Bethesda Ignored Fans?

[HonningbrewMAX]

Judging by on most posts in the " Elder Scrolls V Discussion " fans of TES asked for..

More Varied Weapon Types

More Armour Types

And mounted combat

Arena's

Etc.


None of these appear in game

Todd Howard said " The most requested input was Dragons & Spears: We got one in ".

I cant remember many people begging for dragons? But most asking for Spears.

Do you think Bethesda ignored fans? Or just listening to people who aren't fans but 12 year old COD fan boys?

[Pilaf The Defiler]

I think Bethesda did what they thought would make a better game, and it seems to have worked very well.

Besides, the DLC isn't even out yet. Who says we won't see some of those things?

[Dark Spark]

They let me kill things. Ain't complaining about that.


That sounds simplistic. But I am no simpleton. There are nuances to violence, and Bethesda abides.

Bethesda abides.

[HonningbrewMAX]

The Game Jam? In a week they produced

Better water effects

Spears

Build your own home

Footprints in snow

More follower options

Mounted Combat


And much more



In a week!!

Dont see why they didn't put it into the final game!?!

[DarkEastwood]

I keep hearing this thing about GameJam but have no idea what GameJam is or what happened! Anyway I think Bethesda cares for their fans but like any company (not hating, I understand), go for the money by finding larger audiences. If they add something as epic and awesome as Dragons they'd get more fans. People will say 'Wow this game has an enormous, epic, non-scripted, tough enemy to this game! Sounds like a reason to buy it!' not, 'This game has Spears! Totally a reason to spend $60!'.

[Evil-i]

Personally, I don't get all the katzenjammering over the loss of Spears. Or Throwing Stars. Or Medium Armour. Or Classes and Attributes.

Did Bethesda "ignore" their fans? No, although they listened to what the fans had to say, they didn't let the fans dictate to them exactly what the game was to supposed to be like.

You can't please everyone with a consumer product, and truth be told, the massive amount of fan input was probably contradictory and ultimately unworkable in all of its demands. Besides, if everyone got everything they wanted, there'd be no need for M'aiq and his insights.

[OblivionDuruza]

I have to disagree with the assertion that Bethesda ignored fans. Most of the changes from Morrowind to Oblivion were in response to fan complaints (so one could almost ban fans for the 'dumbing down' of Oblivion), and most of the changes from Oblivion to Skyrim were in response to fan complaints. It's just that it is very hard to please the gaming community, and what some people want, others do not. There will always be elements some people are unhappy with, and retrospect is 20/20.

[Giordano]

There's no real reason why they left out medium armor and the extra weapon types. It's not as hard as coding dragon flying, so it should of been there - especially after Todd said they would return.

That is my biggest disapointment with Beth. Yet again we have less stuff (where are the pants, I wonder?) with the excuse from Beth "It met our customer requirement" and the excuse of some fans "they twied their very bestest".

[OblivionDuruza]

There's a clear reason for the merger of upper and lower body armour, tand that is enchantment. With the Enchanting perk tree, were you to have extra slots, you could become even more seriously OP than you can become already in Skyrim. Not only was that a way to address clipping problems, it was a balance thing.

Skyrim may not be perfect, but it's what people asked for, just like Oblivion is what people asked for (Fast Travel, removal of Chance based Combat and Magic, etc.)

[MathiasFlynnias]

I thought the combining of the armour pieces was simply for aesthetics? Didn't Todd say it was just a lot easier to have a nordic feel to the armour if they just combined them? Though to be fair, legion 'skirt' thing and anything else would have looked dreadful. I would have hoped civilian clothing remained two pieces though.... and there was more of it. Just because we are in Skyrim, they didn't have to do away with all the Imperial clothes. I want my red silk linens back I felt like such a lord. And I don't want to wear 'Fine clothes' that everyone wears.

[Giordano]

There's a clear reason for the merger of upper and lower body armour, tand that is enchantment. With the Enchanting perk tree, were you to have extra slots, you could become even more seriously OP than you can become already in Skyrim. Not only was that a way to address clipping problems, it was a balance thing.

