Bethesda only needs to make a solid game to stay in business. If it lives up to or even better PAST the spirit of its predecessors, the old fans will be happy, and new fans will naturally come into the fold by seeing how attractive it looks. Bringing in new customers is the absolutely worst excuse to make a series "streamlined" and "accessible". Honestly, if this is what the basis of them making a game, then you might as well say that Bethesda should just release smaller TES games every year, with only minor tweaks in between them. That's a strategy that's worked for EA and Activision.

I have removed flames, namecalling and responses to it. Please don't do that. :toughninja:

Forums tend to represent an extreme minority of the actual player-base, a caricature of the whole. That however does not mean that it does not in some ways represent the playerbase in a way. In the end, it is their game, and their choice on what they do...but the forums do at times have good ideas along with bad...and if any ideas on the forums are to be used..it is clearly up to them to weed out ideas that are destructive to the game, to ponder on ideas that are good but maybe not feasible, and to implement the "spirit" of ideas that are good, but taken in a more realistic approach by those who actually work on the game. In the end, I don't really see games, with large and otherwise involved fanbases being made in a vacuum. At the same time though, I dont see them catering to the whims and desires of every single player without consideration to their own creative vision.

Hard to resist sometimes... LOL

I agree, as long as Bethesda does it the way MK wants we will be a-ok. :wink_smile:

Please resist... thanks

We've seen 3 finishers in footage so far, 2 of which didn't switch to 3rd person. How do you know Todd didn't switch to 3rd person manually? Also, you assume a cosmetic feature such as this is unavoidable where I would bet money on the notion that we'll be able to turn it off, just like in NV.

................

I have seen some really good ideas on this forum, but for every good one, you get one demanding the whole game is changed to allow one guy one playstyle, one sick or psychopathic one, one daft one, half a dozen that haven't been thought through, and one asking for M'aiq.
I think they have done the right thing by looking at a few popular mods, seems to make much more sense than scouring forums.

I think the bickering, arguing and discussion just serve to show that Skyrim is highly anticipated, empty forums wouldn't look particularly great so they have that going for them at least, also the forums are one of the first places that a random person interested in the game may look, if they see a lot of angry posts full of criticism it may not only put them off buying the game, but they may also put off their friends from getting it too.

Our ideas as fans may not be of much importance but our satisfaction as customers is, just look at the anger on the boards for Civ 5 when it was released, not that i expect Skyrim to be anything like Civ 5, i expect it to be great, but yeah i think the forums are pretty important in their own way even if they are not representative of the player base overall, i guess with the priviledge of having our voices heard should come a duty to be more tempered and fair in how we put our idea's forward and how we end up judging the game once it comes out.

I myself have questioned the dragon shouts and the dovakhiin features, not being particular enamoured of either (of what i've seen, which admittedly is next to nothing), but i don't think i'l be doing that anymore as this thread here has made me realise it's not really any of my business as much as i love the ES series, i haven't put anything into the game, none of my hard-work or labour is in it, what do i contribute? a small amount of patronage, and patronage never had any effect on art, it just purchases it, i'l either like or dislike the game once it comes out but i think i'l keep my amateur opinions about how it should be and what should be in it to myself from now on lol

looking forward to 11.11.11 :tops:

I think it's fairly safe to say (not just from the demo footage we saw, but from commentary on the full 30 minutes we didn't see) that the switch wasn't manual.

If it's completely optional though and there's a way to disable it, then that's absolutely fine - no problem at all. That's all people are asking for.

Why is it because you are on the Forums you are all of a sudden a Blacksheep of the 5 million copies of Oblivion sold and that for some reason people not on the forums are not as rampant and ridiculous as some put it as the ones on the Forum?.....because you're on the forum you suddenly become a minority? mmmh


here I was thinking I actually cared about the game enough to go on its forums...not to mention this is not the only place that has the same concerns/praises as other forums...but what can you do right? for some reason Forum users are special.....in complementary and insulting forms of the word...apparently.

While there are certain ideas that are terrible from the get go, the fans also do have a certain knack for identifying aspects within the game that not just could be improved, but actually need to be improved. Stuff like the bow re-balance, improving accessibility etc. Some of which the fans identify, others of which Bethesda does.

Take the ranged weapons debate - every weapon class has a couple of similar weapons that perform the same function, and there is a bit of variety in the function that each individual weapon offers (claymore - reach at heavy weight, shortsword: short reach at light weight) except for daggers and bows. Daggers don't really need an equivalent, because they suit every play style and a small axe or small club would look kind of silly. On the other hand, in Oblivion bows had absolutely no variety whatsoever. There was one type of bow the entire game. That may not matter to melee characters, but to anyone playing around with ranged weapons they only have one weapon class to choose, and that weapon class has no variety within it. I'm thinking that for a lot of people that was an issue, and hence why for five years now the crossbow thread has popped up on this site again and again.

