ESO isn’t being developed by Bethesda Game Studios. Zenimax Online Studios is the developer.
It’s only relationship to Bethesda is through the publishing side, Bethesda Softworks.
All of these companies are owned by Zenimax Media.
Murse@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
After the shit shows of Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online, I don’t think I actually give a shit about either anymore.
I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it’s not shit.
Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Murse@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
It showcases how little pride they put into their franchise. Like… if I need a frame built for a new house construction, and the local meth addict offers to do it for 1/10th the cost of the cheapest actual framing company, and I say “Sweet! Let’s have the meth addict do it!” …and he does a predictably shit and unfinished job despite claiming he could do it just as well as professional framers… the main problem here isn’t that a guy who’s brain was fried by meth framed my house, the problem is that I hired someone who’s brain was cooked by meth to frame my house!
Shitting on Zenimax Online Studies is like pinning the situation on the addict.
StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 1 week ago
The fucked up thing was 76 was actually a pretty chill and causal game. My roommate got me to play it for a few weeks…
And then Bethesda decided to change the level scaling so that everything was a bullet sponge.
Now I wont claim it was the best fallout game, but I was having fun exploring the map and having super high level players give me gear and ammo as a relative newbie.
In my opinion they broke the game the moment everything scaled to my level and I was forced to feel the grind constantly. A clear money grab to make players spend on in game purchases.
Besides that I’ll defend the 76 esthetic and community. When I left, it was because it stopped being fun to scrape for everything. Especially in areas that I had cleared 20 levels ago.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Replace ESO with Starfield, since that was actually developed by the same people. And it’s worse than ESO!
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 week ago
What was a shit show about ESO? I understand it was pretty successful and still receives support. It didn’t even have a bumpy launch like FO76, afaik.
Mika@piefed.ca 1 week ago
I used to play this game a whole fucking lot, like around 10 characters that are level capped, did pvp, some endgame pve etc. Did the vids about weird bg pvp builds even.
I can’t say the game is shit, cause honestly, the core mechanics wise it’s good.
But.
A lot of buts.
The more I was playing it, the more I was noticing how little shit the devs give. And when I say devs I don’t mean programmers. The whole team that magages and supports the game is atrocious. Most likely there aren’t even many of them there, so the project just funnels the resources elsewhere.
Like, back back in the days, they created Cyrodiil - a huge open space PvP with castles, sieges and shit. It is supposed to be played with lots of players at the same time. The mere size of it and mechanics highly suggest that.
Yet, the engine they have doesn’t allow them to. Since the start of the game they’ve moved all the computations to the backend, which made severe lags when the sides get around 50v50v50 online. Unplayable amount of lag.
Yet, motherfuckers have great performance during the pvp events, which drives even more players (pvers) into pvp due to rewards. Cause you know, if you just put a better hardware into play, there are no issues.
And I remember how they were banning people who were asking about pvp performance community managers on the stream, angrily saying that “they are working on it”, and that it would be there soon.
Yet, when I’ve dropped the game and came back like 3 years later, they just restricted cyro to 30v30v30 or something like this to reduce the lag. There were no core changes ofc.
They treat balance like something that can be fixed without any haste in like 3-6 month timeframe. And I mean there were 4 months of a set that was bugged and dealt twice the damage it should’ve by tooltip, it was everywhere. Then when they nerf things, it’s to the fucking floor, straight into the garbage bin.
And also they randomly rework shit all the time. Like change the numbers on everything across the board cause they ran some spreadsheet math. Or unite weapon and spell damage stats to allow hybrid builds (now all builds are hybrid cause why not). This ruins builds as well as ruining balance, and not always result in a better gameplay.
And yeah also, they don’t listen to any feedback. Even from their beta server. Cause by the time they put it there, they are on the schedule to release it to prod in several weeks and they only do the bugfixes.
So, idk, yeah, they make some new maps, new quests, new ways to grind, but this is basically a lifeline.
Murse@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Launch wasn’t as bumpy as FO76, but it was still pretty bad in the sense that the gaming community realized it was another false-advertising cash grab very clearly built around a microtransaction sales model, which they switched to after the first wave of misguided subscribers realized we’d been duped. They leaned heavily on Skyrim’s success, citing things like combat having that kind of weighty feel - swing a sword into a shield and you get that rebound like two items with real mass just hit eachother. ESO didn’t even attempt to replicate that like they promised, but delivered combat animations that felt more like a bad WoW knockoff, with two models just swinging at eachother but not actually responding to the contact in any way other than the healthbar ticking down.
It’s another example of over-promising and under-delivering. If it didn’t have the Elder Scrolls stamp on it and was marked as the C-tier medieval fantasy MMO that it was, and priced accordingly, it would have been received just fine.
But their initial charge was $60 plus a $15/mo subscription AND microtransaction bs… which for the ‘Skyrim but an MMO’ experience we were sold, many of us stood ready with the wallet open. Didn’t take long at all for the gaming community to notice the difference between the brand new Lamborghini we were sold didn’t exactly match the third-hand Honda Civic we received.
Elder Scrolls enshittified. I won’t complain if they make a comeback, but I’m not holding my breath either.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 week ago
Wow. I played in the beta and for the first year and that was just not my experience with it.
Murse@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Glad you had a better experience. It was a real disappointment for me - not just the game, but Bethesda still stood out as company that’s passionate about games. Seeing them abandon that for a quick buck really did sting.