Skyrim may not be perfect, but it's what people asked for, just like Oblivion is what people asked for (Fast Travel, removal of Chance based Combat and Magic, etc.)

They could of simply changed the values of the enchanting stats to accommodate an extra piece.

And from what I recall, people did ask for the return of medium armor and Morrowind weapons. I would be satisfied just with the armor and crossbow.

[Evil-i]

On the subject of melding torso and leggings into a single clothing/armour item, I see it as a way of reducing the RAM intensiveness and saved-game file sizes, which we know can be issues when playing Skyrim on consoles.

[soda popinski]

There's a clear reason for the merger of upper and lower body armour, tand that is enchantment. With the Enchanting perk tree, were you to have extra slots, you could become even more seriously OP than you can become already in Skyrim. Not only was that a way to address clipping problems, it was a balance thing.

Skyrim may not be perfect, but it's what people asked for, just like Oblivion is what people asked for (Fast Travel, removal of Chance based Combat and Magic, etc.)

They could of simply changed the values of the enchanting stats to accommodate an extra piece.

And from what I recall, people did ask for the return of medium armor and Morrowind weapons. I would be satisfied just with the armor and crossbow.

You're a hard core morrowind fan, and you don't even list it in the ES games you've played under your picture?

I really have a problem with people that [&@%!] about every change from morrowind. Some people find that game to be god's gift to mankind, and anything else doesnt cut it. And that is fine. But you need to understand that when you have your gift from god, future products won't live up to that, so i dont get why you all expect them to.

You don't like the game, dont play it. If your xbox burned out and you can't play morrowing, buy a new one on ebay

[Giordano]

First off, I've never played Morrowind. Secondly, I'm just using Morrowind as previous installment of the series. It had Weapon X, why weren't they in the next games? It's like if The Empire Strikes Back has no lightsabers because the crew wanted to cut down on costs. If Beth really listened to their customers, then they would have heard the Morrowind "fanboys" and surely not repeat the same mistake Oblivion had. But what we got in Skyrim was even less than Oblivion (another one: custom spells!).

Gameplay has gone up throughout the series, but equipment has gone down. By the this logic, will TES VI only have iron, steel, and daedric swords, two bows, and some spells? Would that be OK because "Beth listened to us and gave us their very best shot?". You know the amount of attention they got pre-release? The amount of money they've received since then (not to mention, it's still $60 - and it's been half a year!) to not put some extra goodies like crossbows? It baffles me how Beth could of skipped such a small, noticeable value of a video game which was very much wanted by the players. But what baffles me even more, the stubborness of fans praising Beth for the changes.

Also what happened to PC verisons of games? If the crappy 360 can't handle modern games, then put the full game on the PC market and keep the dumbed down one for the console market. Why the "universal" CD for all? Is it that hard to keep track of two products?

[OblivionDuruza]

The 'mistakes' of Oblivion where actually all made to deal with complaints about Morrowind, that is exactly my point, and one that seems to have been missed. Most of the things that are changed between games are a result of Bethesda listening to the complaints of the community, but as I said, they cannot satisfy everyone, and people will always complain.

That being said, I agree that a lot of 'improvement' could be made to Skyrim, Oblivion and even Morrowind.

I also find comments about 'Morrowind fanboys' to be largely inaccurate, somewhat offensive, and near asinine, just saying. Let's please not turn this into a Morrowind v. Oblivion v. Skyrim debate please.

[BvBPL]

Eh. It is a fun, enjoyable game. I don't see a lot of reason to second guess the developers given how enjoyable it is.

Gameplay has gone up throughout the series, but equipment has gone down. By the this logic, will TES VI only have iron, steel, and daedric swords, two bows, and some spells?

I'm surprised to hear people say they wanted different types of armor. Skyrim has at least 25 different classes of armor plus unique armor for guards for each hold, plus unique pieces, plus robes. For comparison, Morrowind (by my quick count) has about 25 or so different cuirasses, but that includes at least some unique pieces, like the Knight's Templar armor. In any case, Skyrim has an armor selection that is comparable to Morrowind's even without any medium armor. Morrowind does have some more helms though. I think Oblivion has about 12 different classes of armor.