On a side note, the argument that the forum only represents a tiny percentage of players and thus our views are invalid because everyone else disagrees with us is completely invalid. I'm not sure if you have noticed, but president Obama represents 308 million people at the G8 summit.

There's enough people using this site to create a representative sample of the fan base. Any views expressed on this site are reflective of the fan base - it is highly unlikely that those millions of fans all have radically different opinions to the ones expressed on this site. (With the exception of factors that alter the learning curve of the game)



Lol ninja'd.

Honestly, does anyone here actually run a business? You don't tell your regular customers that they do not matter to you because there will always be dozens of others to replace them, even if you're running a multinational corporation, because they'll take their patronage to the local business who care about them as individuals.

There is NO DOUBT that there are actually many good ideas that get put on the forum. Including those of my detractors. But at this stage in development most of us are literally complaining at a wall. I agree with several posters that suggest that the best way to make long term changes to the franchise lies in modding. Through modding Beth actually gets a good look at what the cats that can change the game have done. The more popular and demanded the mod the more it could influence Beth. Also, Beth will be listening to reviews and comments after launch and over the next several years as they start to ramp up for the next project(i would guess to be falllout 4). Just like they were paying attention to opinions after every iteration.

We also shouldnt forget that Beth is a business and as such must make some decisions solely on whether they believe it will affect the bottom line, regardless of the older fan base. For them to continue to create ever more impressive games requires more and more resources. Hence a larger audience is required to justify the larger expense. Pandering to a wider market is a must. They could easily make an Arena clone at a significant fraction of the price. But does Beth want to go that route? Obviously not.

If they made the game from this forum, the game would go from 300+ to 100 hours, and it'd be a piece of crap. Honestly, have you even read some of the ideas on here? I do think they listen to us though, and have taken a couple things from our reviews of what they show us, but I doubt they take more than 1 or two original ideas from the forums, if any.

Thats just what they tell people to keep the "suggestion" people posting

Well I don't think we are black sheep and there is no doubt we are fans of the game and the series but it's true we are not necessarily representative of the fans at large. We folks that hang out at the forum more tend to know all the ins and outs of the game, how it works, how the numbers behind the scenes work and every little aspect of games. Most just see the ads, thinks it sounds like a good game and get it and play it and never really can put their finger on why they like it or not.

That fact doesn't mean a whole lot in the end because we still count among the numbers overall and we tend to be able to express what we want in a much clearer way because we do understand the find points.

As for the rest of your post, I'm really not sure what you are saying. The members here represent a pretty good mix of folks and most are pretty mature when expressing themselves. :shrug:

"Tis a great place to gather and learn about the game, wonder about it and offer our varied opinions. I like it.

then explain the dev that just posted, he had to have read the forums

... He's the Senior Community Manager.... It's all in the name bro...

I've SEEN devs here before. They have yellow names. They read threads all the time, I know.

The second half of my post was addressing the statement people seem to enjoy making when they do not like the features someone else is talking about or showing concern over its removal or Altering with the statement "Bethesda isn't making the game for you, you're a Minority and Bethesda is a business, they aren't here to cater to you because your on their forums" a statement of which I find purely used to undercut another individual and nothing more :shrug: as if for some reason because one is on the forums one ceases to think the same way they did when they were not on this forum or on another forum.

case and point for some reason if Bob thinks similar to John that x features or in/out good/bad both played the games but didnt go on the forums. if Bob joins to forums he becomes a minority and his opinion is atrocious and game dampning while John is more...attractive?

Let's face it everyone. The devs do look at this forum, but if what we are asking for would take too much extra time/money/effort, it won't happen in the original release. Regardless, Skyrim, being an Elder Scrolls game for one, and being a Bethesda game for another, will be fantastic. It will look great, play great, and feel great. And I'd put money on it lasting longer than any other game I've ever played. I've spent around 90 hours on Morrowind, 130 on Oblivion, 130 on Fallout 3, but I hope to have Skyrim outshine them all together. I'm betting it will be at least 15 hours to complete the main quest, and of course another 200 or so to do all of the little side quests. This will be massive. And very very impressive.

That being said, no, not all of our ideas will be put into the released version of the game. But that is the great thing about Bethesda: they encourage modding. The Elder Scrolls modding community is a wonderful, unique thing. Todd Howard has said that he plans to implement user-created content into not only the PC version, but also the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. This would be fantastic. Full article http://www.next-gen.biz/news/skyrim-mods-could-reach-consoles

I trust bethesda

Taking some idea from people on the forums is a good thing but if they did everything that people tell them in these forums we would end up with one weird game :tongue:

Bethesda is the Anchor for the Elder Scrolls games just so people know that.

I agree.