Certainly, but what if the reasonable justifications are portions of the game that they are not allowed to reveal? What they have given us are sneak peaks, overviews of features that they want to excite people. To fully explain every feature would be like giving you the game. It's not their fault some of us can't see the possibility in their features.

you my good sir, are the man

Again, proves my point, with people not seeing the good in the change...

I remember reading something similar to this on the Bioware forums, prior to the release of DA2. Someone attempted to convince the majority that the stripping down that Bioware done would somehow enhance the game.

Needless to say, that person has not shown themselves too often anymore.

My point is, as others have said, changing something for the sake of it is completely opposite to changing something that would benefit in some way from alteration. Change is something whose impact cannot be evaluated until the changes have been experienced, so my opinion of the changes will not be fully formed until well after 11.11.11

If the change is wrong or bad, how can people see the good in it? No-one criticises an improvement.

Unexpected? I don't know what to say...as soon as I found out how the system worked I immediately knew it was crap. I would have known that before I put together the first leveled list in the CS if I would have been a developer. What happens when everything levels with you is not exactly hard to realize if you ask me - it's a very simple concept with a very simple outcome. :shrug:

To me this is the best example why you don't need to test every idiotic idea you may have. Some ideas only require (half) a minute of thought to realize they won't work.

It really wouldn't. If Beth actually came out, engaged in a real dialogue with their audience, and stopped releasing all their information through print magazine exclusives I think they entire relationship would be a lot more amicable. Clearly explaining the equipment system (armor slots, can clothing be worn under/over armor, how many accessories, etc) does not ruin any sort of surprise. Explaining the combat, how it's been improved, the variable levels of challenge, does not take away from the experience later on. There are plenty of indie game designers who are very vocal about the development cycle, regularly releasing new information on a very frequent basis.

Not discussing story/ploy details is understandable. That's an actual spoiler. Not discussing which skills are in and which are out is not. It's just an attempt to keep fans in the dark because they don't want to have to explain the cuts they've made. And so instead of actually discussing the changes, we're forced to engage in idle speculation and guess about trends and all that [censored]. This certainly leads to a more vocally upset fanbase, which in turn leads to a more divided fanbase as others leap to Beth's defense.

It will always be bad if you don't see the upside of the thing.

A bad change will be a bad change if you only see the bad things it gives.

Indeed, your argument is very logical. However the business world is not as logical. While you may deem such things as perfectly understandable to release to the public, lame business dudes do not. What you are explaining has not been shown to be a beneficial trend in the game marketing business. In the end, the Devs aren't the ones who are in charge of marketing, otherwise they might agree with you. There's a bit of politics to the whole thing that you really have to give them the benefit of the doubt on.(also, releasing information to magazines as opposed to just telling the public openly=$$$, and business people Loveses $$$)

Also, I disagree with you on what is a spoiler and what is not. If you have already been presented all the gameplay then that's just like being presented the entire storyline. Same amount of spoil. I enjoy the amount they have disclosed. I enjoy the mysteries. So what if you don't know every detail of it right now. It's less than 3 months away. Besides, what has really been that BIG of a deal? Oh no, we don't know some of the skills! I would hate to be pleasantly surprised to find out what they are when it comes out! It's all things that have arguments for both sides, meaning it could be good or it could be bad. So what? That's like before you were told anything. It could svck or it could be great. It's up to you how you decide to try and look at it.

I am sympathetic to the OP. For examples of franchises that resist change, see Call of Duty and Madden. While they have may polished their formulas to near perfection, innovation is all but banished.

ES tries to reinvent itself, to a large extent, with each game, a bit like the Final Fantasy series does. This may lead to fluctuations in quality, but it also can lead to some truly outstanding, revolutionary games that epitomize their genres.

In all realms of art, fans tend to resist change while artists (at least the good ones) tend to embrace it. I'm reminded of Martin Scorsese's films. Many of his die-hard fans would like him to spend the rest of his career making Taxi Driver or Goodfellas over and over. But I actually get more excited about his "departure" projects. Artists are often invigorated by new ideas. We shouldn't reflexively punish creative people for being creative.

If the bad outweighs the good, trying to twist things for the goods favor is selfdeceiving which will result in dissatisfaction in the end.

Thinking "I'm glad it's not inside me anymore" doesn't make feces in ones pants a good thing. And thinking "It could be worse" or "Well at least there's..." is just giving up on what one really wants.

