Franchise408 wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

I’m going to continue to go against the grain here and say that the game will continue to improve and add new content.

Out of curiosity, what thought process led you to this conclusion?

ESO is still a money maker. They are not going to kill a game that is still successful

The continued existence of the game wasn't what we were discussing. I was asking about how one could review the recent news available and then say as a result the game will continue to improve.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Come on man. When Matt was let go that was the writing on the wall, Rich taking his place and being let go a year later is writing etched permanently into a wall.

No game studio has had this kind of changeover and maintained their game/studio. Don't be naive and think ESO is fine.

Or we could do the more responsible thing and advise people wait for the official statement regarding ESO rather than telling people to automatically jump to the worst conclusions, given we still have too little concrete information to base such extreme assumptions on.

The responsible thing is to not mince words, pretend like everything is fine and give customers the false presentation that it will be business as usual going forward.
Any thing said will be worded in the most positive way possible misleading customers, not addressing the elephant in the room. This has been the case time and time again, done over and over by countless companies, especially in the modern era.

"Fresh new talent" is code word for letting go of the expensive vets who cost more and replacing them with college students who get paid pennies on the dollar and whom more often than not produce junk over what the vets made.

"Restructuring Staff" is code for "tons just got fired, work loads increased, productivity dropped and products suffering until the doors get closed".

You can't honestly think that what we saw produced as content from this past year+ is going to stay the same, much less get better after the studio director was let go along with a ton of other folks.

See, the problem is you're putting words in my mouth. I've said over and over in various threads about this, including one I made myself, that no one has to or even should pretend everything is fine. In fact, kindly read my post again and you'll see even in the very thing you quoted I never once said people need to be positive and act like things are just peachy. Please point out the "false presentation that it will be business as usual" when what I said was people should wait until we have actual statements to go off of before jumping to ANY extreme (which means, by the way, the extreme of things being perfect or the extreme of this being the end).

It doesn't matter HOW they word it if the game winds up closing down sooner rather than later. It doesn't matter HOW they phrase things if the layoffs have indeed hit them as hard as they could have. The elephant in the room will be addressed no matter how prettily it's dressed up, if the elephant does indeed wind up coming into the room. They can use whatever flowery verbiage they want, but when it comes down to it, if things are bad they'll have to say things are bad.

It's getting just a bit frustrating that people who want to insist on the bleakest outcome keep trying to act like anyone advising to wait until we have ACTUAL statements are trying to "pretend everything is fine", even if we've said over and over the very opposite thing. The only thing we know 100% for sure are two things:

1) The number of confirmed layoffs in the thread that's got the list,
2) That 213 people altogether were affected by the layoffs

That's it. We don't know things like an official count of how many employees ESO actually had. We don't know how many of those 213 might still be working with the studio but with reduced hours. We don't know if any employees from other departments who might have experience in something like writing or level design may be shuffled around at some point in the future. We don't know. And acting like we do and this is the end for sure 100% no doubt about it isn't going to help anyone.

I've said it idk how many times now: People are more than valid in being concerned, in being worried. Things don't look good from what information we know and things that have happened in the past. It makes sense to be uncertain and to not feel very positive about the future. What's unhelpful is having a defeatist attitude over what little information we have, and by that I mean just calling it quits like we've already been told the servers are shutting down next year or something.

Rich Lambert was why I was never comfortable recommending this game to people, so can't say I match the energy of the OP on this.

IviRo wrote: »

When they were working on the new MMO in parallel, there were far fewer people working on TESO than there are now. Therefore, there is no need to say that everything is bad and you know where everything is going.

And this. First off, they should have never even tried to release another MMO while ESO kept bleeding players. It was Matt Fior's pet project, and because of it's probably for the best cancellation, he himself chose to walk away. He was not "let go".

Until there's actual legitimate reason to doomsay, I'm going to hope this is all in favor of a I'd say somewhat needed restructuring and not termination of the game.

nb_rich wrote: »

Something people need to consider also is the remaining staff will probably start worrying about job security and start taking opportunities that come to them before something potentially happens in the future.

