Be VERY carefull what you wish for

Dimar

VlVEC wrote: »

Considering they have a PS4/Xbox One console launch upcoming I doubt this game is going away any time soon.

It may not go away, Elder Scrolls is too well liked, but it will die on the vine as a subscription based MMO. If you can't keep the casual players reasonably happy then the game will die or go FTP. The so called, "Hardcore Players" just don't support anything long, they'll look for a new challenge and ESO will pass away. I've been playing these games longer than most of you have been alive and I've watched decline of every game on the market. Most did what Zenimax is doing now, playing to special interests and not to the majority.

Sakiri

To clarify boredom from wow: when I ran out of character slots on my primary realms and only logged in to raid, I quit. I had more fun leveling my 22 characters than I did raiding my alt druid(main ele sham didnt get to go, resto druid did).

Here, Im having more fun leveling other faction alts than doing them on my main because vr is fundamentally flawed imo but not exactly in the difficulty department.

joshisanonymous

The game is too hard? .. Confused. Is this about the increased difficulty of VR mobs? Which was unintentional? And fixed within 24 hours?

I've told people this isn't the game for them, but only after trying to point out how it can be enjoyable. If they can't find a way to enjoy it, though, then it literally is not for them. What else is one to say?

If Zenimax decided that these people need to be catered to, I think we'd end up with a very washed down game, with a conglomerate of features from every other MMO all hastily thrown together without any real way to tie them together... You'd have Rift.

I, for one, think the only way a game can succeed is if the developers make the game that they want to make. I truly do not want them to start looking at target demographics and such to make decisions. If they continue making this the game that they want it to be, that demographic will appear and those people will stick around for the long term.

Of course that means that some people, maybe a lot of people, will not like the game at all. It may even mean the game completely fails. But, if they start trying to cater to the lowest common denominator, it will probably also fail, because it'll become a shell of what they really wanted to do, an echo of every other modern MMO that exists.

So, if you are one of those people who can't find enjoyment in this game. It's true, maybe it's not for you. That's unfortunate, but it's not so bad. It's not even necessarily bad for myself. If 10 million people play or 500k play, I'll still find just as much enjoyment in the game, and I'll continue finding enjoyment in it for a very long time, unlike that extra 100k subscribers who might've stayed for an extra month or two if Zenimax had only changed the game to match their specific needs, no matter how little it fit within their overall vision. On the flip side, if they made those changes, there's a good chance that I would leave, and they'd be left with a finnicky playerbase that is effectively dictating what they can do, as opposed to a loyal playbase that loves what Zenimax wants to do.

AngryNord

*tickles Sakiri*

Guppet

The really funny thing is that most forum goers are the more dedicated players. I think we probably all want it to succeed. I also think we are probably all skilled enough to complete the current VR content.

People say group play is what VR may require at times. That's fine, but the current group tools suck.

I spent all night last night looking for dungeon groups, I managed to get 2 dungeons complete. Both times we stopped looking for a tank (I heal so we were good sang way) and got a third DPS, then smashed the instances, I think we wiped twice during those two runs.

If content is to be kept hard, make grouping much much easier, was that not the point of mega servers?

Sakiri

AngryNord wrote: »

*tickles Sakiri*

Eeeeeeeep!!!!!!

joshisanonymous

Guppet wrote: »

The really funny thing is that most forum goers are the more dedicated players. I think we probably all want it to succeed. I also think we are probably all skilled enough to complete the current VR content.

People say group play is what VR may require at times. That's fine, but the current group tools suck.

I spent all night last night looking for dungeon groups, I managed to get 2 dungeons complete. Both times we stopped looking for a tank (I heal so we were good sang way) and got a third DPS, then smashed the instances, I think we wiped twice during those two runs.

If content is to be kept hard, make grouping much much easier, was that not the point of mega servers?

I don't think this is a problem with the tool, I think it's just that there is a limited number of players at the high VR levels right now. I had absolutely no trouble using finding a group with the tool up until about level 40. Then it became more difficult, but eventually I'd find that last tank or healer.

