anyone else remember quotes like this?

lathbury

Bethesda's Vice President of PR, Pete Hines, has detailed the publisher's plan to support The Elder Scrolls Online post-launch with regular content additions. Speaking to GameSpot, Hines defended the game's monthly $14.99 subscription fee by describing it as a "value proposition".

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars," he said when asked why The Elder Scrolls Online was not pursuing a free-to-play model. "We're also very confident in our ability to support it with content. And not content of the magnitude of, it's a new month, here's a new sword or here's a funny hat--but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases."

"... Not here's a new sword or here's a funny hat--but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases."
Hines further justified the subscription fee by explaining that, as a massively multiplayer game, The Elder Scrolls Online would require all players to have the same content installed and available to them in order to interact with one another.

"So you wind up in a situation where you say, look, by and large, when you're talking about regular content, adding new features and new parts of the world, either you're all in or you're not," he continued.

Hines recognized that this may limit the MMORPG's potential number of players, saying that this was not an issue for Bethesda.

"We're not trying to make a game that everybody who plays games will automatically buy," he elaborated. "It is a certain kind of game. There's no shooter elements. There's no aliens. It is a massive, 'Go where you want, do what you want' game that we think offers the kind of experience that's worthy of a subscription."

Hines described how this approach would have been affected had Bethesda chosen to adopt a free-to-play model, stating that the percentage of the team Bethesda could afford to assign to create future content would depend upon the The Elder Scrolls Online's base sales performance.

"That just seems like a lesser game, and we're not going to make a lesser game that might be more palatable," he continued. "We want to do the version that we think is the best game and the coolest experience. And that means putting a lot of people and a lot of content creators towards having stuff that comes our regularly; every four weeks, five weeks, six weeks. Big new stuff that you want to do."

Iago

I remember but now I know they just told people what they wanted to hear so they could swindle us and then act like they are doing us a favor by announcing they had lied. After all B2P is what their player base wanted right? Oh wait that was a lie too.

LtCrunch

Things change.

lathbury

yes seems now we are going to be getting the lesser game he talks about

Gyudan

I still don't know why they had to bring him from Bethesda to participate in the Live. @ZOS Community managers were present in the chat but they should have been in front of the camera.

Iago

lathbury wrote: »

yes seems now we are going to be getting the lesser game he talks about

Yupp

Roechacca

I think Mr Hines owes everybody a rainbow farting dragon mount and a funny hat . What do you think ?

Sallington

roechacca wrote: »

I think Mr Hines owes everybody a rainbow farting dragon mount and a funny hat . What do you think ?

That'll be 2000 crowns.

Iago

roechacca wrote: »

I think Mr Hines owes everybody a rainbow farting dragon mount and a funny hat . What do you think ?

I think we are owed an explanation at the very least. At the very best a rainbow farting dragon mount and a funny hat could be pretty fun

daneyulebub17_ESO

Empty suits like him say anything to keep people spending money. Doesn't matter if its true. Worse than a used car salesman.

Iago

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

Empty suits like him say anything to keep people spending money. Doesn't matter if its true. Worse than a used car salesman.

Yupp just another suit wearing charlatan

Lord Xanhorn

Great post, here's a shiny new Undaunted hat...oh wait!

grimjim398

That's why when the company says so emphatically that the crown shop will only be cosmetic you can totally, absolutely believe what they tell you - for at least the next 24 hours.

OrangeTheCat

As someone else posted in some other thread:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE

Iago

grimjim398 wrote: »

That's why when the company says so emphatically that the crown shop will only be cosmetic you can totally, absolutely believe what they tell you - for at least the next 24 hours.

I will take there word for it for about 20 seconds, after that well you know...........

Brother_Numsie

You have to remember, Peter Hines is only the VP of PR, he's not the President or CEO or whatever. As a Public Relations/ Marketing guy his whole goal in life is to sell the game and make people happy about their purchases (there is more to it I'm sure). Sometimes (actually happens a lot) PR people will say things prematurely or not be "In the Know" so they say stuff that ends up not being true (not out any kind of malice).

