Is the future of Bethesda - DOOMED??

[jjb54]

When Fallout 4 came out, it still seems to be going "okay" ... but ONLY BECAUSE OF THE MOD COMMUNITY!!

If there was no mod community, Fallout 4 would have died a slow painful death.

Why - Fallout 4 was the beginning of Bethesda showing they have LOST the ability to tell stories and had to rely on other venues, like importing SIM CITY into the game. Fallout 4 is NOT SIM CITY and even they did not do the Settlements right!

- How on earth did any of the settlers survive past puberty? Seriously, you look at how dependent and weak they are.

- Beth did not take into a simple account, "What if the settlements do build a reasonable defense?"

My point here, I had turrets and such surrounding my settlements and Beth in their lack of thinking things through, allowed "Teleportation" of Deathclaws, Raiders, Mutants into the city. IF they had come the normal way ... they would have NEVER MADE IT! Thus Beth did NOT even semi-sorta-kinda-maybe think that one through at all.

- They made the useable sandbox smaller!

One argument, is that it ' ... is bigger ...' and yes, if you take into account the mass amounts of water space, NOT REALLY USED, but hey, you can go for long swims if you want, I guess!??

I could go on, but my point is, without the MOD COMMUNITY coming to Beth's rescue ... FO 4 would have died.

FALLOUT 76

This too was no small disaster, if we are honest. It's release actually created LEGAL ISSUES and even now, people are still not happy with it. Beth Bombed and I have friends that subscribed that only go on ".. once and awhile..", because it's "Boring".

 

STARFIELD

Well this goes without saying, that this too was a total bomb. The common, paraphrased complaints: Boring, Repetitive, Waste of Time. No real story to "grab you"

 

So why all the above?

 

ELDER SCROLL 6

I'm concerned that Beth has lost the ability to tell stories, keep attention of the players. I seriously fear with what I have seen and heard about the above, except those who are paid to "Praise" them, that they will bomb this and it will be the MOD COMMUNITY to rescue it. 

This is sad ... I mean it. The mod community is NOT supposed to rescue Beth's butt and since FO 4 that is what is happening!

 

I am very concerned about ES 6. Be ready if it comes out ... to not be surprised if it's ... well ...... 

[showler]

Fallout 4: Made absurd amounts of money for Bethesda before the first mod was ever released.  Majority of players never used a mod.

Fallout 76:  Made money, continues to make money, has a large number of active players, is actually a pretty good game.

Stanfield: Disappointing release, but not anywhere near the disaster people pretend it to be.

Bethesda: sold to MS for insane amounts of money, in no danger of going anywhere.

[jjb54]

Yes ... FO 4 did make $$$ ... but $$ was MADE before all the release of FO 4.

.. This is a sad and common argument, if you are honest. People were honestly hyped with the news of FO 4. I on the other hand was cautious and waited and after it was out ... the fan base was not excited at their money being spent, because at first - the game was seriously BUG RIDDEN!

.. Oh, but that's to be expected! Seriously? What if Ford - Chey and such did cars that way? Yes, a Lemon > NOW AND THEN < get passed, but on whole .. they KNOW THE CAR WILL WORK and do not need 'auto shops' to come to the rescue.

Fallout 76 - does NOT continue to make $$, but they are ".. not laughing all they way to the bank.." Current information that I could find: 2021 - they are just keeping in the Black.

Starfield - is .. not as "hot" or "praised" by honest users. Those not on the Take for $$ or Favors with Beth. I look at both sides .. and honestly, it's NOT the Buzz Word like Skyrim still is. Not even close.

 

But the point is: Beth is failing in telling stories and having plots. FO 4 = 76 and Starfield are facts of that.

[HeyYou]

1 hour ago, jjb54 said:

Yes ... FO 4 did make $$$ ... but $$ was MADE before all the release of FO 4.

.. This is a sad and common argument, if you are honest. People were honestly hyped with the news of FO 4. I on the other hand was cautious and waited and after it was out ... the fan base was not excited at their money being spent, because at first - the game was seriously BUG RIDDEN!

.. Oh, but that's to be expected! Seriously? What if Ford - Chey and such did cars that way? Yes, a Lemon > NOW AND THEN < get passed, but on whole .. they KNOW THE CAR WILL WORK and do not need 'auto shops' to come to the rescue.

Fallout 76 - does NOT continue to make $$, but they are ".. not laughing all they way to the bank.." Current information that I could find: 2021 - they are just keeping in the Black.

Starfield - is .. not as "hot" or "praised" by honest users. Those not on the Take for $$ or Favors with Beth. I look at both sides .. and honestly, it's NOT the Buzz Word like Skyrim still is. Not even close.

 

But the point is: Beth is failing in telling stories and having plots. FO 4 = 76 and Starfield are facts of that.

Ford, Chevy, and a HOST of others, DO do cars that way. Why do you think a common saying is "Never buy the first model year, or the first year of a new generation."?????

How did FO4 make most of it's money before it released? Yeah, it had good pre-order sales, but, many retailers sold out their supplies within the first couple days as well. The game STILL has a significant player base.

I got FO4 shortly after release. The game was eminently playable, and I didn't encounter any of the game breaking bugs some folks did.

Starfield is a mediocre game. Beth should have done a few things different..... but, I wasn't consulted when the game was in development. Beth has also never really had a "Good" story since Morrowind...... Starfield was also very playable for me upon release. (yes, I preordered, yes, I got the game a week before launch.) There are bugs, yes, but, in any game of this scope, that's gonna happen, regardless of who releases it.

[AaronOfMpls]

20 minutes ago, HeyYou said:

There are bugs, yes, but, in any game of this scope, that's gonna happen, regardless of who releases it.