I have a hard time believing that there's some design issue that makes it hard to find a group, otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy at low levels.

Guppet

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

The really funny thing is that most forum goers are the more dedicated players. I think we probably all want it to succeed. I also think we are probably all skilled enough to complete the current VR content.

People say group play is what VR may require at times. That's fine, but the current group tools suck.

I spent all night last night looking for dungeon groups, I managed to get 2 dungeons complete. Both times we stopped looking for a tank (I heal so we were good sang way) and got a third DPS, then smashed the instances, I think we wiped twice during those two runs.

If content is to be kept hard, make grouping much much easier, was that not the point of mega servers?

I don't think this is a problem with the tool, I think it's just that there is a limited number of players at the high VR levels right now. I had absolutely no trouble using finding a group with the tool up until about level 40. Then it became more difficult, but eventually I'd find that last tank or healer.

I have a hard time believing that there's some design issue that makes it hard to find a group, otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy at low levels.

I was level 13!

Dimar

Guppet wrote: »

I don't think this is a problem with the tool, I think it's just that there is a limited number of players at the high VR levels right now. I had absolutely no trouble using finding a group with the tool up until about level 40. Then it became more difficult, but eventually I'd find that last tank or healer.


The problem is, if it becomes too hard to get to VR status, then there will be even fewer players to group with. When you remove the solo aspect from any game you limit it's ability to succeed. There just aren't very many group oriented MMO success stories. Most people want to be able to solo, if they can't they'll quit playing.

joshisanonymous

Guppet wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Guppet wrote: »

The really funny thing is that most forum goers are the more dedicated players. I think we probably all want it to succeed. I also think we are probably all skilled enough to complete the current VR content.

People say group play is what VR may require at times. That's fine, but the current group tools suck.

I spent all night last night looking for dungeon groups, I managed to get 2 dungeons complete. Both times we stopped looking for a tank (I heal so we were good sang way) and got a third DPS, then smashed the instances, I think we wiped twice during those two runs.

If content is to be kept hard, make grouping much much easier, was that not the point of mega servers?

I don't think this is a problem with the tool, I think it's just that there is a limited number of players at the high VR levels right now. I had absolutely no trouble using finding a group with the tool up until about level 40. Then it became more difficult, but eventually I'd find that last tank or healer.

I have a hard time believing that there's some design issue that makes it hard to find a group, otherwise it wouldn't have been so easy at low levels.

I was level 13!

Oh.. LOL. Sorry, I can't relate to this scenario at all then. I'm at a complete loss as to the explanation. Was this recently? Maybe it's because I only experienced the low levels during early access and a little after official launch? Those zones do seem to be a lot less populated when I revisit them now.

joshisanonymous

Dimar wrote: »

The problem is, if it becomes too hard to get to VR status, then there will be even fewer players to group with. When you remove the solo aspect from any game you limit it's ability to succeed. There just aren't very many group oriented MMO success stories. Most people want to be able to solo, if they can't they'll quit playing.

Are you having trouble soloing before veteran ranks? I'm honestly surprised if that's the case. Almost any build seems perfectly viable from 1-49, save for maybe a couple boss encounters where you may have to rethink how you're doing things if you have a really terrible build.

Edit: In fact, I'll add that I did all of Coldharbour with a completely random build that consisted of unleveled armor and skills that I just wanted to level up for potential future builds. I used full light armor with no passives and one DW bar, with these abilities: Haste, Aspect of Terror, Summon Shade, Siphoning Strikes, and Sparks. This was thrown together completely randomly and turned out to work just fine. I killed very slowly but never ran out of resources and never got hit 1-on-1. Fighting multiple mobs was pretty chaotic because I had to use Aspect of Terror a lot, but it was still doable. My point is not to say that I'm some great player that I can succeed with a crap build, I don't think that's the case, I'm just trying to say that even a completely unplanned build can work for the hardest pre-VR content.

Cogo

Reevster wrote: »

Same thing happened with EverQuest 1 , everything was going pretty good and then they came out with the Plains of Power expansion ( mainly to appease the hardcore/uber guilds at the time) well, then most the "average" players could not do the content . hell they couldn't even get past the trials that were required to enter the Plains, EQ1 died with that expansion.

