You are aware that Zenimax is a shell company created by Bethesda's then CEO?

Bethesda gets to do whatever they want because they are their own owners, literally.

Maybe most fans don't understand the intricacies in game development, but I don't think their suggestions and tips are completely out there or their expectations too high. Usually, fans just want more of the same with better function and more things to do, sometimes more character development, dialog, ect.

No, I wasn't, which is why I asked if they were. Of course, that post was in reference to nu_clear_day.

I think it's ridiculous you made that leap of reason. Of course they're professionals and not toddlers that's why they choose not to engage with the community at large on the forums. With millions of fans that all have different ideas about what works and what doesn't all the while [censored]ing about it (I understand the silence) however, I'd be willing to bet they do read the forums with great interest.

Given the caliber of games we get from Bethesda I'd say they learn from mistakes, and for my two caps Beth has improved with each game release. I'm guessing you've used the internet long enough to know how trollistic people can be, heck it's on these forums regularly. It's easier to listen and improve than to respond to folks that believe they know everything. . . it's less frustrating.

You know, I want to step back and say it's really not fair for us to speak for them, whether they enjoy interacting with the community or not. The fact is, they do interact. They may not do it often, but that doesn't change the fact that they interact from time to time.

They listen and improve and sell more games. Look at the rabid demand for the FO4 CE . . . heck just for FO4 alone. They know we will support them if they make good games, it's in the sales numbers. Hate to tell you the collective we has many different ideas about what's good and what's not about any product.

I may like the local pizza for the cheese and someone else for the crust, but change one or the other to much to please someone's preference and you lose the other. I'm just saying they listen and use that alone with other ingredients when making a game. Just like the negative from FO4 will help improve the next ES game. There is no need to appease us here on these forums by responding to posts. I have seen how a community can act on the SWTOR forums when a dev posts anything, sad really.

Because the internet is a shiny happy place with no

Speaking of CD Project I really liked the thank you for believing in us note and the soundtrack included in The Witcher 3.

This is complete nonsense. People learn from praise as well as criticism.

True, but I was specifically noting blind praise as doing no good. Posts declaring "Dis is the best game evar!" or insulting people who disagree with a change Bethesda's made on the assumption that it's going to be awesome (when very little information has actually been presented) and things like that are cancerous in my opinion. I have never seen anyone improve a significant degree with such praise. The internet as a whole offers far too much blind praise. Nice words strung together but without any actual feedback to go off of. Blind bashing is also overly common, but that at least gets challenged fairly regularly. If someone says "Fallout: New Vegas svcks!" without any elaboration as to why it svcks, it's pretty much a certainty that people are going to challenge them for specifics. But if someone says that they like something but doesn't elaborate on why? It's more likely to be accepted as is and no insight or elaboration given.

If someone tells me that they liked the script I wrote, that's great. It's nice to have my work appreciated. But I need to know why they liked it if I'm going to improve. And, more often than not, I find hearing about what they didn't like and why they didn't like it to be a more helpful subject when it comes to improving things too.

Keep in mind that criticism isn't inherently negative either. Praising a work is a form of criticism, as is bashing a work.

Thought that was a rhetorical question tbh.

Feedback is a long-term process.

There will not be a panic feature inclusion, 98 days before launch, because ButtBreath66 posts an inspirational suggestion on the forum.

Do developers read the forum? Of course they do, some more than others, but for those who are minded to, they will lurk.

Some changes are significant ones, so I suspect the move to voiced protagonist was discussed at Bethesda at length.

It wouldn't surprise me if they did some modded testing on the Fallout 3 engine before engaging 2 voice actors for 2 years.

In my opinion, the forum feedback that is most effective, is the feedback in the 6 months post-launch, some of which may

get a nod in patches or DLC, but mostly it forms a backdrop of information going into (presumably) Elder Scrolls VI.

Aside of all that, expecting some feedback service from Bethesda and getting grumpy when it doesn't happen, is rather entitled.

I frequent the Lord of the Rings Onlne forums. I've seen devs there try to communicate with the forum members and they just got eaten alive. Every word they said was picked apart and anolyzed before being used agent them.

