geekboy09 wrote: »

What i'm saying is a year with no content but with a emphasis on fixing bugs, and improving older content?

What fixes to older content do we need?

Old craglorn wasn't popular

No. I wouldn't be. We've had enough slowed down for performance. It's never going to be perfect.

I don't think they can go a year without new content but I'd like for them to take time with it like Morrowind all the way into Summerset

If they took time to make high res textures for the vanilla areas, higher poly models, if they upgraded character models and -Mara's mercy - animations.. Yeah, i'd like that. But then, more complex city hubs of DLCs required separate instances. Could upgraded versions of the vanilla uninstanced cities even work, i've no idea

Yes

In theory, sure.

Starfield will be released later this year and although it’s a sci-fi solo space adventure , this one is looking forward to playing it and ESO will take a step back.

It’s probably a small number who will do this.

I would be fine with it.

One year no new meta, no farming... Just relaxing.

geekboy09 wrote: »

What i'm saying is a year with no content but with a emphasis on fixing bugs, and improving older content?

I would be okay with this. If they wanted to take a break from expanding the game so that they could upgrade servers, their engine, and fix a lot of issues that can make this game unplayable at times, it would be worth having a bit of a content drought.

Of course, I may be bias, as I've yet to complete all 3 alliance stories so there would still be plenty for me to do.

In the beginning, when a paid sub was mandatory, ZOS was working on getting the game to play nice with consoles. During that whole time period people were paying subs, and besides the loyalty rewards, weren't getting much content for it. Craglorn was the new content and then crickets for what felt like forever. While I would like the glitches and bugs fixed, I don't really want no new content in the meantime.

dmnqwk wrote: »

I'd hate for the game to collapse because they took a year off making new content.

It's easy to mistakenly think 'oh but the game will be so much better' - no it wont. If all the bugs were fixed, a few % of people will return while thousands leave out of boredom and/or there is new stuff in other games. On top of this nobody new would come in because they 'fixed the bugs'.

It's lovely to dream of bugs being fixed, but not at the expense of the game collapsing. (Since those bugs have been untouched for years and haven't caused everybody to leave already, it stands to reason they are not worth fixing that badly'.

I wonder what percentage of players actually know what these bugs are? I know I don't. I imagine they're entirely related to particular playstyles which many players don't follow.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No. I wouldn't be. We've had enough slowed down for performance. It's never going to be perfect.

I'd be happy with mediocre.

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

No. I wouldn't be. We've had enough slowed down for performance. It's never going to be perfect.

I'd be happy with mediocre.

It's already mediocre, and it's already got more fixes incoming. They are upgrading their hardware, and doing a server re-architecture so they can fix foundational code.

It wouldn't be a problem for me because I'm always way behind on new content, so it's very unlikely I'd run out of things to do or stop playing.

But I don't think it's a good idea for 2 reasons:

1) ZOS already did a year long 'performance improvement plan' a few years ago and it doesn't seem to have produced any noticable results. It certainly didn't stop players complaining about performance or saying they should prioritise it. Even during that year, when they were giving us regular updates on what they'd done and what they would do next we still had topics like this one popping up.

2) As other people have said game development doesn't work that way. Not everyone making a game is a programmer or capable of fixing bugs. If you imagine they make all the art, design levels, write quests etc. by typing out the code you're at least 4 decades late, but I'm not sure it ever actually worked that way. Imagine you come into work one day and get told everyone from an unrelated department is going to stop everything they do and instead help you get through your work. Would you want that? Or does it sound like you've just been assigned to manage a lot of people with no relevant skills or experience, trying to train them on the job while your performance is being judged on the idea that just because there's more people in the room the work should be getting done faster?

And no, it doesn't matter what your job, or their job, is. I used to work an "unskilled" retail job that happened to be in the same town as the companies head office, so we'd often get people from HQ sent over to learn how things worked on the shop floor. I have no doubt they were good at their actual jobs but it took a lot of time and patience to walk them through how to process orders, how to speak to customers, how to handle the way customers would treat them, how to sort incoming deliveries etc. because none of that was anything to do with what they were qualified to do. In the meantime teaching them actually slowed down our work because everything had to be explained, practiced and corrected.

Assigning a bunch of artists, story writers, 3D modellers etc. to fix bugs and server performance issues would be even more complicated.

The alternative is ZOS could fire everyone who isn't qualified to fix bugs and use the money they saved to hire people who can, then fire most of them when performance is improved and re-hire all the other jobs that need doing, but I suspect they'll have a hard time hiring anyone who isn't desperate for anything they can get that second time once it's known the company would do something like that.

Darkstorne wrote: »

That's... not how game development works.

"Writers! Texture artists! 3D modellers! SFX crew! Environment designers! You're now all programmers and on bug squashing duty!"

Or they get laid off and find other jobs leaving Zenimax to start over and finding talented content creators to create new content once Zenimax starts that process again. I doubt Zenimax would pay them to do nothing and the writers and such tend to lack the skills to find and rectify programming issues.