Sure they tried to get back the players with this expansion or that one with adding stuff to help players do the hard content but it was too late the damage was done.

Its a tough job though to balance everything but if they can pull it off they could actually make this Game into a decent MMO, but there is still work to do for sure...

I am sorry, but you are incorrect about your assumption that Planes of power killed Everquest.

First of all, Planes of power opened up the Pane "hub", a better "nexus" zone if you will. Allowed everyone to teleport everywhere. The causal people loved that.

The zones in PoP was for all kinds of players. There was at least 5 zones what I can remember that you could enter. Given, most of them was NOT soloble and the casual player had to play longer then an hour a day to keep gaining AA.

Each of these first open zones had public raids in them on the bosses ther, that gave you access to the next zone if you where in the raid and beat the boss.

Yes, here, the public had HUUUUGE problems even getting to the boss, hehe.
Raid guild did not. We took out the first ones pretty easy. And they had decent upgrades mind you.

Then each person who had access to the next had to work with the raid time to gain access to all 4 Elemental planes. Then you needed to kill the main bosses in all 4 Elemental planes to get a "key" to the end game zone which was plane of power.

Plane of fire was kinda easy if you where a decent solo player. Remember a lot of none raider players making it there and kinda stayed there, cause of exp and loot.

For those who remember, Plane of earth. Counsil of the elders. not 1, but 12!!! bosses to fight at once, and they all dropped exactly 72 keys. One per character in the raid. This is one of the raids I still remember like it was yesterday, because you REALLY had every "group" do their job.

Before we got the whole guild keyed, We did kill the event and got 72 keys, but there was still members who did not have those keys.

So, we arranged with one of the guild that I as a guildleader had a dialog with (I do miss the REAL community of EQ).

They had the same problem. Needed 10 more keys or so. Same with us.
So. We took 2 x 72 raiders to plane of earth. I lead that whole thing.
We succeeded, but to this day I have never had that big of a headache and remembered I almost passed out when we where done.

Then, Plane of Time for all who had ALL elemental keys on their charater.
This system was not liked by the public, but wasnt the first time EQ used this type to gain access to a raid zone. Sleepers Tomb for example?

I do not remember how long it took, but a lot of whining from the majority of EQ players that they could not enter these new cool zones......SOE gave in and simply open them up, AND nerfing them a bit.

At this point EverQuest was still doing fine, but was suffering for older age....a game can evolve and go on, but everquest was limited by its engine among other things.

It was a mix of an older game, wish from a lot of players for something new, and the next expansion they released, what was is called? Alien creatures? The expansion made no sense. Sure, it was new, hard events, new loot and all that but was out of place. Also all MMORPG players are not an EQ fan.

So with the 2 above fact and the release of new MMORPGs like Anarchy Online and a few others I dont even recall cause they failed, but mostly in 2004, World of Warcraft got launched. When did EVE go online? 2003?

WoW was a new type of MMORPG AND already had a playerbase in their quite awesome Warcraft 1-2-3 series.

I myself played WoW from the start and did play it, with several breaks in between, for years. In the start WoW was nothing what it is today.

WoW took the MMORPG world pretty much. Think in year 2 or 3, they reached 11 Million current accounts, which still is the would record in any subscription game.

Then WoW started its own evolvement and journey and choose to make things easier and easier and easier and let the dmn game play for you with every single addon there was. Amazingly, quite a lot of players like this. Little effort, big fast rewards. For me, WoW is dead, but it is the best MMO in THAT type of MMO. Which is the complete opposite to ESO.

This is where Everquest started its downfall, and now is free to play, a 15 year old game. RIP my old friend.

Sorry if I sound like a know it all, but Everquest was my life blood....sort of what ESO is starting to sip into my bloodstream ;-).

skarvika

UR JUST SAYIN THIS BECAUSE YOU'RE A N00B! GIT GUD!!! PLAY SOMETHING ELSE CASUAL! LERN 2 PLAY!!!! UNSUB IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!!!111

andrantos

I remember having this discussion back in FF14 1.0. Eventually, Yoshida and his team were adding some very cool things to the game. However, everything required a full group of 8 players. EVERYTHING.

