Going to agree with what Bowen has said. My brother and a few of my friends were in the beta and while they may buy I have no doubt they will move on in a few weeks or months. Even outside of WoW the mmo market is pretty saturated these days. Trying to shove one more traditional mmo into the mix is just bad business. I think WoW's longest lasting contribution to the genre may actually end up being phasing and instancing. It allows the developer to choose exactly how many people are in a particular point (location wise, quest wise, etc). Although I have yet to see anyone implement it in a way other then WoW I think it has great potential.
Gamertag: KL Retribution
PSN:Furlion
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited December 2013
SKYRIM has such a large and devoted fanbase that it's easy to see a SKYRIM MMO securing a profitable enough core of players to hang around for a while, as long as it's properly and regularly supported and updated. I don't think those people are really looking for groundbreaking MMO design.
SKYRIM has such a large and devoted fanbase that it's easy to see a SKYRIM MMO securing a profitable enough core of players to hang around for a while, as long as it's properly and regularly supported and updated. I don't think those people are really looking for groundbreaking MMO design.
This is true of a brand like Final Fantasy, because people are attached to the brand itself. The lore, the tropes, all of that is stuff people are passionate about.
Elder Scrolls is something else. People are far more attached to the open, dynamic gameplay than any particular element of the TES universe. I don't think there's enough pure brand loyalty to overcome dull gameplay.
Even people who LIKE Elder Scrolls games are used to dull gameplay. Honestly, if any MMO can succeed in spite of some bad combat, it'd be Elder Scrolls, because that's what people expect from the franchise. I love Morrowind and Skyrim, but it wasn't because of good combat. It was for the exploration and open endedness of the games. I've many doubts they can recapture that stuff with an MMO, and I think the game will probably end up sucking, but we'll have to see.
If they capture the feeling of exploration with tons of little optional dungeons to explore and all that and make it feel more sandboxy and not too theme parky I think Elder Scrolls fans will love it.
In A normal elder scrolls game you're an adventurer who dares to go into deep places and explore things that most will not dare to do. You are intrepid and seek fortune among the elite of the world.
In TESO you and hundreds of other people are on a race to get to that chest before anyone else. It's like the amazing race version of an Elder Scrolls game.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Seems like having hourly/daily tough-spawns would help foster groups. Need to kill the demon scouring Whiterun's lumber camp? Grab some buddies from your friend's list or some stranger in the (non-instanced) town and go off and kill him. Phase it so each local group only sees themselves, or have the solo person just ignore that area in general.
Legit that took me 3 seconds to conceptualize. Build it into the phasing system you should already be using, script the event, boom done. You probably wouldn't even need to get programmers involved if you designed the scripting and phasing system sufficiently well from the get go. You could hire some game masters to design this shit.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Honestly, I've always thought TES was just an herbalism and alchemy simulator.
I feel like it's merely a vehicle for hilarious nudie mods.
If your game doesn't crash after 20-30 minutes of uptime, you're Skyriming wrong.
Wait, what? My Skryim doesn't crash, and can go all day, and I've got ~200 mods running.
So. There's that.
All of the Bethesda games start to get crashy when you have too many textures and mesh files packed in the mods folder. It's not XXX number of mods, you can have a few mods but if they have too many alternate graphics things get really unstable. This has been true since at least FO3 if not earlier, and it's also true with Skyrim.
Even people who LIKE Elder Scrolls games are used to dull gameplay. Honestly, if any MMO can succeed in spite of some bad combat, it'd be Elder Scrolls, because that's what people expect from the franchise. I love Morrowind and Skyrim, but it wasn't because of good combat. It was for the exploration and open endedness of the games. I've many doubts they can recapture that stuff with an MMO, and I think the game will probably end up sucking, but we'll have to see.
If they capture the feeling of exploration with tons of little optional dungeons to explore and all that and make it feel more sandboxy and not too theme parky I think Elder Scrolls fans will love it.
