1. This rule should not apply to non-player assets, like the look of Nocturnal or Ordinators in base-game zones. If people are upset by improvements to those, I'm not sure what to tell them. Online games change.

2. For player assets, like motifs and mounts, compromises can be found that don't remove the old assets from the game. Such as legacy styles in the outfit system, or outright new motifs with a similar style.

Admittedly didn´t read the thread, just most of the OP.

One way of doing it, I´m sure has been mentioned, would be to add, not change, player models into 2 versions.

And while I can see the merit in the OP example of not changing something that looked a certain way when acquired - and certainly not when bought, this behaviour doesn´t seem consistent; obviously they change things in patches despite me not liking it. Like racial skills. As in them being in the game at all. Very annoying.

And certainly there is a difference betweena crown mount and regular in-game models?

It is IMO one of the best things about the internet in general and online games in particular, that you can go in and improve things even years after release. Yes it does mean we get unpolished, buggy software on release on occasion (looking at you, every Total War game e v e r ), but that is another discussion.



You younger people do not know about these things, but let old Male Amazon tell you a story. This is the story of Frontier First Encounters, a great game released in the 90s, that was buggy as heck.

As in, it crashed within 5 minutes EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PLAYED IT, requiring a hard reboot. Needless to say this had a bit of a negative impact on the enjoyment of it.

They did patch it, unfortunately since this was basically before the internet, this meant getting a floppy disc with the patch, and the people selling me the game didn´t give their previous customers one once it was released. Another store would only give it to their own customers. I think people would actually cut the boxes open just to steal the patch disc, but I might misremember that.

I believe you could order a disc from the UK, but it was a hassle and, I was a kid.

Just as a final thought; couldn´t the art be client side anyway, so you can put in any look you want on your character and it still doesn´t allow you to cheat or affect others, since they don´t see the same artwork?

Jhalin wrote: »

Let’s be honest here. That policy is just a cop out so they never have to address the art errors and poor design choices

Nonsense. These sorts of issues relate to the standard problem with forums of the vocal minority versus the silent majority. All ZOS are saying is that they've learnt the hard way that if they react to vocal demands from a small number of players they risk making changes that are disliked by a much larger number of players, especially in relation to long-established things like artwork the appreciation of which is purely subjective.

iiYuki wrote: »

This policy leaves little room for improvement and many players can get the wrong impression that ZOS does not care for the product once it has been sold which isn't true at all.

They obviously dont care or they would sell the same re-skinned mounts and pets over and over again in "Limited time" sales that are *** in their own right. Linchal Grand Manor was limited time, I bought it last year so I could have an awesome house that I might use as a guild home in the future with the only deciding factor being no-one else will ever own this home again, this is my only chance to ever own it and alas they are now limited time selling it AGAIN, I guess limited time means something different to ZO$ funny though how its the only one to return the island home and various mounts and costumes haven't, then again they weren't 14000-17500 crowns.
That Policy is literally the BIGGEST cop-out and F-you to paying customers that it possibly could be, and the only logical conclusion anyone could take from it is that they in fact could not give two-*** about customers once the money has been passes.
"This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years" A few *** YEARS as if its no problem just a little bug no biggie lets let it sit there for YEARS, how can it take ANY company, or more specifically a company a large and making as much money like ZO$ a "couple of years" to fix a *** art related bug.
if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, now this is the one that takes the prize as most idiotic comment of the entire policy, "my character model is clipping the outfit", "HDR isnt working as intended", "dying doesn't work with this outfit" well some people might like it so we'll do nothing, biggest and best cop-out I've seen so far.

The limited time idea came from Disney a LONG time ago. They started offering their VHS tapes "for a limited time" because they were "going to not be available for seven years". They were quite successful at it for a while, until digital came out. But, ever since then, other companies have adopted this model to improve immediate sales.

Bad policy. As time goes base game assets will need to be brought up.

I mean.. I get where they are coming from. they changed around imperial motif shoes recently and lets just say I was NOT pleased. luckily the model i was using was still there, nonetheless.

however - there IS a happy medium. one doesn't need to change the core design in order to update textures. and texture updates would go a LONG way towards fixing some of the older appearances, from motifs, to furnishings.