Want to finish a storyline.... gated by a raid instance

Want to wrap up some artifact armor quests.... gated by raid instance

Want to acquire a really cool weapon for your job/class?.... more raid instances!

Want to acquire that really cool artifact weapon?.... All those raid instances? You have to do them all over again and again and again.

Want to partake in the really cool new feature....either gated by a raid instance or the feature requires a full group just to partake.


Players like myself just thought it would be nice to have fun things to do when you don't have time to get a full-group of players together. I also learned that today's "hardcore" crowd is only "hardcore" in the sense that they invest a crap ton of the time into whatever game he/she is playing. They like things to be both repetitive and exceptionally time consuming (which is usually boring for us regular players who don't consume content as fast as they do).


Back when I played EQ, the hardcore crowd may play a lot, but these guys and gals were both skilled and exceptionally knowledgeable. They were also typically friendly, compassionate and fun to play with because they, you know, liked sharing their knowledge of the game with anyone that was interested and willing to learn.


I find that my biggest challenge with MMOs these days isn't the actual game but rather navigating some of really crummier bits of the MMO community, and that is neither fun nor engrossing.


That is my 2c rant for the day.

Cogo

Dimar wrote: »

VlVEC wrote: »

Considering they have a PS4/Xbox One console launch upcoming I doubt this game is going away any time soon.

It may not go away, Elder Scrolls is too well liked, but it will die on the vine as a subscription based MMO. If you can't keep the casual players reasonably happy then the game will die or go FTP. The so called, "Hardcore Players" just don't support anything long, they'll look for a new challenge and ESO will pass away. I've been playing these games longer than most of you have been alive and I've watched decline of every game on the market. Most did what Zenimax is doing now, playing to special interests and not to the majority.

ESO have tons of content/features/stuff to do for the casual player.

Please be specific, what is NOT to like for a casual player?

And if your answer is that you cant do events/things that require either a group, or time, like looking for skyshards without the addon, Trade skills and 50 other things that you can't do an hour a day.....then the only type of MMO that can offer instant gameplay, easy fast stuff and log 1 hour later with 3 achivemets, few epics and so called Quests done. Oh and gained several levels in that hour.
The a MMO type like WoW or the "I have no bloody clue why people even look at this game" Wildstar is soon out. Both those games gives you a lot, for little effort and time.

You can do most things in ESO, but you have to understand the fundamental core of the game. You have the world of choices, but your time, skill, interest and investment in researching on your own, is what makes ESO so great!

Yes, a casual player will not do and reach things as fast or even be able to do some things, but that is by design.

You have loads of things as a casual player. Just dont look at what others are doing...explore yourself?

aleister

Like PVP, hardcore challenge should be consensual. Let the player seek it out if they want it, but let it be a choice and don't block them from progressing in the game (if you insist on making a main story line integral to this) by forcing it on them.

WoW was not perfect, but it got this right at least. There were challenges if you sought them out, otherwise it turned the MMO world on its head by being something that everyone could play and succeed at. This allowed WoW to go on to be the highest grossing video game of all time ($10 billion+) and the most-subscribed MMO ever. To this day, WoW still has over 7 million subscribers. They obviously got something right.

Skyrim was also no slouch sales-wise, and by leveraging the popularity of the Elder Scrolls series, ESO has much the same opportunity that Blizzard hard building on the Warcraft series.

temjiu

theyancey wrote: »

I agree with the OP. This is am online story driven game set in a very specific universe that has a large and dedicated following. Elder Scrolls games are not shooters. A person who buys Oblivion expecting Halo will be disappointed. Likewise anyone expecting ESO to be WoW or some such won't be happy here either. When this concept began to gather steam there were some who wanted co-op Skyrim instead of an MMORPG. This is not that game. It was never intended to be and never will be. If I had to compare it to something it would be LOTRO.

