I really love this game...

relentless_turnip

It kills me that ZOS are just like any other game developer...
I know it is naive to believe that they would be any different from any other developer when clearly that is who they are competing with.
We all know that it all comes to money.
They could throw enough money at the current problems to fix them... But they won't...
Because it is all about maximising profits, spending as little money as possible to make as much as possible!
Elements of this game are still playable, but a large majority isn't... Not in a remotely competitive way pve or PvP.
We can't even get a person of authority to come out and tell us what is going on.
Poor @ZOS_GinaBruno is just left to answer to the community...

I don't expect Amazon to be any better as some people have stated... What an innovation it would be to have a developer who cares about the functionality of their game.

I'm not blaming the combat team and those on the front line of these issues. It is the upper management who green light resources and their priorities. I don't even want to be blaming ZOS, as a whole it is just the state of the video game industry.

technohic

People answer to different bosses with different motives. I'm sure developers take pride in their work, and if not; at least dont want to have to chase around an issue under the pressure of it being in the customers hands already and impacting the business.

I know just at my job recently; a team member had just launched a nice feature but it was buggy and I am sure he didn't want to push it out yet. Powers that be decided the issues were low risk and minor inconvenience. I on the side, was working on another feature long before and the coworkers feature enabled me to do so much more. Problem is, that minor inconvenience his feature had became a show stopper IMO for mine as it's not obvious to the customer who might rely on it, that the other feature they were using enabled the feature I was working on in most environments.

Well, we had presentations to executives on projects, and I had my presentation setup and my boss reviewed it beforehand and said "why is this not on there? That's something they will get really excited about!" And I contested it was too far off and I know despite the issues, one particular person would want it now. I was overruled. Things happened exactly the way I said there, and it will wind up being pushed out. Help desk will get hit with calls, and we'll have some knowledge base out there for support to troubleshoot it, but it's more stress on an already understaffed help desk.

Long_Distance

I am pretty sure Amazon closelys observe what is going on with their competitors. They must be well aware of the current state of ESO, WoW and FF14. Even a kick-start project would market-analyse the leaders of the pack to find and define its niche.

The latest ESO patch is a godsend for Amazon's project. I don't think that the latest insinuations of a partial shiftback/refocus on PvP is a coincidence.

This though of course doesn't guarantee at all that its going to be a good game. The footage from the combat system I have seen, did not really impress me.

markulrich1966

I stopped reading here:

"They could throw enough money at the current problems to fix them... But they won't..."


Might I remind you that we had MASSIVE lag starting 2 weeks before Elsweyr was released?

Even PVE (delves) became hard to play, as for example heavy staff attacks lasted 5 times as long as usual.
It was a massive bug, it took a while to be solved - but they solved it.

I understand your frustration, but please stop these senseless accusations, they solve nothing. Act adult, not childish.

relentless_turnip

markulrich1966 wrote: »

I stopped reading here:

"They could throw enough money at the current problems to fix them... But they won't..."


Might I remind you that we had MASSIVE lag starting 2 weeks before Elsweyr was released?

Even PVE (delves) became hard to play, as for example heavy staff attacks lasted 5 times as long as usual.
It was a massive bug, it took a while to be solved - but they solved it.

I understand your frustration, but please stop these senseless accusations, they solve nothing. Act adult, not childish.

Its not childish, if anything it is more childish(naive) to believe otherwise... This is a corporation. Profit and loss is a basic in any business. In a corporation every cost is scrutinised to maximize profitability.

If you don't believe giving them more resources would solve the problem faster that is incredibly ignorant.

I don't think you should be deterring people from creating threads that put pressure on a corporation to make a change.

It is currently an unplayable game. Telling a person to not state the obvious does not do any one favours...

It is money not a conspiracy theory... It will fix the issues faster.

relentless_turnip

Long_Distance wrote: »

I am pretty sure Amazon closelys observe what is going on with their competitors. They must be well aware of the current state of ESO, WoW and FF14. Even a kick-start project would market-analyse the leaders of the pack to find and define its niche.

The latest ESO patch is a godsend for Amazon's project. I don't think that the latest insinuations of a partial shiftback/refocus on PvP is a coincidence.

This though of course doesn't guarantee at all that its going to be a good game. The footage from the combat system I have seen, did not really impress me.

I completely agree, they will have ears to the ground to ensure they grab as much of the market they can.

Ultimately they will end up the same way though....

Malmai

Somebody needs to have 500 yachts and 500 houses and 500 cars etc...

relentless_turnip

technohic wrote: »

People answer to different bosses with different motives. I'm sure developers take pride in their work, and if not; at least dont want to have to chase around an issue under the pressure of it being in the customers hands already and impacting the business.

I know just at my job recently; a team member had just launched a nice feature but it was buggy and I am sure he didn't want to push it out yet. Powers that be decided the issues were low risk and minor inconvenience. I on the side, was working on another feature long before and the coworkers feature enabled me to do so much more. Problem is, that minor inconvenience his feature had became a show stopper IMO for mine as it's not obvious to the customer who might rely on it, that the other feature they were using enabled the feature I was working on in most environments.

Well, we had presentations to executives on projects, and I had my presentation setup and my boss reviewed it beforehand and said "why is this not on there? That's something they will get really excited about!" And I contested it was too far off and I know despite the issues, one particular person would want it now. I was overruled. Things happened exactly the way I said there, and it will wind up being pushed out. Help desk will get hit with calls, and we'll have some knowledge base out there for support to troubleshoot it, but it's more stress on an already understaffed help desk.