That being said, I would like to add a quote:

"ZeniMax reserves the right to change the fees or billing methods at any time upon notice to You through Your Account. If You pay a periodic (e.g., monthly) subscription for a Service, ZeniMax will provide You with at least thirty (30) days advance notice of any such changes. Your continued use of the Service thirty (30) days or more after ZeniMax provides such notice of the changes means that You accept such changes. If any change is unacceptable to You, You may cancel Your subscription at any time, but ZeniMax will not refund any fees or prorate fees for any subscription."

That's from the Terms of Service.

Yeah, it sucks, but it has been there since before you bought the game. You agreed upon it by accepting the Terms of Service Agreement and EULA or you wouldn't be posting or playing the game. And this was decided by the company, not one man.

You can cry and moan and quit the game, but this is the way it is, for better or for worse.

Just remember every game has these terms, even Blizzard.

Gidorick

lathbury wrote: »

..."That just seems like a lesser game, and we're not going to make a lesser game that might be more palatable," he continued. "We want to do the version that we think is the best game and the coolest experience. And that means putting a lot of people and a lot of content creators towards having stuff that comes our regularly; every four weeks, five weeks, six weeks. Big new stuff that you want to do."

and how many times did we receive an update that would actually fit this description? Twice, thrice? Craglorn, undaunted & the dye system?

Lord_Draevan

I'm sure the decision to drop the sub requirement and have a cash shop was made for ZOS by the company that owns them, Zenimax Media Inc, wanting to increase a subsidiary's profit margin.

Now ZOS looks like liars and takes all the heat, and ZMI gets off scot-free

Lord_Kreegan

A PR guy...

"PR" stands for:
"Primarily Rhetoric"...
"Probably misRepresentation of the truth..."
"Principally a Recline... [to recline is to lie... okay, it's a stretch...]
"Potentially a Regurgitation of falsehoods designed to mislead, deceive, or misinform others after extensive planning and preparation of material intended to appeal to potential buyers' foolish presumptions of honesty in marketing a product so that fools will buy said product..."

QUOTE: ""There's a sucker born every minute" (believed to have been spoken by David Hannum, in criticism of P. T. Barnum)

THAT is the modern philosophy of marketing.

You want to save the world? Don't save the whales; shoot a PR guy...

Kraven

To add to the list of notable quotes:

Matt Firor, "Charging a flat monthly (or subscription) fee means that we will offer players the game we set out to make, and the one that fans want to play. Going with any other model meant that we would have to make sacrifices and changes we weren’t willing to make.”

"The Elder Scrolls Online was designed and developed to be a premium experience: hundreds of hours of gameplay, tons of depth and features, professional customer support – and a commitment to have ongoing content at regular intervals after launch. This type of experience is best paired with a one-time fee per month, as opposed to many smaller payments that would probably add up to more than $14.99/month any way."

Paul D. Sage: "No, we don’t have any plans that I am aware of to change it in the future. You know the business model is what the business model is and it allows us to deliver high level content on regular basis right now. So there are no plans that I am aware of."


“Our fans are our biggest inspiration, and we’ve listened to their feedback on the entertainment experience they want,” said Matt Firor

Way to go @ZOS_MattFiror‌, End with a joke.

Pmarsico9

I remember when in the beta forums I asked how they were going to collect their subscriptions from people who were already paying a sub for the MS/PS Networks.

And

/crickets.

So I wrote "Then you'll have to go Free to play." And I paid the sub anyway because I didn't think (and still don't) that it's realistic that there will be any following at all on consoles.

The graphics aren't good enough, there's too much sensitivity to latency, and typing on a console is lol.

The gain is so minimal. It's blatant:

Somebody thinks consoles will save this game, but the truth is that it's not in a good place. It probably hasn't made the impact they thought it would. It was projected as Skyrim online, but it's not even close to that.........and it should have been.

But then the ol' "WoW is the benchmark" idiocy that essentially mandates the industry kicked in. And here you go. A game, still just slightly better than beta form, that already has a declining population that has a model being aimed at people that won't play it for any meaningful amount of time in any meaningful quantity.