This brings us to Harmon's cogent statements. This game was built to engage Old and new ES fans and hopefully to be a vehicle to attract many more in the future. It is a game that should appeal and be playable by all of them. It was stressed by ZOS during the design phase that the game would be approachable by all and would be built for both group and solo players. Anyone can play and with a modicum of effort and a short learning curve be able to enjoy the game's content and STORY. Take away the low hanging game fruit that allows the newbie, the disabled, the aged, or the casual player to fully complete and enjoy playing ESO and you remove the salaries for devs, mods, servers, etc. The game shrinks with the collapsing player base. In the end all that would be left is a burned out cinder of an F2P populated by a handful of self proclaimed uber gamers who sit around bemoaning the lack of new content and fellow players. I do not think that such a suicidal business model would sit well with Zenimax's shareholders. For us ES fans it would represent the final victory of the daedra. Even at this early date these forums read like something concocted by Sheogorath.

I could not have said it better. I never liked EVE Online, but I knew EXACTLY what it was going in. it was a small budget, niche designed sandbox game. they didn't have to appeal to a larger audience because they didn't care. It wasn't my kind of game, but I respected that a great deal. and I know people that do enjoy it. And the reality of it is that it is brutal to new players, so its population attrition ratio is horrible...it will keep running as long as it has older players who will continue to play it, influx of new players is minimal at best. But again, it's small budget, so that matter impacts them far less.

Zenimin wanted to play with the big boys. they advertised their game as open, accessible, and...well...like an ES product. when it's not. its an everquest redone, with an ES-like game tagged on the front to fool people. its big budget...it NEEDS to appeal to a larger audience, and if they don't, I doubt they'll be able to keep their doors open.

I really wonder if they are hoping that people will be fooled enough with the first 1/3 of the game (1-50) that they will get enough "intro players" cycling through the game to keep it alive till it hits Consoles. sort of like a gamble on "how many casual players can we fool into buying the game so we can keep the doors open for the bulldogs".

Vlaxitov

Cogo wrote: »

I am gonna be aggrogant with you all here who I probebly like the same game as. Everquest was the first MMORPG with the daggerfall world. Open world. No main story. You played.

Everquest is still to this date, the best raiding game ever made. Not even WoW beat Everquest when it comes to the compex, different, tactics, setup, teamwork and the coolest of all, OPEN loot. EQ invented DKP, something I always miss in every MMO I play since all other loot systems simply is not as fair as DKP (pure dkp)

Eve, is a massivly successful player driven game. The best ever where players does the game more or less. They have thrown in some raids called "fleets"?, but still the big part is pvp, economy and trading. No one comes close to that type of market.

ESO is a mix of several games. Wide world as EQ, player driven market as EVE, as little as possible in common with WoW!

ESO is the new breed/type of MMO. Never seen and tried before. Sure, the combat system was in conan, Pvp simular to Daoc and somewhat warhammer.

ESO took the good part, based it on Elder scrolls and here we are. Already something I call a fantastic game, with a huge potential. And a company who doesnt do the mistake SWTOR did and made a good game, with no future plans.

ESO have plans a year ahead, for tomrrow, for next week, ideas and features already released but not in detail and when. Like thieves guild and a justice system.

Everquest had an early version of this future planing with when they release the next expansion and how it goes togather with the game. Also the many classes and races in EQ where lovely, whernt they?

Even here ESO is new. There are classes, or are they? You start the story of you. Sure, you pick a race, fair enough, but whatever "class" you pick, you will become what you are good at, and you are doing and ego, what YOU find enjoyable.

I still only seen the 12 man raid in short youtube but that looks nice.
I am still more impressed with the outstanding story/quest and AI in INSTANCES. Hell, a group of mobs there can be smarter then some groups of players. Thats also something I havnt seen WORKING before.

And each day, and I might preach to the quire here, each day almost, I find something new. May it be a differnt quest. Item, some way t do tradeskill I did not know of and already NEW THINGS, which Zenimax puts in the game.

ESO is what a lot of old school EQ players been looking for, but also a whole new player base that would like these RPG games, but gets scared off WoW, EQ is to old, EVE is to specific and quite hard. Also the pvp part.