Danikat wrote: »

That policy sounds like a massive over-reaction. "We changed one thing once and some people didn't like it, so now we'll never change anything ever again."

I understand the thinking - they're trying to make a game they think is cool and players will like. It's pretty discouraging when you think you've improved something and all you get is pages and pages of people ranting about how you've ruined it forever and how much they hate it and you for doing it. But to decide the best approach is to never fix anything, including things some players would like to see fixed, is just doing the same to the other extreme and it's not going to get any better reactions.

This seems like a great opportunity to open up a dialogue with players and discuss what would be best, either taking different opinions and then ZOS picks the one they think is right, or going with the majority. No they wouldn't be able to please everyone (or even ask everyone) but it would be better than swinging from one extreme to the other with a blanket policy for everything, if only because players would get to feel they were involved in the process and hopefully would understand the decision even if they didn't agree with it.

(Alternatively - and this is a very different approach and probably not a small change - maybe they could look into allowing mods to change graphics client-side. So it wouldn't affect the server at all or allow you to change anything actually in the game - you couldn't make new super-powered weapons or whatever. No one else would even be able to see the changes you made. But if you liked the old version of the redguard armour, or want to hide the hip flaps or whatever you could do it - on your PC only.)

Your final suggestion could be tha base for nasty cheats: if you could remove art assets, you would be able to remove walls, corridors etc. You could make a clear path to the last boss in any trials/dungeons for example.

The policy makes sense in the narrow context of player appearance.

It does NOT make sense in the context of other game art, like improving Nocturnal's appearance, updating older Maormer models in the base game, and so on.

As for HDR, I don't care one way or the other. Do whatever is best for performance, I'd say.

Acrolas wrote: »

It's just good design policy to fix objective issues and nt subjective ones.


Objective issue: Fixing that typo in the above sentence.
Subjective issue: Changing my mind and using words other than 'objective' and 'subjective' even though the new words would still ostensibly mean 'objective' and 'subjective'.


There are some art issues that are objective issues because they deviate in a specific and conflicting way (clipping, incorrect dye overlay, holes, unintended visual glitches) from how the asset was supposed to be released and will be eventually resolved in quarterly updates.

But stuff like "budget cosplayer" is nothing but intentionally hurtful feedback, and designers just don't need to be exposed to negative crap like that after their work's been officially approved. The designers don't work for you and they shouldn't be expected to give in to shaming and insults and submit revisions for things that are not mistakes.

I'm completely willing to let personal preferences slide so that ZOS can lock in their asset as final and completely negate anyone who tries to bully their artists. That is strong intellectual property management.

Clearly the nocturnal model is the result of meeting deadlines. They saw our feedback during the summerset pts asking for a change and for updates on it. Its understandable that they had to rush it for the deadline but to not go back and finish the model to bring it up to standards to the other daedric princes just makes them look like they dont care to fix it as they already have our money even though that wasn't the intention.

Have you seen how amazing mephalas and hircines model look? even clavicus who has a more normal looking model looked more daedric than nocturnal. Her shrikes look more like nocturnal than nocturnal does. I am sure the designers wanted to do a better job at THE main villain of summerset but she ended up being outshined by mephala. This policy prevents improvements from happening

Acrolas wrote: »

Aliyavana wrote: »

Clearly the nocturnal model is the result of meeting deadlines. They saw our feedback during the summerset pts asking for a change and for updates on it. Its understandable that they had to rush it for the deadline but to not go back and finish the model to bring it up to standards to the other daedric princes just makes them look like they dont care to fix it as they already have our money even though that wasn't the intention.

Have you seen how amazing mephalas and hircines model look? even clavicus who has a more normal looking model looked more daedric than nocturnal. Her shrikes look more like nocturnal than nocturnal does. I am sure the designers wanted to do a better job at THE main villain of summerset but she ended up being outshined by mephala. This policy prevents improvements from happening

You have no evidence of Nocturnal's appearance being in any way related to a deadline issue. You're trying to blame everything except for the fact that you would have preferred something else other than Shrike's Nocturnal Frock. Which is not an objective design issue.

The ink is dry, and you're going to have to live with it.

And don't forget how the quality greatly differs from mephala and hircine



I understand your viewpoint but objectively speaking nocturnal's model feels un-unique. I feel like they could do so much better if their policy allowed for them to fix it.