As I said mate, have nothing but respect for the developers. We know they work hard and they care... It is the upper management that need to step up and make a change. Direct the developers to the maintenance and longevity of the game.

Sounds like you can relate

relentless_turnip

Malmai wrote: »

Somebody needs to have 500 yachts and 500 houses and 500 cars etc...

Lol I'm sure a lot of it goes back into development of other games...

I think during times where the game is unplayable, someone in charge should be taking the reins and saying here is some more resources, fix this. It is not acceptable 30,000+ people online right now have paid for this, this is not an acceptable experience.

Nemesis7884

amazon is just as greedy but amazon is usually competent at everything they do (as opposed to google)

Long_Distance

relentless_turnip wrote: »

I don't expect Amazon to be any better as some people have stated... What an innovation it would be to have a developer who cares about the functionality of their game.

I'm not blaming the combat team and those on the front line of these issues. It is the upper management who green light resources and their priorities. I don't even want to be blaming ZOS, as a whole it is just the state of the video game industry.

It's not that a "caring" dev team guarantees a well doing game. A company run by devs who would only care about fluid game play/functionality would most probably a very boring experience and a nightmare for the devs themselves who need to make a living from their work.
Any business needs to make money and to do so, in a competive market, customer saitisfaction is a key element. I assume that nearly everbody in the gaming industry cares about games in some way. After all, they all could make a lot more money when applying their (IT/managing) skills in industries way more lucrative.

From my (admittely selfish) perspective the balance between money-making features and (what I personally find) "fun" is out of hands in ESO. For many others it's still seems ok, though.

I am sure ESO is in the "money making mode" which is totally ok, though. They have made huge development and marketing investments before they even have earned the very first dollar from their game.

The direction the game is heading, though, seems to push many of the (competive) endgame crowds (as in PvP, HM trials) away. That's probably of no big concern to them, at least not money wise, in the short run. Not sure though what this will do for them in the long run.

It will have an impact on the community and thus on the target audience that they'll draw their new customers from. I can imagine that in the long run many people will get bored from doing questline after questine after questline and more houses, pets, and costumes. Most people have done that in this game, but at some point this gets boring sooner or later. Also dungeons get boring after you've done them for so many times and yet another dungeon or a zone won't help that. They would need to invent genuinely "new" stuff to keep people interested.

That said, PvP can be considered pretty cheap content for them with a high return on investment. It can create a long time ever changing social game experience without any investment at all. Some people in this game don't do anything else but Cyrodiil and BGs and they actually dread new content (as in the hammer, or destroyable bridges/gates).

Unfortuneatly that part of the game can't technically keep pace with what they introduce in the other parts.

Wifeaggro13

relentless_turnip wrote: »

It kills me that ZOS are just like any other game developer...
I know it is naive to believe that they would be any different from any other developer when clearly that is who they are competing with.
We all know that it all comes to money.
They could throw enough money at the current problems to fix them... But they won't...
Because it is all about maximising profits, spending as little money as possible to make as much as possible!
Elements of this game are still playable, but a large majority isn't... Not in a remotely competitive way pve or PvP.
We can't even get a person of authority to come out and tell us what is going on.
Poor @ZOS_GinaBruno is just left to answer to the community...

I don't expect Amazon to be any better as some people have stated... What an innovation it would be to have a developer who cares about the functionality of their game.

I'm not blaming the combat team and those on the front line of these issues. It is the upper management who green light resources and their priorities. I don't even want to be blaming ZOS, as a whole it is just the state of the video game industry.

I have no problem with them making money . But dont sell turds dipped in gold paint. Games with far smaller teams and far less of a customer base were able to make games with progression ,single player and multiplayer content while adding classes ,races , new game play,housing ,fluff , and new and engaging mechanics,lore,story all the while improving game performance graphics quality of life ui improvements. Zos well on it's way to the predatory game market. Um not buying the garbage chapter when I'll play half the thing and realise it was just a reskin of old ideas.

Iskiab

I have no problem with ZoS making money too, that’s why they made the game.

I have no doubt there’s managerial incompetence involved though and they’ve stripped resources from server capacity.

There are two ways to look at server capacity:
1. It’s not a revenue stream so the company is better off spending resources on new content.
2. It’s a basic for your game to function so should be counted as overhead.

ZoS went with option 1 I believe and they’re going to lose a lot of money because of it - that’s management incompetence.

relentless_turnip

Iskiab wrote: »

I have no problem with ZoS making money too, that’s why they made the game.

I have no doubt there’s managerial incompetence involved though and they’ve stripped resources from server capacity.

There are two ways to look at server capacity:
1. It’s not a revenue stream so the company is better off spending resources on new content.
2. It’s a basic for your game to function so should be counted as overhead.

ZoS went with option 1 I believe and they’re going to lose a lot of money because of it - that’s management incompetence.

I have heard this said before... Straight after midyear mayhem consoles reported the skill delay we are experiencing now.

The theory is they have done something there end to make this happen. Potentially downgrading the server.
It may be something more innocent like rerouting the servers for some reason. With the game growing I would find it hard to believe that they would reduce server capacity or downgrade the servers.

Then again if they were told they would save "X" amount of money each year if we use this method etc...