[DEVs] Why would you release new content (Craiglorn) if even the current game is not polished?

danteafk · April 2014

If you want people to subscribe and stay with the game, you need to fix your game before releasing new content. Otherwise it will be a decline. Why is there no official response on those issues? What are the directions? What is being done?

Bugged Quests
Endless Loading Screens
Crashes
Lag
Slow Weapon Swap
Dungeon Loot
Dungeon Chest Piracy
Bots
Cheats
Hacks
Elder Scrolls Too Easy To Capture
PvP In General Too Easy, Keeps Should Be Harder To Raid

etc etc

Rotherhans · April 2014

One word: "Endgame"

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO · April 2014

Why wouldn't they? It wouldn't make any sense to take the team off of the Craglorn project to have them work on something else at this point. I know it makes sense in your head, but look at the business implications to re-organizing that whole structure.

Give your head a shake please.

Klarick · April 2014

I unofficially welcome the OP to the MMO genre of gaming. Stick with them, IMO it is worth it.

Rotherhans · April 2014

Meh, no reason to be this rude.

Although it also annoys me when people can´t get the difference between content creators and coders(aka bugfixers) right, in ESO´s case the game was/is in such a poor state that quite frankly all hands shoud´ve been reassigned to "firefighting" duty about 2 days after launch.

Of course that´s all just wishful thinking.
The bucks have to continue rolling and this means new content ASAP, no matter the state of the rest of the game. $:\$

Eris · April 2014

You know that the development team consists of more than one programmer sitting in his basement under his mom's house, right? You also know that Craglorn has probably been in development for months and months right?

They have development teams that work on different projects and have different responsibilities. There is the future development group that writes, codes and prepares new content. There are the QA testers who evaluate the game and locate as many bugs as possible in X timeframe. There are the maintenance programmers who's job it is to fix the bugs that aren't found and to patch or hotfix things that need maintaining. Then there are the animators, the sound engineers, the writers, the producers, the network administrators, the GMs (of which there are several types), the customer service reps (of which there are several types), the hardware technicians, the internal help desk, the secretaries, the accountants, the management, etc...

Software companies as a whole generally develop projects months in advance. Sometimes they work on multiple projects at the same time *GASP* did you know... Microsoft wrote MS-DOS 4.0, Windows 3.0 & OS/2 at the same time? It's like magic... ooooo.

ZakyUchiha · April 2014

Right now, there's nothing much to do when you're VR10 except maybe farm some dungeons (only 3 VR6-10 dungeons), level up professions and Cyrodiil (which is overrun by OP DK's and vamps)..

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO · April 2014

If you wonder about this stuff, and find it fascinating, get a job in IT/Software/Hardware, etc. You'll soon discover that all this wishful thinking evaporates in the real world applications.

I used to be naive, I was also interested to find out how this all works. Now I work in this field.

Paske · April 2014

Because Craglorn has been mostly done / finished before release ?

But they decided not to include it into release because it wasn't finished ?

Also many game designers / 3D artist / sound producers / the list goes on, are imployed full time but are unable to help with bug hunting / fixing.

So what do you do with these developers that are employed ?

You give them work !

And thats how Craglorn was ( or rather is going to be ) born.

Not that hard to comprehend I would say.

driosketch · April 2014

danteafk wrote: »

Why is there no official response on those issues? What are the directions? What is being done?

/facepalm
There's an entire subforum:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/categories/EN-dev-discussion

Phyrdrin · April 2014

driosketch wrote: »

danteafk wrote: »

Why is there no official response on those issues? What are the directions? What is being done?

/facepalm
There's an entire subforum:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/categories/EN-dev-discussion

Not to mention the sticky at the top of the CS forum....

danteafk · April 2014

driosketch wrote: »

danteafk wrote: »

Why is there no official response on those issues? What are the directions? What is being done?

/facepalm
There's an entire subforum:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/categories/EN-dev-discussion

/Facepalm, just water on the hot stone without anything real being done.

Also:

Broken Vamp Skill Line

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO · April 2014

danteafk wrote: »

If you want people to subscribe and stay with the game, you need to fix your game before releasing new content. Otherwise it will be a decline. Why is there no official response on those issues? What are the directions? What is being done?
Bugged Quests

Endless Loading Screens

Crashes

Lag

Slow Weapon Swap

Dungeon Loot

Dungeon Chest Piracy

Bots

Cheats

Hacks

Elder Scrolls Too Easy To Capture

PvP In General Too Easy, Keeps Should Be Harder To Raid

etc etc

Well if you actually wanted a response you'd have created a better thread (not trying to be rude). What are they even supposed to say. These are generic problems with every MMO. Be specific. Provide examples and documentation. If you cant be bothered, why should they to come in this thread and comment?

This is like the 20,000th post that does the exact same thing without actually providing any details to reference.

DMuehlhausen · April 2014

They probably have the next 2-3 zones like this near completion. This is how MMOs have always been developed. You release the game with the end game content not even done.

Blizzard though did this right by making the initial lvl 60 dungeons so hard at first it slowed people down allowing them to finish the content and polish some other stuff. The content though anymore is gobbled up so fast by people that they don't have the chance to polish things first.

WitchAngel · April 2014

To get some positive reviews in the media to drown the criticism.

If they cared about the game more than they care about creating the false illussion of a great game, they would put the expansion on hold, utilizing the staff for more urgent matters.

Wavemoore · April 2014

Eris wrote: »

You know that the development team consists of more than one programmer sitting in his basement under his mom's house, right? You also know that Craglorn has probably been in development for months and months right?