As for different pieces of armor, I think the armor integration is great. I don't have a lot of fondness for randomly finding left paldrouns in Morrowind. The aesthetics of having my character (and other characters) walk around in armor that seems like a matched set FAR outweighs the mishmash Frankensteins of Morrowind.

I don't think mounted combat would work mechanically the way they set up the combat engine in Skyrim. If they put it in, I think it'd feel shaky and tacked-on. I'd love to be proven wrong though. I started another thread about that issue in this forum.

I do wish there was a great variety of weapons though. I think there'd be a problem with some weapons and the perk system they set up. Spears, for example, would it make sense to have those gain the "swing" power attack for moving left or right? I'm not really a crossbow kind of guy, but I can understand how folks might be nostalgic for them.

I wish there were more spells too, but I think it is great that the spells work in Skyrim. I didn't find the spell system in Oblivion that interesting since you'd have to be Apprentice sign and a high elf to really get enough mana to make it work. It is nice in Skyrim that any damn fool race can be a spellslinger.

Listened to the fans? I dunno. But it is a good game and I'm generally happy with it.

[Giordano]

I'm focusing on equipment content, so keep that in mind.

That being said, I don't know how anybody would complain about crossbows, medium armor, spears, etc? Is there any sort of reason why these weren't included, besides "not enough time"?

[Drethen]

In the next game a set of armour will be a single item, click to wear the full set. Nice and streamlined.

[SithisIsMyCopilot]

First off, I've never played Morrowind. Secondly, I'm just using Morrowind as previous installment of the series. It had Weapon X, why weren't they in the next games? It's like if The Empire Strikes Back has no lightsabers because the crew wanted to cut down on costs. If Beth really listened to their customers, then they would have heard the Morrowind "fanboys" and surely not repeat the same mistake Oblivion had. But what we got in Skyrim was even less than Oblivion (another one: custom spells!).

Gameplay has gone up throughout the series, but equipment has gone down. By the this logic, will TES VI only have iron, steel, and daedric swords, two bows, and some spells? Would that be OK because "Beth listened to us and gave us their very best shot?". You know the amount of attention they got pre-release? The amount of money they've received since then (not to mention, it's still $60 - and it's been half a year!) to not put some extra goodies like crossbows? It baffles me how Beth could of skipped such a small, noticeable value of a video game which was very much wanted by the players. But what baffles me even more, the stubborness of fans praising Beth for the changes.

Also what happened to PC verisons of games? If the crappy 360 can't handle modern games, then put the full game on the PC market and keep the dumbed down one for the console market. Why the "universal" CD for all? Is it that hard to keep track of two products?

Basically: yes. Skyrims game data is pretty much identical across all three versions, just the actual program code being rewritten for the different platforms. Making two different versions would take a lot more resources.

Edit: also, I'm GLAD Beth ignore its "fans", as I have literally never seen a group of fans as hateful as TES fans, excepting possibly Final Fantasy fans. Seriously, on this forums first page I count five threads complaining about Skyrim, and how it's awful because it's not morrowind with a new map.

If Bethesda listened to its "fans", they'd have committed mass suicide years ago.

[Mattbott]

they made a decision since Mw to make the game more playable but retain the depth and despite criticisms i and others have about how they did this, i think they did a pretty good job, part of that is losing spears and crossbows, but we have also lost sound spells, un followable journals, irrelevant skills and a host of clutter (it's sometimes close whether we have lost too many things, i loved levitating, but..)