The amount of capital invested in the console versions are obviously the biggest negative here. They shouldn't have even been toyed with for a year two. With a PC expac launch being the best time to do things in a logical manner for a console launch.........which there shouldn't be anyway.......because

WHO IS GOING TO PLAY A MMO ON A CONSOLE?

No keyboard, no mouse. Yech..............

tpanisiakb16_ESO

lathbury wrote: »

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars," he said when asked why The Elder Scrolls Online was not pursuing a free-to-play model. "We're also very confident in our ability to support it with content. And not content of the magnitude of, it's a new month, here's a new sword or here's a funny hat--but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases."

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars,"

I want NOTHING MORE than to keep a cash shop out of this game, but when will you people realize the amount of players that were subscribing to this game WAS NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP IT FROM STAYING ONLINE.

Stuff costs money. When faced with budge cuts, layoffs and dwindling profits you HAVE TO SINK OR SWIM.

They underestimated their support they felt "strongly about".

Stop making this whole diatribe about YOU. ZOS is a company, you don't build a company to hand out everything a customer wants for pennies, you build a company TO MAKE MONEY.

It's B2P or ELDER SCROLLS: OFFLINE. They are not doing this change to chase away all their players, they are making doing it to bring in people. People you or I or even THEY might not like, but FFS it has to be done. No one, not even ZOS would rather go through this model transition, but it's necessary.

YOU are not a special snowflake, your 15$ a month and loyalty and appreciation means nothing when a company is not making expected profits. Holy cripes you guys, get it through your head. The people currently subscribed post B2P announcement was simply not enough, this is why the change, not to nickle and dime us, but to keep a game afloat.

ashlee17

As they say they say "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior"
Oh no.. I think I just quoted Dr Phil... And I think he is right...

Mmm time to rethink my life...

Jaxsun

Brandalf wrote: »

Things change.

Especially when they suck at running an mmo

VirtualElizabeth

Well, let me break it down for you folks: Technology companies change their mind all the time. I have been working in tech for over 15 years for a couple of big names: For one of these companies, change was constant - every 6 months there was some brand new product, way of doing things or venture that was going to change the face of computing. Well 6 months later the product was suddenly retired!

Tech companies equates constant change. You may not see it from the outside, but believe me it was there.

xaade

Brandalf wrote: »

Things change.

Yes, like my attitude about the online gaming industry.

Destiny
Elder Scrolls Online

Both said, "Yes there's a big entry fee, but this is what we plan to do with that money".

Both did, "We can't market what we promised."

It's not a measure of how I view the changes, it's a measure of how much I'll trust anyone when they say that their big gate fees has value and will deliver.

This leads me to what I've been saying today.

I cannot trust that your subscription option will provide the value you say it will.

And my fear that if the subscription option does not have enough value, that this game will become just like every other F2P cash shop driven, no playable content producing, money grab.

MornaBaine

For those of you defending ZOS and this cash shop debacle... sure things change. But there's this thing called integrity. It USED to matter in business. Yeah, I know, things change. But every single one of these guys should be publicly called on the carpet and made to explain why this has happened. Stop blowing rainbows up our arses. We all KNOW the economy sucks. What they SHOULD have said was simply, "Although it was our original intention to remain subscription based, actual earnings vs. projected earnings and the problem of console release has made that impossible. In order to CONTINUE to create new content and offer customer support that is up to our standards we have had to rethink our original business model. As we want ESO to continue to grow so that you, our loyal players, can continue to enjoy it and get ongoing updates and new amazing content and the best customer support possible we have decided to change course and go with....blah blah blah...." THAT, at least, would have been honest without being too grim and scaring off players by saying the ship is sinking. Yeah, it IS all about spin. Problem is, ZOS hasn't figured out how to do it. They're acting like politicians. And that, frankly, is disgusting. They should be ashamed... though I understand shame is going out of style too.

Kraven

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

I remember when in the beta forums I asked how they were going to collect their subscriptions from people who were already paying a sub for the MS/PS Networks.

And

/crickets.

Then you should have paid more attention. It was stated in several places, Sony opted to waive the PS+ fee. You would not be required to have PS+ to play ESO on the PS4. Micro$oft on the other hand demanded their cut, which was on them not on ZOS.

