

Jackdaddio_sl · May 19, 2014

Rescorla_sl said:
Why should any MMO developer design their game, whether it be PVP or PVE content, to cater to this crowd? Should they not be focused on satisfying the more mature player?

Well, even 'mature players' quit games too when they start losing. I don't know anyone who likes to pay montly to be cannonfodder.

I'm not saying cater to the criers, I'm saying make a smaller game and cater to those people. There really isn't anything wrong with designing a game to have 200-300k as a PvP centric game that you can grow out from. I'm only speaking on this as a player of games, not as a maker of one though because I understand makers have a totally different dynamic than I do... making lots of dough.

Imo PvP thrives best when it's smallish in scale. Each new PvP game released tries to figure out ways to putmorepeople in it than the games that came before it thinking"Well, if it was fun and tight with a hundred or so, it will be awesome with a thousand!"The problem is it never scales correctly and with larger playerbases you have room for larger mistakes. Once the Ship of Losing starts for casuals, theywillbail. Then it begins to list to a side and it's irreversible regardless of changes afterwards ala Warhammer. The changes made aren't enough because they built the game for those casuals who are leaving, not for those like you who planned on being there through hell and high water.

ESO seems like it wanted to be a combination of WoW and DAoC and that's a recipe for disaster right from the start. You can't design a game for filthy casuals and tourists and stick them in a model that was built upon player loyalty and PvP as the main focus. They didn't need to make a hardcore PvP game with full-looting and hardcore action to do well, they just needed to make an actual PvP game but they chose to make Wonderland instead, which GW2 already did.

Creslin_sl said:
The only way for it to really work is for the world to be so large no one force can ever really hope to hold it.

Darkfall had trouble both because distance wasn't meaningful enough and because losing was way to large a kick in the balls.

These two sentences seem at odds. On one hand you're saying a PvP game needs a large world so no one could ever really hold it, and then saying Darkfall had trouble because the distance wasn't meaningful enough.

I always though DF had a pretty huge world and since the map didn't have those flashy 'alerts!' that GW2/ESO/Warhammer has, you couldn't tell where some force was attacking. I'm probably misremembering it because I didn't last long in DF and that was at it's launch.

spronk · May 19, 2014

troll the fuck out of them, tell them their game is absolutely flawless and only console players will truly understand their masterpiece. tell them hardcore PVPers play on the Wii U so they need a port. It kinda sucks that players are visible in PVP, not only should nametags and plates be invisible but all players should be invisible all the time, it makes PVP way more exciting. Also if more than 5 players are together in a 10 yard radius they should start AOEing each other for 50% health every tick, but they should all be invisible to each other. Raid frames are for carebears, they should be disabled on Cyrodill.

also siege walls should be only destroyable by mounts kicking backwards

also pvp players love doing pve, tell them to zone into cyrodil you need to run 4 PVE dungeons first, and this requirement refreshes every 12 hours

Jackdaddio_sl · May 19, 2014

spronk_sl said:
troll the fuck out of them, tell them their game is absolutely flawless and only console players will truly understand their masterpiece.

also siege walls should be only destroyable by mounts kicking backwards

Itzena_sl · May 19, 2014

Bruman_sl said:
I can't think of any situation where a MMO was able to recover from a crappy launch. MMO players really do like whatever is new and shiny. Fixing issues and improving gameplay barely ever, if ever, will repair a huge loss of population.

EVE, but mainly because a) they bought the game back from their publisher for pennies on the pound and b) they were pretty much the only one in that particular area of the MMO genre at that point in time.

mkopec · May 19, 2014

Final Fantasy Online XIV was another one. Shitty launch---> fix game----> relaunch-----> profit.

Creslin · May 19, 2014

Jackdaddio_sl said:
Well, even 'mature players' quit games too when they start losing. I don't know anyone who likes to pay montly to be cannonfodder.

I'm not saying cater to the criers, I'm saying make a smaller game and cater to those people. There really isn't anything wrong with designing a game to have 200-300k as a PvP centric game that you can grow out from. I'm only speaking on this as a player of games, not as a maker of one though because I understand makers have a totally different dynamic than I do... making lots of dough.

