Has Paul Sage left ZoS?

Vizier · August 2015

Honestly, they need new blood, because what they've done to date is lack-luster and doesn't do TES justice. The vision has been unclear. The direction the game has taken has been inconsistent AND ZoS has had a sloven approach to balance and fixes.

JD2013 · August 2015

Well, the new Creative Director Rich Lambert did a bunch of work on Oblivion, so ... there's that.

Rosveen · August 2015

JD2013 wrote: »

Well, the new Creative Director Rich Lambert did a bunch of work on Oblivion, so ... there's that.

Is this supposed to be a good or a bad thing?

RDMyers65b14_ESO · August 2015

Rosveen wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

Well, the new Creative Director Rich Lambert did a bunch of work on Oblivion, so ... there's that.

Is this supposed to be a good or a bad thing?

It's a great thing! Nothing against Mr Sage, but the game needs to be more Elder Scrollsy. Rich has already shown that he is actually listening to the forums... er, lurking. This appears to be a win-win situation. I wish Mr Sage the best in his new endeavors.

Alucardo · August 2015

Rosveen wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

Well, the new Creative Director Rich Lambert did a bunch of work on Oblivion, so ... there's that.

Is this supposed to be a good or a bad thing?

Oblivion was so good my girlfriend and I would fight over it so much on the Xbox that I went out on bought it for the PC as well.
Unfortunately when Skyrim came out same thing happened, and we figured it best to just break up, which we did. I thought it would have been nice to find someone who appreciated TES as much as me, but I thought wrong.

Kupoking · August 2015

So far I am happy with Rich Lambert's work. Ive seen a change in how the game is being oriented and that is a big +.

Also he reads the forum. Huge +++.

Was extremely skeptical at first though.

Sausage · August 2015

Cody wrote: »

so is this part of the reason this game started on its downhill slope?

That started way earlier, I still cant believe Bethesda showed green light for Themepark ES game, later added PVP to it, after making 15+ year of open world games. This should have had GTA5 kind of success.

Rosveen · August 2015

Sausage wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

so is this part of the reason this game started on its downhill slope?

That started way earlier, I still cant believe Bethesda showed green light for Themepark ES game, later added PVP to it, after making 15+ year of open world games. This should have had GTA5 kind of success.

There was no "later", ESO was designed with PvP from the start - and it's a good thing. Having some form of PvP is great for an MMO, it keeps people interested far longer than repeating the same set of dungeons ever could. Of course, everyone has a different idea what the right design for ESO would be...

Sausage · August 2015

Rosveen wrote: »

Sausage wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

so is this part of the reason this game started on its downhill slope?

That started way earlier, I still cant believe Bethesda showed green light for Themepark ES game, later added PVP to it, after making 15+ year of open world games. This should have had GTA5 kind of success.

There was no "later", ESO was designed with PvP from the start - and it's a good thing. Having some form of PvP is great for an MMO, it keeps people interested far longer than repeating the same set of dungeons ever could. Of course, everyone has a different idea what the right design for ESO would be...

No way this game started as PVP in mind. Cyrodil isnt even nearly there, does Cyrodil look like 5+ year thing for you? I bet some indie dev can make that for 5-10 mill. That what makes this even more interesting, did Bethesda start this themselves, when they realized they are too off, so they hired Zen, who take the blame. Nevertheless this whole project is one big downhill.

Callous2208 · August 2015

Everyone talking about ESO crashing and burning and this downhill slope for a terrible game. Meanwhile, I'm over here uninstalling all my old standard go-to mmos and putting more hours into Tamriel than is acceptable for a grown man. I left for a while a few months after launch due to pve balance. Now that I'm back, there's nothing better IMHO. I've tried them all, this is a darn good game. From my perspective, on the NA-PC side, looks to have a healthy population. Granted there are issues, like in all games, I guess they just are major enough to garner any reaction from me. I love all of the single player TES games. I love mmo's. This is a good mix of both worlds to me. Perhaps I'm just easy to please, but a steam library of failed mmo adventures would say otherwise.

Rosveen · August 2015

Sausage wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Sausage wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

so is this part of the reason this game started on its downhill slope?

That started way earlier, I still cant believe Bethesda showed green light for Themepark ES game, later added PVP to it, after making 15+ year of open world games. This should have had GTA5 kind of success.

There was no "later", ESO was designed with PvP from the start - and it's a good thing. Having some form of PvP is great for an MMO, it keeps people interested far longer than repeating the same set of dungeons ever could. Of course, everyone has a different idea what the right design for ESO would be...