They have development teams that work on different projects and have different responsibilities. There is the future development group that writes, codes and prepares new content. There are the QA testers who evaluate the game and locate as many bugs as possible in X timeframe. There are the maintenance programmers who's job it is to fix the bugs that aren't found and to patch or hotfix things that need maintaining. Then there are the animators, the sound engineers, the writers, the producers, the network administrators, the GMs (of which there are several types), the customer service reps (of which there are several types), the hardware technicians, the internal help desk, the secretaries, the accountants, the management, etc...

Software companies as a whole generally develop projects months in advance. Sometimes they work on multiple projects at the same time *GASP* did you know... Microsoft wrote MS-DOS 4.0, Windows 3.0 & OS/2 at the same time? It's like magic... ooooo.

Maybe one day you'll be as smart as you think you are. Or better yet, maybe one day you'll learn how to treat people.

Making others smaller to make yourself look bigger is a very poor approach. He has a valid point, fix the problems before pushing out new content for a very small % of players. It doesn't matter if they are on different teams, it still takes resources away from the CS team when they will now have to deal with the inevitable bugs associated with the new content on top of all the issues they are fielding today. It will have a very negative compounding effect that will be difficult to rebound from.

I agree with the OP that the timing is bad.

oxygen_boarderb16_ESO · April 2014

That strategy doesn't work in real life application. You can't just move teams around willy nilly.

Eris · April 2014

Wavemoore wrote: »

Eris wrote: »

You know that the development team consists of more than one programmer sitting in his basement under his mom's house, right? You also know that Craglorn has probably been in development for months and months right?

They have development teams that work on different projects and have different responsibilities. There is the future development group that writes, codes and prepares new content. There are the QA testers who evaluate the game and locate as many bugs as possible in X timeframe. There are the maintenance programmers who's job it is to fix the bugs that aren't found and to patch or hotfix things that need maintaining. Then there are the animators, the sound engineers, the writers, the producers, the network administrators, the GMs (of which there are several types), the customer service reps (of which there are several types), the hardware technicians, the internal help desk, the secretaries, the accountants, the management, etc...

Software companies as a whole generally develop projects months in advance. Sometimes they work on multiple projects at the same time *GASP* did you know... Microsoft wrote MS-DOS 4.0, Windows 3.0 & OS/2 at the same time? It's like magic... ooooo.

Maybe one day you'll be as smart as you think you are. Or better yet, maybe one day you'll learn how to treat people.

Making others smaller to make yourself look bigger is a very poor approach. He has a valid point, fix the problems before pushing out new content for a very small % of players. It doesn't matter if they are on different teams, it still takes resources away from the CS team when they will now have to deal with the inevitable bugs associated with the new content on top of all the issues they are fielding today. It will have a very negative compounding effect that will be difficult to rebound from.

I agree with the OP that the timing is bad.

Not only am I as smart as I think I am, but I also have 30 years of experience in the computer industry to back it up. 12 of those years working IT in a leading customer care management company. In case you don't know what a CCM is, those are providers of customer service to other companies. In the case of the one I worked for we provides support to international banks, major computer companies, online games, entertainment corporations, the US government, and such, many of them being top 50 companies.

So I know a lot about the development, deployment and maintenance of large, multi-user, multi-purpose applications. I know a lot about what it takes to support those sort of applications as well.

The OP rattled off a long list of things that he feels needed to be addressed. I pointed out, quite clearly, that all of those things can and will be addressed by the appropriate group within a vast organization. People seem to be of the opinion that it is only possible to address one thing at a time, bugs or content or bots or gold spam or server lag, etc.

If you look at the patch notes for v1.1 coming from the PTS, you will see clearly that not only are they launching new content, but they are addressing just about everything on his list of concerns.

That is the way software development works. You squash what bugs you can in testing, you find the bugs you missed at launch, and you deploy the fix for those bugs during the first update. Zenimax knew this, they had their people ready for this, and they followed through.

steven_shidiwenb16_ESO · April 2014

Why would you release an unfinished game without end game content is the question we should all be asking. Who gives a crap about a few bugged quests that don't really affect your play other than cause a mild hindrance for about 15minutes, go do another quest there is no shortage of them.

Gelston · April 2014

I haven't read anything else in this thread. I am at Vet 8, with no exploits, I want Craglorn.

Brakkar · April 2014

In case you didn't notice, there is a patch currently on pts which includes not only Craiglorn, but also a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
And ZoS said these aren't even final patch noted, by the time patch 1.1 is released there may be much more.
Why make all those whine posts all the time, I don't get it.
Report a bug, if its not on the list yet and wait for the fix.
Have some patience...

blackwolf7 · April 2014

Marketing Strategy my friend.

Only players know that ZoS pretty much sucks at fixing bugs and takes them 2weeks to fix those quest bugs imagine how long will they take to fix skill bugs.

Only those who are currently playing knows how unpolished this game is.

So they announce new contents to entice others who are still thinking of buying the game or not.

From outsiders point of view:

Wow ZoS is awesome!! They already release a new content even though they just released the game! Super cool im going to buy now.

They do not know that the game is currently infested with simple bugs that could be easily fixed but instead is taking a long time because they are focusing on new contents for marketing purposes.

Cant blame ZoS though. Company is all about profit. Money is the main purpose so it is only natural to allocate all your resources to getting more profit instead of pleasing every customer whom you already got money from

Laerian · April 2014

Because short sighted mmo locusts will quit if they don't get their endgame fix: That's a mmo rule.