Opinion: Glitches, gameplay, and ragequits, oh my!

Phazzle

read with images @ ESO Traveler

Yo! I see a lot of unrest on the ESOforums, but don’t worry your pretty little skullcaps! It’s gonna be ok! Here are a few things that you can rest easy about:

Glitches

“I’m payin’ $15 a month and they can’t even release a game that doesn’t glitch up every fifteen minutes.”

Dude, I get it. Yesterday I was in the middle of the Ravenscroft quest line fighting a gargoyle, and just when I was about to kill him I got that glitch that makes everything on the screen untargetable. Arrgh! It sucks, and boy is it frustrating, but it is not something to quit the game over.

As a veteran MMOer I can tell you that glitches are just the nature of the beast, especially after release. They will get better. Early on, WoW was full of glitches. One glitch cropped up when a raid boss gave players a disease that persisted outside of the raid and everyone was dropping dead in town. They fixed it, and WoW is still around. Give them a bit to work the kinks out, and accept the fact that the game will never be perfect.


Antisocial players and grouping problems

“Grouping sucks. This is a single player game that is tryin’ to be an MMO!”

Grouping is fine. I have had no technical problem grouping with people. The problem is that most people don’t seem to want to group. The game is very satisfying single-player so that is what most players do. That said, if you can’t find groups, then you need to go out and make them. The megaserver gives you access to players everywhere so even if only 1% of players want to do something it is still a significant portion of the community.

This means being a leader and putting together a serious guild. The game needs more leaders and less followers. To paraphrase Gandhi, “Be the change that you want to see in Tamriel.”


Pay to play

“Monthly fees are lame. They’re just trying to get money out of you.”

Yeah, Bethesda is in it for the money. They didn’t just make this game for you out of the kindness of their hearts! Pay to play is the best financial model for an MMO. A consistent flow of cash means that they can hire enough talented people to continue to release content and fix bugs.

Free to play games are not really free anyway. They have hidden costs. Take Dungeons and Dragons Online, for instance. It is free to play, as long as you only want to experience 10% of the content and don’t mind using real cash to buy hirelings and potions!

50 cents a day is a small price to pay for a good game. Think of it this way. If you could pay 50 cents to go to an arcade and play all day, would you do it?


Still feel like ragequitting? Do it in style.

Maybe this game isn’t for you. There’s no shame in walking away if you are not satisfied. If you do ragequit, make a statement. Take the time to sit down and write a real, handwritten, letter to Bethesda. Let them know, unequivocally that you are not satisfied with the game. That will really get their attention. If you are gonna QQ, you might as well QQ an ocean and not a pond.
See you in Tamriel…maybe.

TicToc

Sure, there are people that overreact to certain issues, and problems are to be expected with MMO's.

However, people that refuse to acknowledge that the game has issues are just as big a problem, if not worse.

The game has more than a few minor glitches. There are some major bugs that prevent you from progressing in the game, or even prevent you from playing altogether.

Grouping is a very real problem, and it probably would have been a good idea to understand what they problem was before creating a thread about it. Phasing has created a situation where people cannot complete quests as a group. Even if you are grouped you have to complete your quest objectives by yourself. You get no credit for what your groupmates do. If someone has already completed a quest, they cannot help you complete yours. Even worse, because of phasing, your groupmates may become invisible to you, as they are in a different phase than you are. It has nothing to do with people being social. There is a real issue.

Also, quitting because you are not happy with the state of the game, or because it is not fun for you, is NOT "rage quitting". It is just quitting.

I think it is far too early to speculate on the downfall of the game. MMO's will always have some growing pains. That said, there are some fairly big issue that they will need to address quickly if they want to maintain subscribers. Yes, WoW fixed some major bugs, and succeeded. On the other hand, there have been far more MMO's that did not fix their major bugs in a timely manor, and did not succeed. Only time will tell where this game falls.

Phazzle

I was addressing the antisocial problem specifically. As I said, "I" have not had any problems with grouping.

rawne1980b16_ESO

If i'm going to rage quit then by god i'm going to do it on a public forum where my anonymity means no one knows me or gives a damn about my existence.


That will teach them.


Everyone shall know that I, random person from the internet, has left the game.

Sarenia

I would be willing to bet the majority of "everything sucks, goodbye!" posters actually don't quit, or they come back in a few days.

I think they subconciously make these posts to either get talked out of it, or incite a direct conflict.

TicToc

Phazzle wrote: »

I was addressing the antisocial problem specifically. As I said, "I" have not had any problems with grouping.

But this is the quote you used:

“Grouping sucks. This is a single player game that is tryin’ to be an MMO!”

Which really doesn't speak to any antisocial aspect. People feel put off that, even in groups, they have to complete the quests as if they are playing solo, so the grouping aspect of the game "sucks". for them, especially when group members disappear into another phase. Typically, if someone in this game is complaining that the grouping sucks, that is the reason. The phasing makes them feel as if they are playing alone.

For me it has been little more than an inconvenience, but I am fine completing quests on my own. However, I can see it being an issue for people that always play in groups.

demendred

Its all about finding those right type of people. Its what keeps me on this game.