True enough!  That's one reason I rarely get or dig into games right after launch; I prefer to wait until after the worst launch-day bugs are fixed. 

(Which has worked out in one infamous instance: I missed Diablo III's launch week lag from the servers being super-busy.  Though on top of my usual wait-a-bit, I'd already played the game during a few rounds of the beta tests in the months before D3's release.)

[HeyYou]

1 hour ago, AaronOfMpls said:

True enough!  That's one reason I rarely get or dig into games right after launch; I prefer to wait until after the worst launch-day bugs are fixed. 

(Which has worked out in one infamous instance: I missed Diablo III's launch week lag from the servers being super-busy.  Though on top of my usual wait-a-bit, I'd already played the game during a few rounds of the beta tests in the months before D3's release.)

I like to give new beth games a year or so before purchase..... Didn't do that with Starfield though. Still, I don't regret it. It's a fun game to play.

[dicere]

Not doomed exactly, but there has been a definite shift downwards in terms of quality since the launch of Skyrim. Bethesda probably never anticipated the success of Skyrim, and have been trying to re-create it ever since, rather than focusing on just making a good RPG. Their recent games have been underwhelming. Fallout 4 was merely average, Fallout 76 was an obvious cash grab with missing features from the start. Starfield was a convoluted mess of disjointed ideas, and it's almost as empty as fallout 76 in some ways. And they keep trying to push paid mods (creation club) on the community, despite all protests, and don't mind breaking everyone's mod lists repeatedly in the process. Bethesda are not good at listening to their community with empathy or understanding.

 

 

 

[HeyYou]

4 hours ago, dicere said:

Not doomed exactly, but there has been a definite shift downwards in terms of quality since the launch of Skyrim. Bethesda probably never anticipated the success of Skyrim, and have been trying to re-create it ever since, rather than focusing on just making a good RPG. Their recent games have been underwhelming. Fallout 4 was merely average, Fallout 76 was an obvious cash grab with missing features from the start. Starfield was a convoluted mess of disjointed ideas, and it's almost as empty as fallout 76 in some ways. And they keep trying to push paid mods (creation club) on the community, despite all protests, and don't mind breaking everyone's mod lists repeatedly in the process. Bethesda are not good at listening to their community with empathy or understanding.

 

 

 

Official modding tools have not been released for starfield as of yet, and beth is under no constraints to make sure their changes don't affect mods. This isn't anything new, it's pretty much standard fare for a new release.

[showler]

Bethesda's "community" are not good at understanding how small a part of the customer base they actually are.

[InDarkestNight]

9 hours ago, dicere said:

Not doomed exactly, but there has been a definite shift downwards in terms of quality since the launch of Skyrim. Bethesda probably never anticipated the success of Skyrim, and have been trying to re-create it ever since, rather than focusing on just making a good RPG. Their recent games have been underwhelming. Fallout 4 was merely average, Fallout 76 was an obvious cash grab with missing features from the start. Starfield was a convoluted mess of disjointed ideas, and it's almost as empty as fallout 76 in some ways. And they keep trying to push paid mods (creation club) on the community, despite all protests, and don't mind breaking everyone's mod lists repeatedly in the process. Bethesda are not good at listening to their community with empathy or understanding.

 

 

 

They are out of touch with what their customers want, and they even acknowledged that after Fallout 76. They admitted, they though that fallout 76 was WHAT PLAYERS WANTED. They thought their fanbase hated story, hated interesting characters, hated quests. They thought all the players wanted was a hack and slash game where you did absolutely nothing but hack and slash. There was quite a lot of outrage over that when they first revealed that. As for bugs btw, they admitted years ago before even Skyrim that they don't even bother to bug test their own games because they know the modders are going to fix it with an unofficial patch anyway., Seriously. They expect THE FANS to bug test and fix their own game. What does that say?

That said, let's be honest, their games have always been flawed. Skyrim's story is shallow and minmal and filled with plot holes. As I said in another thread, its obvious that they didn't bother to think the story through at all. Of course, when you dig into the 'lore' (if you can call it that), its obvioius they don't put any thought into it at all. They don't even hesitate to retcon their setting with every single game. I mean, the first two games seriously aren't canon anymore, and after Skyrim only half of Morrowind is. Even Skyrim isn't canon anymore after ESO.

And let's not forget the gameplay itself. Yeah, there's what I mentioned before, but there's obvious intentional decisions they made that aren't very good. Skyrim's combat is simplistic and lame, dragons are boring, Oblivion's leveling system actually made the game HARDER as you progressed, Morrowind's combat is annoying and its interface sucks. Oh and let's not forget the infamous balance issues that exist in every game. You had fortify alchemy in Morrowind, custom spells in Oblivion that could one-shot even daedric princes, and the fortify restoration glitch in Skyrim (not to mention the complete lack of balance even if you ignore exploits). Skyrim was only an upgrade over Oblivion, Morrowind is still seen as the best of the three games despite its dated graphics and mechanics (such as npcs standing in one place all day long, among numerous other things). The writing has consistently gone downhill between games though. I'm actually reluctant these days to do the vanilla Skyrim quests they're just so bad. I've actually thought about sticking to quest mods and radiant quests and ignoring all else, seriously.

Really, all their games suck. Its only the modding community that turns them into something decent. This has been the case since Morrowind, and still is today (even if Skyrim dialed it up to 11).

I've honestly been hoping they go under and all their ips get transfered to a company run by reasonable people. Of course, it certainly wouldn't help if it went to EA, which has a rap sheet going back decades of driving beloved IPs into the ground (among numerous other things, like refusing to cater to the retrogaming community at all). It could be worse, but either way its hard to find companies WORSE then bethesda, thus if their franchises get transferred to any other company, more than likely random luck's going to pick a better one.