It was experimenting? hell when it was first announced people already said NO to oblivions Levelscaling, one of the prime concerns was "wait so I won't feel like Im progressing?, what do you mean they get stronger with me?" and at face value that concern wasn't so bad, oh no but it turned out far worse than anyone could ever have imagined


This thread is a semi farce beacause Skyrim is Still TES, nothing revolutionary and new has been done or undertaken, the basics got cleaved, a few gimmicks got woven in and the slapped on new paint and called it new, while trying to justify some "changes" with Ass-backwards reasoning. you're coming up like the Signal beam of reasoning trying to "have people see the light" as if Skyrim is something new, poweful and Scary, akin to a turnbased adventured game turned realtime with RTS features. nothing in skyrim viewed so far is Unforseen change on an epic scale, what was expected was Improvement from what they got right, Fix what they got wrong, and inclusion of everything the new game is bringing to the table, and thats barely happening, but very little of anything is worth the scale this thread is trying to perch itself on.

If the changes in gaming weren't considered for the better by the majority, they'd lose sales revenue and any incentive/reason at all to make said changes.

It's what's wrong with hollywood right now; movies are the same stupid things over and over and over because the movie industry is afraid to try new things. The same classic setups reliably bring in a lot of money. Any new venture tends to be disfavored amongst the majority.

If the majority didn't like the changes to games in the past 10 years, the changes would have been reverted or there would be no market for them. I don't see games NOT selling because of the changes in most cases. Some, yes, most, no. There will always be people that don't like the changes. MMORPGs right now are leaning towards free to play with microtransactions, and many games that are pay to play still have cash shops. I don't like the shops one bit, but they're being added because they're liked by the majority. People will say they hate it, but what talks is the income provided.

TLDR If the change was as bad as you claim, the games wouldn't sell. They do, so it's for the better.

You can't compare those games to a RPG. Call of Duty is a straight-forward action shooter, Madden is a football game. There is not much you can do with these types of games. If Madden is the perfect football simulation then I don't see the point in changing it. If I want to play a football game I play it - because it is as good as a game that is only about football can be. What do you want to change? Make a hockey game out of just for the sake of changing it? Or make the game worse only to make sure it plays different then its predecessor?

In an open world RPG like Elder Scrolls you have an endless amount of possibilities to add new stuff and make a whole new experience without changing working game mechanics/features only for the sake of change. I don't think anyone would complain if they fixed all the flaws Oblivion had, implemented some cool new features, improved the graphics a bit and made a whole new province with new quests and adventures based on that.

And how would they do it without any major change?

I'm not mainly talking about the "cool new feature", but the "fixing all the flaws of Oblivion" part!

And this is exactly why I quit going for that marketing degree...

As soon as I launch the game, I'll find out exactly which skills are in, I'll probably be able to see the full perk trees, I'll almost immediately be able to try out various clothing/armor combinations. This is the equivalent of revealing the cast and crew of an upcoming film. It'll give you an idea of the talent being employed and you might be able to make some relevant judgements based on that ("I hate that actor," for instance), but it's different when you actually experience it. It's the difference between reading a script and watching a film. How all the elements interact, how you can combine different tactics or systems in ways the developers never intended. That's what's interesting, that's what's worth discovering. Not a factual list of what is and isn't in the game.

Well thanks, doctor. It should be noted if no one complained about the bad changes then nothing would be fixed.

:facepalm:

I couldn't even being to understand this logic.

There are changes that are good, there are changes that are bad. Nothing good can come from a bad change, other than realizing it's a bad change and fixing it.

The OP was talking about 'change for the sake of change'. Fixing flaws is change for fixing flaws. The problems arise when you do something like in Oblivion - change an already working level-scaling system (that admittedly would have needed a bit of fine-tuning) to put a crap system in place. That is change for the sake of change.

Well what makes a bad change bad?


No, that's bad fix for a problem...

Not necessarily true. We must temper our actions with wisdom, otherwise remain perpetually the fools who simply try every dumb or risky idea, hoping we can do damage control after the fact or simply "change it back" as you say, which I am sorry to point out is no longer a certainty, by a long shot.

Moore's Law dictates we will reach a critical mass or terminal velocity in our technological development, a point I would argue we passed decades ago, where the means at our disposal no longer allow us the luxury of being such blind and short sighted children about our pursuit of "change."

For example, we might just decide to try out a new techno virus or zombie wireless human network, and infect anyone against their will, by that same logic that if something goes wrong we'll simply stop and learn not to, and be able to undo the damage.

Except we discover the genetic changes we introduced are in fact irreparable, and for the sake of some fad of the moment Borgian hive mind virtual reality orgy, we have destroyed the greater potential of humanity forever.

I will never agree with science or change simply for the sake of it. How irresponsibly idiotic can we possibly be, after thousands of years of evolution... You'd think we'd know better. Yet it seems every generation all common sense has to be learned all over again, and we don't appear to get any better at it. On the contrary...