The bold part is my biggest concern. In every ES game (as well as FO3 and NV), after finishing the beginning sequences, I always look at the initial quest marker and literally point myself in the opposite direction and start walking. The story and lore are nice, and I do my best to follow them, but the game is exploration porn to me. I was damn near 80 hours in Skyrim before I even thought about going to High Hrothgar. So playing a game where I'm constantly being told where I can and cannot travel (especially through invisible walls and quest gating) ruins any bit of exploration to me. Not to mention the 50 other mooks speed-running by me in every cave.
For those who still haven't gotten into a beta, or just want more of that, try Neverwinter. It's been out a while now, I just tried it on Steam. The best comparison I can make for it is a worse ESO with some player created content. Not that I would know anything about ESO, of course.
If I'd been in a beta weekend, this^^^. All the while I would've been thinking how nice an ES version of Neverwinter it was, but still not the ES I wanted. Stupid empty crates and gazillion xxxxHunts-Darklyxxxx argonians running around.
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
I will summarize the internet's thoughts the best possible on this topic:
Why you no make skyrim multiplayer DLC and tie it into steam/PSN/xbox?
GTA5 basically, I guess, slightly modify it though.
Yeah, everybody I know who likes Elder Scrolls has at some point gone "Man it would be fucking rad if 2, 3, or 4 of us could play this game together and just explore and fight shit and kill dragons and run around," but never been "Man I wish they'd make an MMO out of this so I could grind levels and then get raid drops."
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I'd rather run around with a small party of people I somewhat know than any amount of Douchey McTwelveyearolds. It's basically how I play any other MMO anyway.
I will summarize the internet's thoughts the best possible on this topic:
Why you no make skyrim multiplayer DLC and tie it into steam/PSN/xbox?
GTA5 basically, I guess, slightly modify it though.
Yeah, everybody I know who likes Elder Scrolls has at some point gone "Man it would be fucking rad if 2, 3, or 4 of us could play this game together and just explore and fight shit and kill dragons and run around," but never been "Man I wish they'd make an MMO out of this so I could grind levels and then get raid drops."
Imagine if instead of the massive development budget for a new MMO they had just created a multiplayer support version of Skyrim. Yes, it would have required development time, coding, work, money etc. But a lot less. A lot less.
How many people would shell out again for a multi-player version of Skyrim?
I will summarize the internet's thoughts the best possible on this topic:
Why you no make skyrim multiplayer DLC and tie it into steam/PSN/xbox?
GTA5 basically, I guess, slightly modify it though.
Yeah, everybody I know who likes Elder Scrolls has at some point gone "Man it would be fucking rad if 2, 3, or 4 of us could play this game together and just explore and fight shit and kill dragons and run around," but never been "Man I wish they'd make an MMO out of this so I could grind levels and then get raid drops."
Imagine if instead of the massive development budget for a new MMO they had just created a multiplayer support version of Skyrim. Yes, it would have required development time, coding, work, money etc. But a lot less. A lot less.
How many people would shell out again for a multi-player version of Skyrim?
I know I would.
I would pretty much buy any DLC for Skyrim they put out. I logged hundreds of hours in that game, and I want to support the developers. It's a shame they've stopped, but they've got to have the time to develop the next game.
Since those developers are not responsible for TESO, I don't feel conflicted about not buying it.
If I were someone who may have seen the game, I might say that it would be nothing short of a miracle if the game was ready by then. But I'm definitely not, so I wouldn't be able to say that.
If I were someone who may have seen the game, I might say that it would be nothing short of a miracle if the game was ready by then. But I'm definitely not, so I wouldn't be able to say that.
I'll say it. It's not ready for that in the least.
Edit: They were obviously not in beta mode as much as they were in stress test mode. I doubt they have much intention to change much if the release date is April.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I have to assume some kind of fuzzy accounting method is what makes the "30 days free" thing so attractive, even when it's a method that has failed the last several major MMOs to use it (XIV 2.0 notwithstanding). I guess if you can sell a buttload of copies at launch and claim "XXX players online at once!" you get a prize, even if 90% leave once you ask for more money.