As Duruza said we're never happy whatever they do and always forget that most of the things we hate in one game were explicitly demanded by us a couple of years earlier (please please make the game less deadly at low level than morrowind, but for azura's sake don't level it like oblivion again, and fast travel has divided fans despite being there to make our lives easier after propylon/siltstrider/intervention/recall fatigue a lot of us suffered from lol)

fan criticism is based on what we know of past games in the series and other contemporary products, we do not know how a dev plans to incorporate new ideas/cutting edge developments cos most of us haven't heard of them, which is where a good game will really shine in exceeding our expectations. I think Beth can be proud of their dragons (when they work), tho they need to replay RDR if they're going to carry on making horses

by making Skyrim so easy to get into and so deep to play, they have doubled the fan base for TES6 imo, i know a dozen gamers who are addicted to this game , who never touched rpg before. Dumbing down is an easy criticism to make and doesn't apply to this game imo, the core values are still in place and the quality is there in spades

my biggest demand will always be "make a great game please" which they always do, so who cares about whether you can wear 8 rings or if greaves live in the gauntlet slot?

[SithisIsMyCopilot]

Well said. I'm a fairly new ES fan, having started with Oblivion... last December.

Back in the day, I got morrowind for the Xbox, but it's steep difficulty curve and INSANE (5 min, not exaggerating) load times whenever you died (see: often.) turned me off. After playing through oblivion and beyond, I "got it" and really started to enjoy open world RPGs. I picked up morrowind on steam and really liked the five hours I got to play before my mom asked if she could user computer for Netflix

I'm getting a new PC soon (thanks uncle Sam!) so I can give it a good play through. And not have to read and post from my iPod.

Anyhow, I seem to be a fairly rate kind of fan, because I'm willing to go along when they try something new.

[HonningbrewMAX]

First off, I've never played Morrowind. Secondly, I'm just using Morrowind as previous installment of the series. It had Weapon X, why weren't they in the next games? It's like if The Empire Strikes Back has no lightsabers because the crew wanted to cut down on costs. If Beth really listened to their customers, then they would have heard the Morrowind "fanboys" and surely not repeat the same mistake Oblivion had. But what we got in Skyrim was even less than Oblivion (another one: custom spells!).

Gameplay has gone up throughout the series, but equipment has gone down. By the this logic, will TES VI only have iron, steel, and daedric swords, two bows, and some spells? Would that be OK because "Beth listened to us and gave us their very best shot?". You know the amount of attention they got pre-release? The amount of money they've received since then (not to mention, it's still $60 - and it's been half a year!) to not put some extra goodies like crossbows? It baffles me how Beth could of skipped such a small, noticeable value of a video game which was very much wanted by the players. But what baffles me even more, the stubborness of fans praising Beth for the changes.

Also what happened to PC verisons of games? If the crappy 360 can't handle modern games, then put the full game on the PC market and keep the dumbed down one for the console market. Why the "universal" CD for all? Is it that hard to keep track of two products?

Basically: yes. Skyrims game data is pretty much identical across all three versions, just the actual program code being rewritten for the different platforms. Making two different versions would take a lot more resources.

Edit: also, I'm GLAD Beth ignore its "fans", as I have literally never seen a group of fans as hateful as TES fans, excepting possibly Final Fantasy fans. Seriously, on this forums first page I count five threads complaining about Skyrim, and how it's awful because it's not morrowind with a new map.

If Bethesda listened to its "fans", they'd have committed mass suicide years ago.

You cant really have a go at fans for complaining there paying quite large sums of money for the game , and its not like its all hate , hate , hate. I love the TES Series and enjoy Skyrim but I cant help but feel the Developers got a bit lazy on Skyrim

[soda popinski]

You cant really have a go at fans for complaining there paying quite large sums of money for the game , and its not like its all hate , hate , hate. I love the TES Series and enjoy Skyrim but I cant help but feel the Developers got a bit lazy on Skyrim

They got lazy? You mean like they slightly changed the graphics for their existing weapons, designed a handful of new maps, and then packaged it as a new game?

The COD designers are certainly lazy, and they can afford to be

The ES designers are anything but lazy. If there is a bigger game out there let me know what it is

[HonningbrewMAX]

Short guild quest-lines, The exact same weapon types as oblivion , repetitive voice acting

Watch the GameJam man , they created all that content in a week
You think they could of at-least of put some of it into the final release

[soda popinski]

They are putting a lot of it in the final release.

The final release hasn't happened yet. The reality of the game industry these days is that they release unfinished games and then continue to work on them. Sure there are pros and cons of that, but its not just Beth that does it that way