Kraven

tpanisiakb16_ESO wrote: »

lathbury wrote: »

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars," he said when asked why The Elder Scrolls Online was not pursuing a free-to-play model. "We're also very confident in our ability to support it with content. And not content of the magnitude of, it's a new month, here's a new sword or here's a funny hat--but content that is real and significant and it feels like regular and consistent DLC releases."

"We feel pretty strongly about the support we're going to have for the game and what you're going to get for those dollars,"

I want NOTHING MORE than to keep a cash shop out of this game, but when will you people realize the amount of players that were subscribing to this game WAS NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP IT FROM STAYING ONLINE.

Stuff costs money. When faced with budge cuts, layoffs and dwindling profits you HAVE TO SINK OR SWIM.

They underestimated their support they felt "strongly about".

Stop making this whole diatribe about YOU. ZOS is a company, you don't build a company to hand out everything a customer wants for pennies, you build a company TO MAKE MONEY.

It's B2P or ELDER SCROLLS: OFFLINE. They are not doing this change to chase away all their players, they are making doing it to bring in people. People you or I or even THEY might not like, but FFS it has to be done. No one, not even ZOS would rather go through this model transition, but it's necessary.

YOU are not a special snowflake, your 15$ a month and loyalty and appreciation means nothing when a company is not making expected profits. Holy cripes you guys, get it through your head. The people currently subscribed post B2P announcement was simply not enough, this is why the change, not to nickle and dime us, but to keep a game afloat.

The ENTIRE point of a cash shop system is to entice players to buy the items. It REQUIRES players to buy the items in order for the company to make money. After all isn't it the fans of B2P saying that it will bring in more money than a sub?

So they lost quite a few subscribers long before this announcement but last numbers released were 600k? Let's say if they lost 1/3 of their entire player base (Over shooting here, I don't think they lost nearly that many. It's possible though). Leaving 400k subscribers, for a grand total of $6,000,000 per month in subs. Now, they have to make more than that per month. So for arguments sake let's say the lost a simple 1/8th from the announcement, now they'll be making $5.25M per month. So not only does the cash shop have to earn more money it has to first earn as much money. So it has to make 750k per month to be on par, shouldn't be hard initially. Additional consoles means you have the customers from both servers, But then there is the separate server maintenance to consider for additional servers, eh let's forget that for now.

In order to make money the cash shop HAS to have players spending money on it, it HAS to have items players want and feel are worth the money. So of course the items will get better over time until they are obviously better so as to be worth the money.

Add to that the DLC, it has to be released on 3 platforms simultaneously. Do you see how long of a delay between PC and console release was? Every bit of new content will be delayed so it can port to all three at the same time. On top of which it has to be cheap enough that B2P players won't shy away from the additional content and at the same time enticing enough that they will want to buy.

If you count in box sales for the consoles the numbers will probably look pretty good at the end of this year. Of course we're already aware of the DLC they've been sitting on. Thieves and DB were promised "shortly after release" (if only we had known they meant actual release in 2015 and not open beta release of 2014), Wrothgar is another one, completion of champion and justice system. All get split up and broken down to trickle DLC out at an acceptable pace.

They will fluff their numbers this year with these sales. Next year after they start to lose players again they'll drop the Spell Crafting. Spell crafting is going to completely change the entire game after all. So much like they're doing this year with 1.6 and the champion system, (Dropping something you were all looking forward to after delivering bad news, in an attempt to make more people pliable and accepting) they'll do similar next year with spell crafting.

Prediction: ESO is now completely F2P and with the $15 purchase of update 3.0 Spellcrafting you get access to everything released up to this point! So now's the time to come back to ESO.

Much like the emails I already get from failed games trying to win customers back.

Razzak

Those people were replaced by leeches. Anything that comes out of their "mouths" now, is brown and smells like ... .

Rammi

Pretty much every quote above is going to fall flat on its face going forward. Its a total 180!

Especially the here is a sword comment with the new store!! you watch them pimp those items like no tomorrow as new content in 6 months time.