Imo PvP thrives best when it's smallish in scale. Each new PvP game released tries to figure out ways to putmorepeople in it than the games that came before it thinking"Well, if it was fun and tight with a hundred or so, it will be awesome with a thousand!"The problem is it never scales correctly and with larger playerbases you have room for larger mistakes. Once the Ship of Losing starts for casuals, theywillbail. Then it begins to list to a side and it's irreversible regardless of changes afterwards ala Warhammer. The changes made aren't enough because they built the game for those casuals who are leaving, not for those like you who planned on being there through hell and high water.

ESO seems like it wanted to be a combination of WoW and DAoC and that's a recipe for disaster right from the start. You can't design a game for filthy casuals and tourists and stick them in a model that was built upon player loyalty and PvP as the main focus. They didn't need to make a hardcore PvP game with full-looting and hardcore action to do well, they just needed to make an actual PvP game but they chose to make Wonderland instead, which GW2 already did.
These two sentences seem at odds. On one hand you're saying a PvP game needs a large world so no one could ever really hold it, and then saying Darkfall had trouble because the distance wasn't meaningful enough.

I always though DF had a pretty huge world and since the map didn't have those flashy 'alerts!' that GW2/ESO/Warhammer has, you couldn't tell where some force was attacking. I'm probably misremembering it because I didn't last long in DF and that was at it's launch.

I just dont see this exodus of casuals leaving simply because they are losing. They aren't losing in lots of maps, but they still leave, how come? eso is tailor made to make them not lose that much, half the game is keep flipping which you can't lose at. I think they leave cause the filthy casuals don't want such a soulless boring experience just like we don't want it.

There is this great myth started by wow that if you throw free shit at people they will love your game and they all want to be the huge hero and somehow all these players are too stupid to see how shallow that experience is. Except they aren't too stupid and that's why they quit these games that are tailor made for an audience that doesn't exist.

I really wonder how starcraft and dota maintain an audience without letting Timmy win, I bet it's cause Timmy doesn't actually quit the second he starts losing and he keeps playing as long as the fights are relatively fun and there is a realistic shot at winning next time, which are the two things mmos need to focus on, while keeping in mind that mmo mechanics are never going produce fights as reliably fun as other genres so they have to play to their strength, which is the persistent world.

Rescorla_sl · May 19, 2014

Bruman_sl said:
I can't think of any situation where a MMO was able to recover from a crappy launch. MMO players really do like whatever is new and shiny. Fixing issues and improving gameplay barely ever, if ever, will repair a huge loss of population.

IMO a LOT of MMO gamers are irrationally immature when it comes to MMO launches. Almost every regular poster on this board has stated that it's almost a 100% certainty that every MMO launch will have major technical problems. Knowing up front there will be major technical problems, they still buy the game. When they encounter the technical problems they already knew was likely to occur, they label the launch a failure and move on to some other game, which odds are they labelled as a failure several months earlier but after several content patches that fixed the major bugs, balanced the classes, etc is now more enjoyable to play.

Utnayan · May 19, 2014

Rescorla_sl said:
IMO a LOT of MMO gamers are irrationally immature when it comes to MMO launches. Almost every regular poster on this board has stated that it's almost a 100% certainty that every MMO launch will have major technical problems. Knowing up front there will be major technical problems, they still buy the game. When they encounter the technical problems they already knew was likely to occur, they label the launch a failure and move on to some other game, which odds are they labelled as a failure several months earlier but after several content patches that fixed the major bugs, balanced the classes, etc is now more enjoyable to play.

I would say it's more desperation at this point in time with this genre in particular.

Thing is pretty much 90% of games launched in this genre turn a profit. Probably more. And people thinking F2P means a death sentence when they make more money in F2P business models. SWTOR would be the perfect example. TESO needs to follow suit. But they need to fix their game first.

Bruman · May 19, 2014

Itzena_sl said:
EVE, but mainly because a) they bought the game back from their publisher for pennies on the pound and b) they were pretty much the only one in that particular area of the MMO genre at that point in time.

I always forget about EVE

. It's definitely the rarity, and a large part is due to, like you said, them having their niche corner of the market.

mkopec_sl said:
Final Fantasy Online XIV was another one. Shitty launch---> fix game----> relaunch-----> profit.

