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[[Orion]Hermit]

From agecommunity forums:

ES_Deathshrimp:

A lot of this has been addressed in several other threads, but some insightful points have been made in this thread, so I wanted to address it too.

Some disgruntled players tend to combine three very different sets of issues into one general statement that the game is buggy or incomplete. These sets are:

1) True bugs. These are problems like connectivity issues players have when joining ESO. They clearly should not have been in the game and we are working to fix them (and if other bugs or features aren't getting as much attention right now, it's because we are spending so many resources on these problems).

Bruce's point was to explain why the problems are so tricky and why the response (to you guys may feel slow). Game development is just more complicated now. Hardware is much more complicated than it was in the AOK or Civ time (Civ didn't even have multiplayer, let alone NATs to contend with). That's not intended to be an excuse, just an explanation. With the exception of a sound bug in DirectPlay, most of these have to do with ESO.

We also didn't rush the game, nor were we forced to rush it by Microsoft. We just didn't find these problems until the game went live. Fault our testing plan if you'd like, but we shipped the game when we thought it was done.

2) Missing features. This is a little subjective, but typically comes down to anything that was in AOK, AOM or "all RTS games." I've argued before why we can't support every feature from previous games and new features as well. There are features we would have liked to have supported better, such as the hotkey editor, team matches and record game functionality. Most (but not all) of these issues are also with ESO. Our focus with ESO was on community. We figured that is what makes multiplayer games live or die. We knew if we could grow a good community that we would have time to address the missing features later.

3) Design disagreement. Some of these feel like missing features, but in the end they were conscious decisions we made that some fans just disagree with (as is their perogative). We didn't want to have a single, uber ladder based on player skill.

Off topic: Without making this post even longer, we hoped that players would obsess less with smurfing and drop tricks to enhance their score at the expense of playing the game. However, it just may be too radical a change and we are looking at putting some kind of skill score and ladder back in the game. We thought more players would use the games list than quick search, since the former was more AOK-like and the latter can't assure you get the game you want. Quick search *does* consider skill and weights it more heavily than HC level. We just don't display what your skill is (currently). /off topic

We didn't want to have multiple accounts per CD key, because we wanted players to learn and recognize each other, which you can't do if everyone has 10 nicknames. We didn't want to have 2000 units in an army because we think that is too many to manage. We didn't want to have a complicated stance and formation system, because we didn't think that was fun. We didn't want maps to be too random because we didn't want players to resign in the first few minutes when they were resource screwed.

I'm not saying you have to agree with these decisions, and in a few cases I think we're already seeing that we made the wrong call. But it isn't accurate to call something a bug or unfinished just because you don't like the feature. Issue 1 items above are bugs. Issue 2 items are unfinished features. Issue 3 is just the way we designed the game.

If you saw Vega's interview, he did a great job of explaining why patch testing can take a long time. There was a day when developers would release "beta patches" and basically say "We don't know what this will break, but try it if you dare." We (and the customers) are less tolerant of that sort of thing nowdays. (As an aside, I think the consoles deserve a lot of credit for raising the quality expectation bar on game software.) Even AOM shipped with some dreadful performance problems on official but low-end machines, and we did much, much better this time around. But all that testing still takes time. When we get to the point where we are mostly just issuing balance patches, the turn around should be a lot faster because the testing plan is a lot easier. You don't have to worry about hardware compatibility when giving the Portuguese a boost.


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[nix_nivis]

Phenomenal post- thanks for sharing it with us FH.

[vintage_Antioch]

I'm not sure why they would not want to put a skill based ladder in there, it is one of the main foundations of online play.

[SolveEtCoagula]

good post

[[Orion] ipso]

I'm not sure why they would not want to put a skill based ladder in there, it is one of the main foundations of online play.

agreed, although his point about choosing the games you want is kinda good... if only the game browser window didnt suck so much.

[Hazard]

yes, why are the filters soo loose :/

[FsE_SenniN]

Hmm if they wernt forced to release it so early, why did they pass up on so many features, and forget things so obvious as being able to see when your friends are playing. ESO for AoT was and is so much better than ESO2. AoT had a great friends list, a ladder and an observor mode(they better have plans to bring this back). To me it was a complete downgrade, with the only upside being the Clans addition which tbh isnt very useful as you cant get any informations on the clans.

[dim]

Yeah out of all the games they have released aoe3 seems to be the least finished. Every series it seems like they take away the small stuff that they think no one cares about.

[ShOuLdEr]

We didn't want to have a complicated stance and formation system, because we didn't think that was fun.

thats funny how are formations "not fun"

[dim]

thats funny how are formations "not fun"

Yeah it's not like they're forcing you to use them

[SunTzu]

We knew if we could grow a good community that we would have time to address the missing features later.

Two points.
1) Community would not grow cause they will be turned off cause of these missing features
2) Great make more money by selling the xpac with the missing features to the "Larger Community"

This post has been edited by SunTzu: Dec 7 2005, 04:43 AM

[Au_xang]

ESO2 focused on community...but friends were downgraded, filters on game search are CRAP...I hate having to reselect public games EVERY TIME...clan info limited and clan tag display limited, it goes on....great post, but ESO2 focused on community? Plz.

[[Orion]Hermit]

what strikes me is that he says that they made some decisions on what to add and what to drop from past games.

so they add "cool new features" like being able to change the colours of things on the graphics of your home city while out of game yet they drop something like "recorded game functionality".

they add things like ducks in the water which have no bearing on gameplay, yet they drop things like a hotkey editor.

they add things like clan features to eso2 but drop things like friends list functionality.

they add things like the hc feature, but they drop things like a skill-based ladder for matchmaking (sure we can set up games in adv setup but since hc level doesn't determine skill, how are we to set up games against even-skilled players???).

thus i like how he says that some players might disagree with some of their decisions. YES WE DISAGREE WITH THOSE DECISIONS!!!

[Tordenskiold]

I agree with most of what Hermit said, however:

they add things like the hc feature, but they drop things like a skill-based ladder for matchmaking (sure we can set up games in adv setup but since hc level doesn't determine skill, how are we to set up games against even-skilled players???).

I don't think this is quit accurate - DS said that they DO use skills to determinate match-making.

Quick search *does* consider skill and weights it more heavily than HC level. We just don't display what your skill is (currently)

[[WG]Typhus]

I knew it... The more I use automatch the less I'm matched with noobs, even with lower HC level... But dammit, why don't they show the rate? They seems to be afraid of that, like if the lambda player would quit online gaming if he has the feeling the game is focused on the competitive aspect...