Well they don't need to charge $15 for the first month because they got $60 for the first month from everybody who bought the game. Obviously retention matters, but the reason the first month is free is because people are already buying the box and if you were like "Buy our game for $60 and pay $15 on day 1 too," everybody would just go "Fuck you i'm not paying 75 for the first month." It's basically just a way to let players feel like they're getting free time when in fact they paid 4 months worth of time for the first month. =P
Well I just watched a lot of beta videos and the game looks better than I expected (I expected very very bad things). It's not really doing anything super exciting but the presentation of the game (visuals, quest VA, music, intro etc) I saw was neat, I thought.
Animations weren't the best though unfortunately, and I'm not sure how old the beta videos I saw were but the game could obviously still use a lot of polishing
I'll go ahead and say it, I did like the beta. But I didn't love it, and to get my MMO time nowadays you gotta wow me. Wildstar will get some of my money, because the humor and art and "Space!" appeal to me. TESO is kind of doomed from the start, the exploration of ES is partially so amazing imo because you're doing it on your own. You, solitary (insert race) hodge-podge adventurer saw a cave, jumped in, ran from some derpy devolved elves and fell off a ledge to land on some mechano-spider. You might be in over your head. Your pulse is probably racing-either because you're not at the level you want to be for this or because this is paydirt: with all the materials/loots you were hoping to find to start crafting your empire. But its just you and your wits and skills in a deep dark place (or exchange all this for something appropriate in a forest or atop a mountain somewhere). That's what has always made ES fun for me.
That was not the beta, with every place static and every crate/urn opened and empty. What really annoyed me was the lack of movement on the NPCs. It's a little thing, but ES games always have paths their NPCs travel. Heck, even Morrowind's mudcrab would wander about until you sold him too much stuff and he was weighted down to a specific spot for the rest of his days. TESO felt more to me like WOW/SWTOR/GW2 were everyone has a single, static spot they never leave unless a quest phases them into movement.
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
Yes, actually. A large part of my hesitancy to play other games, even F2P titles, is the huge investment I've already made in that exact game. I've about 6 or 8 max characters in that game with 6 yrs or so of on and off again play. I have as many max toons in SWTOR, but since the games are so similar play-wise I 'devolve' to WOW because of the larger time investment I've spent there. WOW's still a good game, even though it can get stale quickly. It's tough, but new games have to be at least as good as WOW and better to make me want to shift. Or they just have to be 'different' enough.
Neverwinter was fun, but I didn't see enough to dazzle me into a long term commitment. Which is fine, since its F2P and can be picked up again on a whim. Honestly, I think that's ultimately a drawback to the F2P market. Their games often feel disposable, you've very little investment initially and that's one less hook. I prefer that, but the game then has to work a lot harder to keep me in it. TESO is doomed for me, unless they change things and hit me sideways somehow. Since the ES experience will be so much better with an actual ES console (or standalone anyway) title, I'm probably going to pass on this and wait for that.
“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.” ... also, "Ah, turn blue!"
XBOne | LyrKing
I saw something earlier today about their spending hitting $200 million. I guess we were wrong, they're not trying to be WoW, they're trying to be TOR.
Posts
Phasing and instancing solve this problem completely.
PSN:Furlion
This is true of a brand like Final Fantasy, because people are attached to the brand itself. The lore, the tropes, all of that is stuff people are passionate about.
Elder Scrolls is something else. People are far more attached to the open, dynamic gameplay than any particular element of the TES universe. I don't think there's enough pure brand loyalty to overcome dull gameplay.
If they capture the feeling of exploration with tons of little optional dungeons to explore and all that and make it feel more sandboxy and not too theme parky I think Elder Scrolls fans will love it.
In TESO you and hundreds of other people are on a race to get to that chest before anyone else. It's like the amazing race version of an Elder Scrolls game.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I call that my garage.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I feel like it's merely a vehicle for hilarious nudie mods.
If your game doesn't crash after 20-30 minutes of uptime, you're Skyriming wrong.
