Why developers wont follow the success of Elder Scrolls?

[InteraMR [TTV]]

We all know how the success of FPS shooters flood us with pretty good shooters out there.
We also know how Simulators have a nice piece of the gaming market,
and while those and many more geners keep on rising while picking the success
from previous games, and adding them into modern games (such as Mass Effect),
And not to say the huge success of Minecraft and all its followers.
I just cant understand why developers fail to follow the success of the Elder Scrolls series.
We have a huge world to discover, a world and evolves as we play through it,
with infinite number of missions, deep main story and wide and intersting side stroies
that turn the world of Elder Scrolls into what it is.
Yet for some reason no other developer is doing it...
I mean sure we have some open world RPGs out there, but they fail to come even
close to Skyrim or Oblivion, the world is static, with areas devided into levels,
so that when you are low level, you cant visit high level areas, and when you are high level you find yourself ignoring most of the world because of the low level zones and creatures.
Most "open world" RPGs out there just following one main story, the sidequests are usually minor and not intersting, and the loot is really bad...

So.. am i missing something?
Are there open world RPG's out there that are even come close to the Elder Scrolls series?

[SwagLord McHashtag]

I guess it's because copying elder scrolls is much more difficult than doing proper shooters or minecraft clones. Just look at all the lore and authenticity this universe has. You need a hell of a lot voice actors, authors and programmers. Just look at the cycle of new elder scrolls releases. Since the morrowind release in 2002(?) we got two new elder scrolls, excluding the mmo. And now compare it with CoD ; )

[InteraMR [TTV]]

Origineel geplaatst door Eduard Laser:

I guess it's because copying elder scrolls is much more difficult than doing proper shooters or minecraft clones. Just look at all the lore and authenticity this universe has. You need a hell of a lot voice actors, authors and programmers. Just look at the cycle of new elder scrolls releases. Since the morrowind release in 2002(?) we got two new elder scrolls, excluding the mmo. And now compare it with CoD ; )

Well, the Elder Scrolls series as far as i know, its lore was made from scratch, while
modern developers can use books, such as Game of Thrones, to base their game on.
To create the world of game of thrones, it will be easy to add a main quest to it, and even
easier to add side quests. And sure you need a lot of voice actors, but the devs can "rent" the voice actors used in Elder Scrolls, so its not that of a problem...
Also even though CoD is just a low budget game, with higher revenues, the open world RPGs also have a huge fan base, i mean, look at Fallout, and Elder Scrolls, they both made huge ammounts of money. Look at even the failed X Rebirth, the game failed so badly, yet it saved the company from going banckrapt!

[SwagLord McHashtag]

I also wish they would make more games like tes. But a profit-orientated company will most likely choose the path with the least effort and the most potential profit.

[MorningLightMountain]

Origineel geplaatst door Miner:

Origineel geplaatst door Eduard Laser:

I guess it's because copying elder scrolls is much more difficult than doing proper shooters or minecraft clones. Just look at all the lore and authenticity this universe has. You need a hell of a lot voice actors, authors and programmers. Just look at the cycle of new elder scrolls releases. Since the morrowind release in 2002(?) we got two new elder scrolls, excluding the mmo. And now compare it with CoD ; )

Well, the Elder Scrolls series as far as i know, its lore was made from scratch, while
modern developers can use books, such as Game of Thrones, to base their game on.
To create the world of game of thrones, it will be easy to add a main quest to it, and even
easier to add side quests. And sure you need a lot of voice actors, but the devs can "rent" the voice actors used in Elder Scrolls, so its not that of a problem...
Also even though CoD is just a low budget game, with higher revenues, the open world RPGs also have a huge fan base, i mean, look at Fallout, and Elder Scrolls, they both made huge ammounts of money. Look at even the failed X Rebirth, the game failed so badly, yet it saved the company from going banckrapt!

I would strongly suspect that intiially at least the lore for TES was most likely heavily influenced by the lore of D&D. As TES started out as the designers homebrew D&D setting.

[Ilja]

Creating any open world games like TES are very larege and risky projects. You have to undertand that making games like this cost alot and will eat the profit from each other, if they are released too close appart. Developers will watch closely what others are doing, before greenlighting any of their plans.

Pillars of Eternity is coming out this autumn. It is not a similar open world game like Skyirm, but it will be certain to draw several old school players (like me) to play out their Infinity Engine nostalgia. After that the sheet is mostly empty from anything that could mess with Skyrim and PoE.

Now would be the good time to do any announcements about new open world PCRPGs, if such plans have been made. Skyrim is still a high selling product, but not a top selling product any more. There are no new high attention fantasy settings announced after PoE, so this would be the perfect time to do so.

[Chargeit]

Because then you end up with this...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/1930/

*Part two is better, though it's in the same way it's better to wait at a bus stop then it is to have a root canal.