ESO, is, the new. I think when the game rolling like EQ/WoW did, that it works and they can patch a broken patch later the same day....then there are a whole new type of players out there who wants this. Maybe they played skyrim or something. I also think the age variation is muuuuch higher here. In a month, I wpuldnt be surprised if the medium age is 25-30. Even 40 years old are showing interest here.

I type to much about subjects I like and believe in.

Tell me that the goal of ESO is to be highest level and highest veteran,and play there. I am enjoying every level, every part of Tamriel. Not just high lvl, do unque tradeskil items and kill a demigod.

There are at least 50 other things to do, along with stuff we do not know yet.
There already are dialogs where the answer or question you choose, can have completely different effects, rewards, endings.

Few weeks ago, I stumbled into a dark elf small village, where argonians where slaves! I tried to find some quest to free them. I didnt. I did find a evil looking dark elf who wanted to buy my soul for 500 gold. As an orc I refused, even if I am still very curious what that was about!

This is ESO, the new type of MMO.

Your epic novel length walls of drivel really make the case for these forums needing an ignore user function.

Laura

what exactly is hard core about ESO? seems pretty easy.

I know kids want like everything handed to them now but... even WoW doesn't do that completely yet.

ZiRM

I don't like telling people to leave, go find another game etc. That's for them to decide on their own. I do see it happening alot on game forums though and if it was my game/company I would squash that with the biggest hammer I could find. It's not good for BU$iNE$$

The_Tip

The first 50 levels, and main story has an end game which will take you a good 40-100 hours if you play it like a traditional Elder Scrolls game and solo, a bad build might need help on a few bosses and the GROUP dungeons that were designed with groups in mind. I haven't had too many issues with grouping, and the ones I did have were minor and fixed rather quickly.

Once you hit the VR levels, from the way they explained it anyways, you were supposed to trend towards grouping, and utilizing the 5 guilds you can join to finish quest's, adventure zones and trials, if you dont like grouping, and can't stand the fact you can't solo everything on youre own (watch sword art online lol) then you did not pay attention to how they marketed the game, and most content past the end of game story line probably isn't going to be your cup of tea.

Vlaxitov

The_Tip wrote: »

The first 50 levels, and main story has an end game which will take you a good 40-100 hours if you play it like a traditional Elder Scrolls game and solo, a bad build might need help on a few bosses and the GROUP dungeons that were designed with groups in mind. I haven't had too many issues with grouping, and the ones I did have were minor and fixed rather quickly.

Once you hit the VR levels, from the way they explained it anyways, you were supposed to trend towards grouping, and utilizing the 5 guilds you can join to finish quest's, adventure zones and trials, if you dont like grouping, and can't stand the fact you can't solo everything on youre own (watch sword art online lol) then you did not pay attention to how they marketed the game, and most content past the end of game story line probably isn't going to be your cup of tea.

You were never supposed to have to group to get common land quests done unless it specified otherwise. This is exactly why they discern the difference with craglorn and call it an "adventure zone." Your argument is invalid.

Evergreen

hamon wrote: »

just a word to the wise for all you forum rambo's who keep saying " this games not for you" or " sorry the games to hard go find another game" and other glib idiotic responses to folk percieving (justified or not) the game is getting too buggy/hard/non fun.

ive seen this pattern in almost every MMO thats failed

1/ all the "hardcores" say stuff like " go play another game then " " this games not for the likes of you"

You really nailed a key insight right here. Elitists just might be the most toxic part of an mmorpg.

Anyone remember LFG [_________] Be Geared and Know Fights

steveb16_ESO46

VlVEC wrote: »

Considering they have a PS4/Xbox One console launch upcoming I doubt this game is going away any time soon.

Won't ever happen.