That's not exactly the same. They relaunched as basically an entirely different game. It wasn't a case of patches and some additional content. They reworked/rewrote the entire damn game.

Tuco · May 19, 2014

The exodus of people from Cyrodiil is pretty universal across the whole playerbase. Casuals quit Cyrodiil immediately after they run into their first VR10 and the top 50 leaderboard is pretty much a list of people who don't play ESO anymore. Everyone between those two groups has a smorgasbord of reasons to choose from why they aren't in Cyrodiil.

As for other games, you can't change human behavior. Almost nobody will sign up to get their ass kicked every day, and only the few people who really care about community and the game will take the steps necessary to turn an impossible situation into a winnable one over a period of weaks. People that just say, "Oh just build up your force and come at us, it's easy" are full of shit. And I'm someone who spends a large amount of my gaming time building up a force and organizing/training them.

If you want players who are getting camped at their spawn or get their city destroyed to keep fighting and not throw in the towel you need to add very specific and focused features into PvP games that:
1. Reward underdogs (bonus xp/loot for fighting near your spawn).
2. Organized underdogs (Dynamic events that start only when an enemy is fighting near the spawn. Include some really tough NPCs for the players to rally around).
3. Buff underdogs (Just give a buff proportional to the population imbalance and/or the proximity to spawn).

In Shadowbane we actually petitioned the GMs to take control of boss NPC mobs and help our enemies fight against us. In WoW's battleground area in wotlk they had some kind of buff system for being outnumbered. In GW2 they added breakout events for home-areas.

Creslin · May 19, 2014

Ya ffxiv was a relaunch in the same sense dfuw was one, so kinda but not really.

Personally I am fine with f2p especially in pvp games where I am more positively impacted by a larger player base.

These "failed" games turning a profit as f2p is not that big a deal. No sane person is looking at swtor and thinking that turning a small profit at the expense of your brand and the opportunity cost of like 5 single player games is a great decision so I dont really buy the argument that they dont care about trying hard to make good games when they can make money with any old crap. they all want money hats and Lamborghinis not to limp across the 0 profit line.

Edit, , @tuco, totally agree the reason I click find match again after getting stomped in dota is because I know I have a reasonable chance of winning the next one. In mmos way too often they give too much momentum to the side that is winning. There is a reason the NFL made the hawks pick 32nd as a reward for winning. The problem eso has is unlike the NFL there or EVE or DF there is not much prestige for winning, so they are caught in a trap of giving the winners bonuses to reward them which makes the losers lose even more often. Players don't mind losing, but you also can't expect them to play if they have no hope of winning.

Big Flex · May 19, 2014

I guess I'm not the only bro that got the ban hammer for no reason. Still appealing this shit.

Dr Neir · May 19, 2014

Tuco_sl said:
I have no idea what you're talking about. Volcanic Rune works great.

Aspect runes. They are rare. I am not talking about how they work or used but in getting them.
Aspect is one of the rarest types out there. As a crafter its hell to just get them. They need to allow for more in the world. They should be almost common return on breaking. I have stacks of all the other runes, I refuse to pay almost a 1k to get a low lvl Apsect just to grind the skill!

I just want them to add more spawns node for runes, more importantly Aspect.

Fix this or FIRE the crafting DEV or Suit monkey in charge over this!!!

Secondary wish: Allow crafters to make world dropped sets. The current world/zone crafting ruin location sets are JUNK!!! I want to be able to make sets that are dropping from mobs! Sets like Knightmare and Warlock.

Trying not to go into a full rant with the crafting in this game! But the world dropped sets should have a chance to break into a trait gem to be used later and increase when wearing more than one of the same or activate once you wear X number of the same trait. This should have been done with the current traits. More you wear the higher the bonus.

Style books should have affected other crafting classes. Like Dunmer only having the higher% enchants for X glyph. They all get the same enchant but the best ones are from X style. To get all the best glyphs for the different types you would need to get all the books.

Style books should not have been dropped, it should have been tradable pages you collect to make the book. Lorebooks would have been useful in doing this vs just collecting them to either read or get the achievement unlock. Wasteful!

Third wish: Guild Store. No search? really?!!! No itemized sort drop downs for the different crafting classes, items and loot. I have a crappy addon helping for some form of search but its still crappy. There is no buying function either, so I cant posts a buy order for X items.
Personally, ask them who set this up, who signed off on it and walk over to those ppl and physically SMACK them in the face!!!