No way this game started as PVP in mind. Cyrodil isnt even nearly there, does Cyrodil look like 5+ year thing for you? I bet some indie dev can make that for 5-10 mill. That what makes this even more interesting, did Bethesda start this themselves, when they realized they are too off, so they hired Zen, who take the blame. Nevertheless this whole project is one big downhill.

I don't know what it started as back in 2007, but the entire game we saw was designed around DAoC-like factions at war concept, they just didn't get it right. We weren't supposed to be able to enter other factions at all. This division doesn't make any sense without the underlying PvP focus. But still, ESO does feel like it was torn into two different directions throughout development. All these "it's not MMO enough!" and "it's watered down TES" threads...

Pallmor · August 2015

RDMyers65b14_ESO wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

JD2013 wrote: »

Well, the new Creative Director Rich Lambert did a bunch of work on Oblivion, so ... there's that.

Is this supposed to be a good or a bad thing?

It's a great thing! Nothing against Mr Sage, but the game needs to be more Elder Scrollsy.

I'm not sure how you could make it "more Elder Scrollsy." Short of reworking it as a single-player game, or doing other stuff that would also completely break it as an MMO, it's about as close to a traditional TES games as it gets.

About the only thing I can think of is player housing maybe? And yeah, they should have included that from the get-go. But a lot of popular MMO's launch without it. I think even WoW just got player housing with their last expansion.

Vil · August 2015

This means cloaks!! Am I right? Paul Sage were against them, maybe now we can start hoping for them to be implented. With Rich at the helm, maybe there is new hope for cloaks! @RichLambert

Elebeth · August 2015

Vil wrote: »

This means cloaks!! Am I right? Paul Sage were against them, maybe now we can start hoping for them to be implented. With Rich at the helm, maybe there is new hope for cloaks! @RichLambert

I don't quite get the fascination with cloaks and I'm not supporting the idea of introducing them but I also don't understand why cloaks where scraped from the game when ZOS already had them implemented:

WhiteCoatSyndrome · August 2015

Elebeth wrote: »

I don't quite get the fascination with cloaks and I'm not supporting the idea of introducing them but I also don't understand why cloaks where scraped from the game when ZOS already had them implemented:

I believe it was a computing resources and performance issue.

Vizier · August 2015

Rosveen wrote: »

Sausage wrote: »

Cody wrote: »

so is this part of the reason this game started on its downhill slope?

That started way earlier, I still cant believe Bethesda showed green light for Themepark ES game, later added PVP to it, after making 15+ year of open world games. This should have had GTA5 kind of success.

There was no "later", ESO was designed with PvP from the start - and it's a good thing. Having some form of PvP is great for an MMO, it keeps people interested far longer than repeating the same set of dungeons ever could. Of course, everyone has a different idea what the right design for ESO would be...

Well, they [snip] up the PvP from the start. You have this great open world environment of Cyrodiil and then they come up with a Glorified Tower Defense game with units running from keep to keep. PvP could have been so much more satisfying with more complex and meaningful strategy, but all that space was WASTED on their Tower Defense PvP. Yessss, PvP is a must in an MMO IMO, but this? It wsan't enough to try to resurrect a Dumbed down version of DAOC.

Not to mention if PvP was at the forefront why didn't they have better tools for group management? No ability to break down into squads within a large group with visible icons/colors etc. No guild tools worth mentioning etc...

IMO there was almost no creative thought put into PvP at all. It was totaly Uber simplified.

[edited for profanity bypass]

IviRo · August 10

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We can confirm that Paul left ZOS after the launch of ESOTU on console. He, along with rest of the team, are very happy with how the game is doing and we wish him the best in his future endeavors. ESOTU continues to be in great hands with Game Director, Matt Firor and new Creative Director, Rich Lambert, overseeing development. Previously, Rich oversaw all content in the game as Lead Content Designer and worked on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. We’re very excited to have him take on the role as Creative Director!

Edit: Fixed a small typo in Matt's title.

[snip] The game is 10 years old, and no improvements and a constant outflow of players! [snip]

[edited for bashing]

tincanman · August 10

Well, it's great to see the Necromancer class has finally found a context in which they are seriously overpowered, right here in this thread.

TaSheen · August 10

Oy....

ESO_player123 · August 10

This must be a record necro

ZOS_Hadeostry · August 10

Greetings,

We have closed this topic as it was originally created in August 2015. In many cases, it's better to create a new thread on a topic that you want to discuss as opposed to bumping one that is rather old.

Thank you for your understanding.