Korah_Eaglecry

hamon wrote: »

just a word to the wise for all you forum rambo's who keep saying " this games not for you" or " sorry the games to hard go find another game" and other glib idiotic responses to folk percieving (justified or not) the game is getting too buggy/hard/non fun.

ive seen this pattern in almost every MMO thats failed

1/ all the "hardcores" say stuff like " go play another game then " " this games not for the likes of you"
2/ fast forward a month or 2 " my guilds dying" "where is everyone " ,, " is this game dead"
3/ finally " come back its fun now , they fixed stuff"

just a warning from the history of failed MMO's , name one "hardcore" MMO thats survived in the last 10 years?
conversely name some who pleased the hardcore for a few months then died due to alienating the "average" players

MMO's need to be balanced around the majority of its player base in terms of what they percieve to be a fair and fun experience. harcores can make it more difficult and challenging if they wish (but they dont, they just want to make it as easy as possible otherwise why would they ALWAYS play the most OP builds , classes)

anything else is a recipe for failure. you dont alienate the largest section of your customer base and survive long..

food for thought

1.) If the Forums is where the Devs are gauging the absolute needs of the community..Thats on them not the Forum-goers.
2.) The majority of the Games Community has nothing to do with the Forums or entirely unaware of the day to day complaints being made. If theres a drop off in the population after two months its on the Devs not the community.
3.) Blaming those who are strictly against change, because that change manipulates this game into a cookie-cutter mold, is scapegoating a fraction of the community for something that strictly falls on the Devs.

If this game fails its because to the lack of foresight, proper planning, testing and constructive changes to the game to improve it. Not because theres 'hardcores' telling a bunch of flavor of the month gamers to pipe down about things that are here to stay.

andrantos

Now, I do think there should be content that requires quite a bit of co-operation amongst fellow players. Typically, players tend to think this content is best served to the hard-core crowd as they typically have the resources to engage this content on a very regular basis. I don't have a problem with this type of content and do enjoy partaking in this content when the time is there. These types of experiences are typically challenging and rewarding in many ways if designed well.

However, in today's MMO, entire end-games revolve around this type of content. You work your way through a repeated set of content... over and over until you've acquired gear such that you can move onto the next set of content.

This is bad as now all end-game progression revolves around content that I may only be able to engage in once week. This type of content also tends to attract some really crummy people with really crummy attitudes.

In a perfect MMO, the end-game would have a variety of challenging, engaging activities that facilitate some form of progression for a variety of playstyles. I only have 30min? No worries, I can login to the game I really love to play and have fun, engaging, meaningful play session. Have hours and hours to burn? Now its time to gather some friends and guildies and see if we can work our way through challenging, fun group-based content.

Salsadoom

Course, the counter issue is when it is too easy people max out the content and then complain there is nothing new then leave. Which makes the company push content too fast..which leads to bugs...which leads to angry customers..

It's a balancing act, every MMO is different because they attract different crowds, the trick is finding the balance to each specific game of the majority of the people that will likely stay. There is a population of MMOers who play an MMO for a short time, beat it, complain there isn't enough content, and then leave as a standard operating procedure.

So it's not as simple as 'play to the majority'. It's 'play to the majority of long term customers' which is sometimes difficult to see.


(and if you really are interested in appealing to Hardcore and Non, you make the primary quest line Non Hardcore and have a secondary quest line and deep wilderness areas that is Hardcore)

Blackwidow

Cogo wrote: »

ESO is a mix of several games. Wide world as EQ, player driven market as EVE, as little as possible in common with WoW!

You never played EQ if you think ESO is an open world like EQ.

I saw your post about how you have not lost anyone from your guild except two players and you get 3 people a week.

You must have the only guild in ESO that is not losing people.

This IS a PC game.

Then why is the GUI designed as a console?

Orizuru

Straw Man Argument. I've seen this pattern in every MMO, regardless of success.

Attorneyatlawl

Crassius wrote: »

Food for thought? Nah, that's just common sense. Unfortunately, it's the least common of all senses.

Double in MMO's.

Yup. The problem is when they go too far and start stripping out the MMO features to the extent that those with less experience in this genre don't understand why the game isn't engaging them, yet obvious things to veterans like having nameplate options with guild tags to help foster community, and being able to move your UI elements around, display health #'s on your bars optionally, etc. are no-brainers. It's a definite balance but they've gone too far frankly in the "'mursion" direction without even having options like nameplates doable through addons.