I guess I am spoiled by the Bioware forums where developers actively engage their fanbase...

On these forums I do not see any developer engagement period.

I may be missing something, but it seems like the developers do not give a damn on these forums.

I think this is sad because forumites are a great resource.


Frankly I do not see why Todd Howard cannot insist that his staff spend at least 15 to 30 minutes every day with fans in the forum.

It would be a win win proposition in my opinion

/Thread End.

We do see development team members appearing once in a while, probably when they are bored/frustrated with a glitch in the game.

I have seen some a couple of times, but its pretty rare IMO. They might just be "spying" on us though

The devs do spend time reading the forums, (at this very moment there is one looking through the topics) and you can also interact with them on a personal level in the "Meet the Devs" threads. However, at this stage of the game development all news, information, screenshots and videos are released by Admin/PR/Community Managers via magazines and the Blog, the devs do not get involved in discussion of the game features.

Remember, you don't have to log in to read the forums.

If you have a look on the World of Warcraft official forums and the treatment that developers receive there, you might understand their reluctance to participate in discussions.

Just check out the Bioware forums for Dragon Age for instance...you will see a Night and Day difference

I can say i got bored of skyrim forum in a month , simply because people endlessly discuss same topics over and over again.Most topics and posts repeat themselves or are simply put spam.
IMO developers already made most decisions about the game now they are just experimenting and polishing stuff a bit.

And what's the point of Bioware developers actively engaging in the community.I don't want to offend anyone but most of Bioware forumities are underage,nerdy,horny teenagers.
And Bioware games keep declining in my eyes and partly because they are listening to majority of their fanbase.Good for them not good for more mature players.

Bethesdas forums are much more mature , but you still can't but notice some hideous and [censored] ideas from time to time.While some ideas are truly great , but those get overspammed with some BS.

I for one, won't want to say too much if I was a developer, anyone I said could be a flame bait.

All the RPGs Bioware produced in the last two years have been commercial successes. So no one can say fan engagement causes their games to decline


Any developer that does not engage the fanbase is set down a slippery path... Look at how Bethesda responded to the outcry over the ending of the fallout 3.for instance.

If you think about, if developers were to post on the forums, a whole bunch of people would start asking questions on the game. And that can get annoying. Just saying :whistling:

Never played fallout (hate the techno/punk/futuristic rpg genre).

What happened to the ending? And what did Beth do about it?

If a developer were to post on the forums, people would start asking questions on the game and that can get annoying. Just saying :whistling:

That will be a spoiler for others who are yet to play the game my friend..

You can google it though if you are interested

Last quest was a
Recommend Fallout 3, in not a fan of post apocalyptical settings but it was well done and fun.
Also give a look at some features that will probably be in Skyrim.

Just because you can't SEE the developers doesn't mean they're not there. They're constantly reading for everyone's perspective in case they had missed something. The trouble is that they can't interact most often because it'd require them to divulge information that we're not supposed to yet know.

They don’t read everything but keep an eye on the forum, beast races was not planned as playable in Morrowind but it was changed because of forum protests.

I've only recently dropped into this forum site, seen one Dev drop by the man, woman, beast, god, dragon, daedra person who goes by the name...

Killmoms.

Over on the NV site J Sawyer still drops in on occasion, and many others were frequent posters.

since nobody knows for sure....all the DEVs have to to is post 1 comment here to say hi and it would solve all the questions....right?
so lets wait for it
better yet I use my magic to summon them ungalabugala aasit!:(spells effective time is 24 hours)

lets hope some developer sees this

I hear Todd Howard shows up here every once in a while with a notepad labelled "Things that only MY Skyrim character will be able to do". The first two items are 'dragons' and 'spears'.

Oh, and he's the only one with online matchmaking. Of course there won't be anyone else for him to play with, but he just likes to have it there.

To be fair, DA2 is gone gold and has probably had most of the work done for a while now so the devs might have a lot more time to tease their fanbase.

Bioware has a bit of a different relation with its fans too. Theyre generally a little more constructive(not nicer, but more constructive) and dont make 10001 threads about how much they want bloody Spears in the game. On the DA forums I tend to see more talk about game features and how to better implement them instead of people talking about whats NOT in the game and how the sky is falling because of it. That and Fenris fangirl threads.

I think that because the most avid TES fans are also the people with the heaviest modded games, which is basically like saying "Hey I LOVE TES games, but not when you make them!", some devs might find it pointless to discuss anything because people will just mod them however they want. Im sure Bethesda regularly reads the forums here but I doubt many of them would want to be lightning rods to every little old complaint, though thats because they DONT post here much. If they were to actually post here more often then they probably wouldnt get such rabid responses.

IMO anyway.

I wasn't a fan of futuristic/scifi either, until I played it. So I fired it up with a feeling of "oh I know I'm not gonna enjoy this", and during the few first hours, that was the case. As I never played previous fallouts, I didn't expect the *style* of the game. When I first saw the intro sequence on you tube, I thought "why the hell are they ruining a futuristic game with music from the 50s"? Turned out it wasn't a realism scifi approach, but a 50s science fiction *projection* on what the future would be like, that made the whole *style* for the game.

Ending? You died, but you went down as a hero in history. I loved it! Probably alone on that, but I love when games and movies do bold moves rather than what you expect. FONV you didn't die, but it was still end of the game. FONV btw have the best writing, characters, and (most) voice acting to date, imho. Combined with hardcoe mode, faction and reputation system, and proper gun sights, makes it the better game of the two.

:wave:

There we go :wink_smile:

Oh? huh? I didn't see anything...