Legit that took me 3 seconds to conceptualize. Build it into the phasing system you should already be using, script the event, boom done. You probably wouldn't even need to get programmers involved if you designed the scripting and phasing system sufficiently well from the get go. You could hire some game masters to design this shit.
Wait, what? My Skryim doesn't crash, and can go all day, and I've got ~200 mods running.
So. There's that.
All of the Bethesda games start to get crashy when you have too many textures and mesh files packed in the mods folder. It's not XXX number of mods, you can have a few mods but if they have too many alternate graphics things get really unstable. This has been true since at least FO3 if not earlier, and it's also true with Skyrim.
The bold part is my biggest concern. In every ES game (as well as FO3 and NV), after finishing the beginning sequences, I always look at the initial quest marker and literally point myself in the opposite direction and start walking. The story and lore are nice, and I do my best to follow them, but the game is exploration porn to me. I was damn near 80 hours in Skyrim before I even thought about going to High Hrothgar. So playing a game where I'm constantly being told where I can and cannot travel (especially through invisible walls and quest gating) ruins any bit of exploration to me. Not to mention the 50 other mooks speed-running by me in every cave.
Basically, I keep thinking this...
Why you no make skyrim multiplayer DLC and tie it into steam/PSN/xbox?
GTA5 basically, I guess, slightly modify it though.
XBOne | LyrKing
Yeah, everybody I know who likes Elder Scrolls has at some point gone "Man it would be fucking rad if 2, 3, or 4 of us could play this game together and just explore and fight shit and kill dragons and run around," but never been "Man I wish they'd make an MMO out of this so I could grind levels and then get raid drops."
Imagine if instead of the massive development budget for a new MMO they had just created a multiplayer support version of Skyrim. Yes, it would have required development time, coding, work, money etc. But a lot less. A lot less.
How many people would shell out again for a multi-player version of Skyrim?
I know I would.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
Mememememe.
Also it'd probably support modding for online too, which would be hilarious.
I would pretty much buy any DLC for Skyrim they put out. I logged hundreds of hours in that game, and I want to support the developers. It's a shame they've stopped, but they've got to have the time to develop the next game.
Since those developers are not responsible for TESO, I don't feel conflicted about not buying it.
That would be fun as all fuck.
I'd drop $60 on it, yesterday. Oh there's my girlfriend too, $120.
elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/12/11/eso-release-plans-announced
If I were someone who may have seen the game, I might say that it would be nothing short of a miracle if the game was ready by then. But I'm definitely not, so I wouldn't be able to say that.
I'll say it. It's not ready for that in the least.
Edit: They were obviously not in beta mode as much as they were in stress test mode. I doubt they have much intention to change much if the release date is April.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I wouldn't be surprised if TESO goes that route even quicker.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Release Date: Dec, 20, 2011
F2P: Nov 15, 2012
I expect:
Release Date: April 4, 2014
F2P: June 1, 2014
They need to see how many people close their accounts after the free month.
Animations weren't the best though unfortunately, and I'm not sure how old the beta videos I saw were but the game could obviously still use a lot of polishing
That was not the beta, with every place static and every crate/urn opened and empty. What really annoyed me was the lack of movement on the NPCs. It's a little thing, but ES games always have paths their NPCs travel. Heck, even Morrowind's mudcrab would wander about until you sold him too much stuff and he was weighted down to a specific spot for the rest of his days. TESO felt more to me like WOW/SWTOR/GW2 were everyone has a single, static spot they never leave unless a quest phases them into movement.
XBOne | LyrKing
Pun intended?
Neverwinter was fun, but I didn't see enough to dazzle me into a long term commitment. Which is fine, since its F2P and can be picked up again on a whim. Honestly, I think that's ultimately a drawback to the F2P market. Their games often feel disposable, you've very little investment initially and that's one less hook. I prefer that, but the game then has to work a lot harder to keep me in it. TESO is doomed for me, unless they change things and hit me sideways somehow. Since the ES experience will be so much better with an actual ES console (or standalone anyway) title, I'm probably going to pass on this and wait for that.
XBOne | LyrKing
XBOne | LyrKing