We need to make INFORMED, intelligent decisions, not go around testing out every dumb idea without restraint. The assumption we'll be able to simply clean up after the sort of technological mistakes we can make today is the assumption of a fool who has no right to make those decisions for the rest of us.

Not that this stops them from simply buying a position of authority... Like the presidency. Today we worship presentation over substance. You don't need to be qualified, you just need money and some lessons delivering canned lies people want to hear in a suit.

Real science takes time. It seems, as Beverly Crusher of TNG once said, the "scientist" brats of today's zombie generation simply want to take shortcuts "right through living tissue," just to see what happens.

Such petty irreverent and nihilistic minds are like a cancer lingering from the last dark age, the atheist pissing contest, the tyrant looking down at everyone else to justify their criminally insane actions, and will be the cause of the next, I am certain of it.

Show some personal responsibility, I say.

Of course we should continue to make changes, but we cannot allow ourselves to start shortcutting what works, let alone what is necessary, just to see what happens.

Nothing personal of course, and this is more appropriately in regard to political or scientific change as you originally pointed out, not necessarily changes in a video game.

Changes to a virtual world doesn't put the lives and future of real people at risk.



We do have some control over the kinds of change we must simply accept. I think humans have suffered as slaves for so long we are almost too timid to demand the use of better tools we have today to solve archaic problems we still subject ourselves to.

We tend still to lump too many things automatically into the category of "things we cannot change."

There is a point, where the level of technology existing to provide better alternatives changes such outdated cliche from wisdom to stupid self defeat. I think we've already tripped and bumbled head first over that line.

If change for the sake of change is good then at some point it would be good to not change anything since that would be change in itself.

Yes, when you boil it down it does get that ridiculous.

So change has got to have a better purpose than to simply exist.

I actually take offense at your suggestion that arguing against change is out of fear and contrary to logic. Not only that, I say it's presumptous, because what you state here is no more and no less than you know better than plenty of marketing textbooks.



If you are a company, you don't have that luxury. When you're out of money, you are out of money. End of story.



We're not talking about never changing anything. You are not talking about ALL change. The title you chose is "change for the sake of change". As far as business goes, that's declaring that it's a great thing to load a six shooter with one bullet, roll the drum, put the gun against you head, pull the trigger and when you're still there declare "Change is good!", move the barrel over by one slot and pull the trigger again.

I've talked at length already about the character of brands. People expect certain things when buying a product of a brand. When people buy a Fiat, they expect, at the most energetic, a Fiat Abarth. But nothing that reaches the 100 kph in under 4 seconds. When people want to buy a Ferrari, they want to have a powerhouse of a motor. They want to feel and hear that power. If Ferrari started saying "Hey, change is good!" and build a 50 hp compact car, then the board of Fiat would decide that Luca di Montezemolo obviously has lost his marbles and has become senile and quickly exchange him for someone who knows what he's doing. No one except for environmentalists will have any problem with Ferrari changing the engine power if it is by cramming another 100 hp into the motor block. On the other hand, if they decided they don't want to do sports cars anymore, they want to make really sensible, family friendly vans, see above.

Chrysler builds a variety of cars. If they stick the letters "Jeep" onto one, people expect some degree of offroad capability. If they'd sold the Neon under the Jeep brand, the only reaction of people would have been "WTF?!" - but not a sale.

That's how brands work. While they still allow some change, there are certain core characteristics that define the brand that people expect to be able to blindly rely on. If you change those, you do serious harm to your business. If you want to offer something with different characterstics in these brand-specific factors, you do so under a different brand. You can do so by either creating a new brand under your own company or by acquiring a complete company in the same field and streamlining it to provide what you can't provide with your main company. The latter would be for example what Volkswagen bough Skoda for, or what Renault and Nissan acquired Dacia for. The first one could be used for example if I wanted to publish a more action-adventure oriented game in the Elder Scrolls setting. Since people expect more classical RPG in my main "TES:XYZ" series, I could take that action adventure - let's call it "Redguard" and publish it not under the main TES label, but under a label that we shall call for discussion's sake "The Elder Scrolls Adventures". Everyone will immediately see that it has something to do with TES but is more adventure-like than the main series.

Excellent anology.

:facepalm: :facepalm:

I really can't belive that I have to answer this question.

Oblivion - GPS Compass, Level Scaling, re-writing lore to fit the game, Oblivion Gates, Overpriced DLC, "Essential" NPC's, poor in-game economy

Skyrim - Removal of Classes and Atrributes, possible removal of spell making, GPS Compass, "Essential NPC's, Kids, Marriage

These are things just off the top of my head that constitute bad changes. Nothing good can come from any one of them other than realizing that they are bad and fixing them now, or in the future.