[Mister E]

Origineel geplaatst door Chargeit:

Because then you end up with this...

lol, ouch
I was going to say the same thing though. There are a lot of similar-ish games out there. You just don't really hear about them, and they're not really popular... because they're mostly not good. The TES games have become pretty huge achievements in and of themselves, and I'm sure aren't cheap to produce, even when not including things that people keep wanting. For a better answer, we would have to look closer to see how much a game like Skyrim actually brings in vs its development costs, and compare that to your generic, moderately-successful FPS or platformer.

Edit: forgot to mention, there are a lot of similar-style games out there too. GTA is another long-running series that offers a crazy immersive open world, it just has a more modern setting.

[InteraMR [TTV]]

Well, lets look back for a sec, to the time we had Oblivion, Gothic 2 and 3,and Fallout 3.
It looks like they did well together, except Gothic 3, that failed very hard.
Both Oblivion and Fallout got to have a feauture, with Skyrim the New Vegas, yet Gothic
was doomed and died away. So we have a free spot, in a fastly growing market.
I think someone should pick this spot!
Especially now that X Rebirth failed, and the Space Sim fans are very good customers,
they can easly migrate towards a fantasy RPG.
There is a huge slice of the marked just floating there, SOMEONE have to take it.
Games like Tomb Rider and Assasin Creed did the job for a while, but there were far from
filling thoese shoes.

[Mister E]

I'd love that, tbh. I keep wanting to play more Skyrim, but not necessarily Skyrim itself. It's not the same, but Dishonored is another similar-ish game (but also not really open-world). I have yet to play Mass Effect and Deus Ex, but they seem somewhat similar too.
Fwiw, though, I don't think space sim fans would generally convert to a fantasy rpg readily (ofc there are people who like and play both).

The other problem is that any newcomer has to compete directly with the king of the genre, and will always be compared to them. The same kind of thing happened with GTA and Saint's Row, which started to go its own way. If a company just makes a knock-off, gamers will generally just play the 'real thing'. All that said though, a Skyrim-in-space game sounds most excellent now :)

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

Origineel geplaatst door MorningLightMountain:

I would strongly suspect that intiially at least the lore for TES was most likely heavily influenced by the lore of D&D. As TES started out as the designers homebrew D&D setting.

No, TES was never a tabletop homebrew. You're thinking of Fallout. Elder Scrolls began as a team gladitorial combat game that evolved rather haphazardly into an action-RPG.

[95Bravo95]

Origineel geplaatst door Two Bears:

Origineel geplaatst door MorningLightMountain:

I would strongly suspect that intiially at least the lore for TES was most likely heavily influenced by the lore of D&D. As TES started out as the designers homebrew D&D setting.

No, TES was never a tabletop homebrew. You're thinking of Fallout. Elder Scrolls began as a team gladitorial combat game that evolved rather haphazardly into an action-RPG.

"The world used for Arena was Tamriel, the fantasy world created by a few members of the staff for use in their weekly D&D campaign."

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070509175304/http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_anniv/tenth_anniv-arena.htm (Originally a Bethesda page that has since been taken down.)

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

Origineel geplaatst door 95Bravo95:

Origineel geplaatst door Two Bears:

No, TES was never a tabletop homebrew. You're thinking of Fallout. Elder Scrolls began as a team gladitorial combat game that evolved rather haphazardly into an action-RPG.

"The world used for Arena was Tamriel, the fantasy world created by a few members of the staff for use in their weekly D&D campaign."

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20070509175304/http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_anniv/tenth_anniv-arena.htm (Originally a Bethesda page that has since been taken down.)

Yes, I've seen that blurb as well. However, if you played Arena (or any Elder Scrolls game) and you played D&D you wouldn't recognize any rulesets as being connected. That it is a fantasy setting with a fairly standard elf trinity doesn't make it D&D more than any other generic fantasy setting out there. Frankly, the attempt to legitimize TES through a supposed connection with D&D (as if D&D was the only way to legitimize a game) is pretty silly. By their own admission they didn't set out to create an RPG.

[Mister E]

I think you're both kind of right. The world may have descended from D&D (and Tolkien), but the TES games themselves started as arena combat, afaik.

[95Bravo95]

Origineel geplaatst door Mister E:

I think you're both kind of right. The world may have descended from D&D (and Tolkien), but the TES games themselves started as arena combat, afaik.

Yeah, I'll go along with that.

[Vita, Mortis, Careo]

Origineel geplaatst door Mister E:

I think you're both kind of right. The world may have descended from D&D (and Tolkien), but the TES games themselves started as arena combat, afaik.

Hey I'm probably the biggest D&D neckbeard on the forum, and that inner supernerd in me would love nothing more than to claim D&D as the originator of all things fantasy. However, I also know that this is not at all true, and that simply because a setting is fantasy, or borrows names from a personal D&D campaign, doesn't make it D&D. Forgotton Realms? That's D&D; it uses the ruleset. Elder Scrolls? No, it doesn't use anything that even resembles the ruleset.