I think that's pretty much it. I'd guess the answer is 5% "we scared them off" and 95% "we just asked so many questions that they didn't have time to answer them all and were told to just get on with making the game and let the community managers - the people actually hired to read the forums - handle this rowdy rabble"

Yep - I do actually see devs lurking (reading but not posting) on a fairly frequent basis here. Like, they'll pop their heads around the door, skim through a thread to get feedback on a particular discussion, and then get back to work.


"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - attributed to car-making pioneer Henry Ford

"An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition. They should also feel free to ignore customers’ inputs." - Harvard Business Review

They can't possibly "make what we tell them to make" because "we" don't agree on what we want made! Just look at all the diametrically opposed mods out there - there are even wildly different visions of what Breezehome in Skyrim should look like. The devs are more familiar with the dev kit than the most experienced modder, so while they have said on multiple occasions that they find the forums useful, a lot of the time they'll be reading a thread thinking, "Oh, but that wouldn't work because ..." and it's something that they know about and we don't.

That's definitely true. Great quotes by the way. I suppose making the game that they want and a game that we want might be quite a daunting task. So far, they've been doing a good job, so they must have some pulse on the community and the fanbase at large to keep us coming back.

I've seen about three or four different employees like Sentinel and Vsion (can't remember other names) that looked through a few threads right after an announcement, but other than that? Nah.

They don't seem to interact with their fanbase on the forums and they seem to only frequent forums after announcing a title and already having the work done (in other words they probably don't read our suggestions or complaints).

But that only happens because they only pop in once in awhile. If they were on as often as I am, people would calm down and eventually don′t care about them

The issue with applying this theory to these forums is that as much as we may hate to admit it we are NOT a representative cross section of who plays Bethesda games. In some respects, we may be better "critics" and have technically more valid suggestions or insight into the "hardcoe" aspects of the games, but on the other hand we are the WORST players to ask about accesability, ease of use and other things that are CRITICAL to attracting new players. Frankly, most posters here despise the "casual gamer" and we are hostile toward the idea of Developers catering to them, but the fact of the matter is, there will be a thousand casual gamers that would NEVER sign in to these forums for every forum member this place has. Each owns a copy of the game and none has more or less "rights" to any special treatment in terms of how the game is developed.

You can WANT Bethesda to pay more attention to US (the LOYAL fanatics of Fallout lore), but the financial success of the game dictates they do what is needed to appeal to the widest audience possible, even if those decisions are against what we (the LOYAL fans) want to happen to the game. Believing that "Artistic Integrity" and adhering to old school RPG gaming rules is more important than financial success is just naive in the extreme. You may not like it but it's how this will unfold, so either accept it, berate it, or move on.

To some degree I agree, this is why they merged skills and perks, not because skills are to complex but because they wanted decent with levels while not having perks every second level who is unpopular.

PC voice acting perhaps, that its industry practice today is probably more important and that reviewers will like it.

On the other hand, they increase moding support to consoles. Mods if not an very hardcoe thing is just for the fans, not the ones who play the game once.

And where is multiplayer? Its an common casual demand.

Yes it would come with lots of costs and lots of cuts in other parts, and yes it would lose out against all the dedicated multiplayer games so only the hardcoe fans would use it.

Still its an major selling point.

No they will not do stuff who turn off casual players like disable fast travel.

On the other hand they would be careful to piss off the loyal fanbase hard enough to get an dragon age 2 effect, fans tells everybody that the game svcks harder than ET and big rigs racing and this scares most casuals away.

Think this was an concern about Fallout 3 pre release.

Never?

I think someone from Bethesda is reading forum posts. There's clearly someone out there gauging the hype levels. Then that person goes and makes every every single glimpse at Fallout 4 that we could ever hope to see a press exclusive and laughs at us.

im sure they do, but just because a lot of people is making a complaint/suggestion, doesnt mean it isnt a lot of people making a stupid complaint/suggestion, not acting on a complaint/suggestion doesnt equal not listning.

3 cheeky 5 me

Unfortunately this is true.

TES VI: SUMMERSET ISLES CONFIRMED!!!!

Just kidding