Nija · May 19, 2014

When you play games as long as most of us have you can sniff out the problems with core systems really quickly.

I don't think I'm alone when I say that it only took me a single beta weekend to figure out that there was a LOT of things wrong here that had no chance of being fixed.

Same thing is happening again with Wildstar. Same again with SWTOR, WAR, etc. The list goes on and on.

As someone mentioned above - they need to pull a FFXIV to fix this game. Put it on ice, relaunch at the console launch with another free month for PC players. Then again that's assuming that they can even acknowledge the issues with their core systems and figure out resolutions for those issues between then and now. A humble effort and a titanic effort, that's for sure.

Neki · May 19, 2014

You know what? Zenimax asking PRX on ways to improve the game now just confirms to me that this is just the PC gamers paying to beta test the game for them in ready for release on the PS4/Xbone.

Tuco · May 19, 2014

I very much doubt that was the intention. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Abefroman · May 19, 2014

Never say never.

Jackdaddio_sl · May 19, 2014

Creslin_sl said:
I really wonder how starcraft and dota maintain an audience without letting Timmy win, I bet it's cause Timmy doesn't actually quit the second he starts losing and he keeps playing as long as the fights are relatively fun and there is a realistic shot at winning next time, which are the two things mmos need to focus on, while keeping in mind that mmo mechanics are never going produce fights as reliably fun as other genres so they have to play to their strength, which is the persistent world.

I think it has more to do with SC and DOTA are exactly what I've been saying, small scale PvP. You don't have 200 people vs 200 people playing zergs. It has nothing to do with letting people win.

If you lose in those games, you suck. Not the design of the game, not because it takes you too long to get from A to B after you've died or you don't have a mount or have a slow one, and you get picked off on the way back. Not because of batswarm. Not because of limited or too many doors on a keep. Whatever the excuse or actual reason.

It's why I keep saying only EvE is the only real good example of mass PvP because the game itself is dedicated to it 95% throughout, so is DoTA, so is SC. ESO is not and that's why it suffers, especially because it catered to casuals who will leave when things go funky. Darkfall could have been that as well, but when you take almost 10 years to actually make your game...

Tuco_sl said:
As for other games, you can't change human behavior. Almost nobody will sign up to get their ass kicked every day, and only the few people who really care about community and the game will take the steps necessary to turn an impossible situation into a winnable one over a period of weaks. People that just say, "Oh just build up your force and come at us, it's easy" are full of shit. And I'm someone who spends a large amount of my gaming time building up a force and organizing/training them.

Frame this shit and send it to them. It's exactly what I've been saying.

There are lots of reason people will quit any game but with PvP, they will quit first and foremost if they are losing.. end of story. I know very few people into it for the sportsmanship angle (gg) that minds losing a lot. There's always a breaking point and casuals will hit that a lot faster than people who primarily PvP.

Pyros · May 19, 2014

Surely you're not saying dota/lol players don't find excuses for losing, right?

I don't think this type of game is popular because it's "fair", fuck no it's not, it's a team game in which most "Timmys" pub, whoever has the most retarded people loses most of the time(but not all the time), heroes/champions have definitive power differences between them and there's the whole concept of getting fed and snowballing.

They're simply popular because you play 20-40mins, and then that's it. You don't invest a long time in your character only to find out your class is shit, if you pick a hero you don't like, whatever, better luck next time, you don't invest huge amount of times in gearing up, you buy your shit as you go and if you don't get your right items, well better luck next time.

The zerg factor is also quite important for the normal casual player. In dota/lol, it's 5vs5(or less depending on the map but whatever), it's always "balanced" in that sense, even though a lot of the game is like 5 pro players vs 5 retarded paralyzed dogs, but eh, at least you don't get your shit pushed in by a raid of 25people all on vent while you're just running around on your own/following your own zerg. I guess that aspect is fair, in a terms of numbers.

Vitality · May 19, 2014

Tuco_sl said:
I very much doubt that was the intention. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Real quick though Tuco, didn't ZOS already consult PRX on many occasions on the PTS only to ignore nearly every last thing they told them? Did they tell you they were willing to listen this time?

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