Can’t be mad at the ones that decide to do that but I would assume the remaining staff play such important roles now that losing any of them can heavily set things back for the game. Honestly if I was them I would just get together on the side and start working on their own game together.

Lol that would be an even bigger risk considering almost all major and minor game studios have been going through phases of layoffs and restructuring for years now, some were closed down entirely recently, and MMOs are getting canceled mid creation left and right because of funding issues right now. And this is all while major studios are at most announcing MMO-lite or multiplayer action RPG games (GW3, Archege Chronicles, Soulframe, etc).
The time and money that goes into creating MMOs is insane, and it's definitely not that easy to band together to create them. Even some old WoW devs who did something like that at most only landed with a super MMO-lite more like a multiplayer game (Palia).

Choosing to walk away from a steadily successful MMO out of fear of losing your job when the entire industry has questionable job security right now would be a reason to be worry. Unlessss they're going to go work for some Korean game company that pushes out short lifespan P2W MMOs like it's no one's business.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

TBF, like Rich or not (I'm not going to pass judgment here), I am not really all that surprised his name popped up on the list of layoffs, more so that it took this long to find it on said list.

During the restructuring last year he was moved into some combined (and new) "director" role (studio game director or something along those lines iirc), where the title just screamed being a temp role to smoothen the transition period of the incoming new management team (keeping an old manager on staff temporarily who knows the processes while the new team finds its footing instead of just letting them go and throwing the new team into the deep end).

In this particular case there should have been much more severe action taken the same day the "they're working on it" video came out. Or then the "you don't have to be here, you know" public comment that came shortly after.

fizzylu wrote: »

Rich Lambert was why I was never comfortable recommending this game to people, so can't say I match the energy of the OP on this.

IviRo wrote: »

When they were working on the new MMO in parallel, there were far fewer people working on TESO than there are now. Therefore, there is no need to say that everything is bad and you know where everything is going.

And this. First off, they should have never even tried to release another MMO while ESO kept bleeding players. It was Matt Fior's pet project, and because of it's probably for the best cancellation, he himself chose to walk away. He was not "let go".

Until there's actual legitimate reason to doomsay, I'm going to hope this is all in favor of a I'd say somewhat needed restructuring and not termination of the game.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

My goal, if any is simply to get people to think before they spend money. I have heavy buyers remorse for playing this game as I never felt I got out of it what I was putting into it. I understand that milage varies, but that is the point in these discussions, to help illustrate how the game as it used to be is not going to be the same going forward.

I am frankly tired of wasting money on digital products that studios do not deliver on and I feel its disrespectful to the customer to mislead through creative verbiage that nothing is on fire, when we can see it is.

I'm firmly in camp wait and see. Meanwhile I will continue playing just as much as I have previously; spending on ESO+, premium tomes, and an occasional crown purchase; leading my guild, helping new players; etc. If there is one thing that is sure to kill the game, it's a major drop in revenue and players because people unsubscribe and stop playing this game.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

I cant believe that I only got to play ome gamr of ToT with Rich.

I remember watching the dev streams each year super stoked just praying for some PvP fixes... only to lose my mind when they revealed another trend chasing (years late mind you) card game.

JHartEllis wrote: »

Rich Lambert getting let go is the silver lining and is the main thing giving some hope here if it means his can't-do-it attitude stops infecting the studio.

That and just about what seems to be the majority of the 'writing' team if I'm understanding things correctly.

JHartEllis wrote: »

Rich Lambert getting let go is the silver lining and is the main thing giving some hope here if it means his can't-do-it attitude stops infecting the studio.

Most games want to hype up all the cool things players can do.

ESO is all about what the player can't do.

Frayton wrote: »

But copium is one hell of a drug.

With all the negativity and doom gloom game is still thriving with loads of players still playing. Zones are busy, pvp and pve queues are fast as usual. I see no difference after the news. Must pain you to see game still being so active

Everything's fine.
DK and leap need some tuning and pvp heals should be reduced from 8 to 5...can't wait to see shield stacking addressed.
Fun times ahead.