Is Bethesda inclined?

[DeepOcean]

Bethesda has the jew spirit, they have that singlemindness about gold, they produce mediocre shit but I think they are aware of it being mediocre and just do what it takes for the moneys to flow, like good jews. Bioware are self deluded idiots, they embrace mediocrity and do mediocre shit not because they have to but because it is the only thing they know, they focus on SJW bullshit because they can't design for shit these days as DA:I awful combat is a proof. So, you have to choose between jew mercenaries or SJW con men?

 

[Greatness]

I think that you either need to enable the testing of magical talent as an in-game procedure (special quest, arena mage duel, complete a project, anything) or failing that simply leave the doors open to the player's discretion. Arbitrary abstraction is worse than everything.

Well that's something no TES game has managed to do. Seeing as they are firmly on the path of dumbing down their games to make everything easily digestible for the masses I'm sure we'll never actually see build-specific quests from them.

Nothing you can't effortlessly fix with bribing, in the exceedingly rare event it affects anything beyond a snarky greeting and "I won't tell you about Tel Naga because you're sickening outlander n'wa, but please be welcome into House Telvanni as a full member and go do this quest on my master's behalf".

I'd still say that at least some level of C&C in the faction system was better than the none that followed in later games.

It's not merely perfect, it's a mess of broken systems and poorly-implemented concepts. There were RPGs that did all of this better than Morrowind and came out at the same time, or earlier (fucking Gothic anyone?) so it's not like being released 9 years ago somehow obliged Bethesda at doing such a poor job.

The title of the thread was "Is Bethesda Inclined?". I know Morrowind fails compared to many other games out there. My argument was that Skyrim is even worse in many or most respects.

It's a consequence of character generation, not choosing a guild. Remember when you choose between warrior, thief and mage at char gen? That's the only thing that determines whether you will join mage's guild, fighter's guild, or thieve's guild - which IMO is streamlined popamole garbage, make real factions, not generic cookie-cutter guilds.

It's not as simple as Fighters/Mages/Thieves guild. There's also Tribunal Temple, Imperial Cult, Imperial Legion, East Empire Company, Morag Tong, Vampire Clans, Great Houses, etc.

Oh, btw, Skyrim does away with fighters and mages guild. Great incline.

Having a mages guild and fighters guild isn't an inherent problem. They made sense as far as the lore goes with the empire wanting control of the mercenary trade.

There isn't any, you will always advance to full leader.

Yes there was. The code book quest for the fighters guild would stop you from joining the thieves guild, the morag tong contracts could halt your advancement in various guilds, the temples quests disallowed you from advancing in certain vampire factions, etc. They were rare but they did exist.

 

[naossano]

Should someone move that thread to the "Adventure games" section ?

 

[Gozma]

The main Bethesda mystery:

Why do regular people buy this in huge numbers? Skyrim apparently sold like 20 million copies and they didn't drop the price down to impulse buy levels for years. It's a supremely amateur feeling ungame "core experience" of running around a level-scaled world opening containers full of random levelled shit and terrible, terrible combat. It's almost as instantly breakable as Morrowind, and with as much obvious developer disinterest in making a traditional game-game (e.g. instant, effectively infinite health potions; hell you can even use them in a time-frozen menu if you like). You have obvious terrible kludge garbage like their horses, which were apparently in Oblivion too and even worse there.

Are they actually getting regular people into the Daggerfall/Morrowind sperg zone where they get you reading books to learn about fake history?

 

[Lhynn]

The main Bethesda mystery:

Why do regular people buy this in huge numbers? Skyrim apparently sold like 20 million copies and they didn't drop the price down to impulse buy levels for years. It's a supremely amateur feeling ungame "core experience" of running around a level-scaled world opening containers full of random levelled shit and terrible, terrible combat. It's almost as instantly breakable as Morrowind, and with as much obvious developer disinterest in making a traditional game-game (e.g. instant, effectively infinite health potions; hell you can even use them in a time-frozen menu if you like). You have obvious terrible kludge garbage like their horses, which were apparently in Oblivion too and even worse there.

Are they actually getting regular people into the Daggerfall/Morrowind sperg zone where they get you reading books to learn about fake history?

Because of the current gen is the best at what it offers. That is enough these days, you dont need to be competent, just less incompetent than the rest.

 

[Gozma]

I feel like right before Skyrim came out there must have been a guy at Bethesda who was like, "Well, this is it. Everyone's going to see how incompetent we are. Morrowind is the best we can do and we can barely disguise the basic engine anymore. It's gonna fail and I'm gonna be fired. I won't have to endure living as a fraud anymore. The nightmare is finally over."

And then it sold 20 million copies.

 

[vonAchdorf]

It's a mystery.

Not.

 

[Sykar]

It's a mystery.

Not.

No it's not, there are too many retards around in this world. Can you imagine that in Germany over 70% of my fellow countrymen are dissatisfied with the politics of the ruling party, but have great confidence and sympathy for Angela Merkel? When I read that shit it feels like my brain cells are trying to commit suicide one by one.

 

[Metro]

Jaesun
Infinitron

If you're going to split off a topic, at least add a little bit more reference to the new 'original post' so someone new to the discussion knows wtf it's about.

 

[Makabb]

People like being lied to, and 'open world' gives them a feeling of playing in a world where you can do 'anything' which translates roughly to nothing and which realy is a one big level with weak assets. Developers like that lie, because it's easier to create one huge level with not much content than create many small levels with content like it was used to, hence the dumbing down of FPSes from doom and quake which required actual skill and knowledge to create intricate levels where you could or sometimes it was imperative to backtrack in order to finish a level to corridan shootans of call of duty and rpgs like baldur's gate 1 which had many small levels where you could travel to and there was always something to do in each and one of them

to 'open world games' games like skyrim. If Skyrim has 1 huge level, than baldur's gate as a whole has around 40 levels with 50x the content.

 

[Sykar]

People like being lied to, and 'open world' gives them a feeling of playing in a world where you can do 'anything' which translates roughly to nothing and which realy is a 'one big level with weak assets'. Developers like that lie, because it's easier to create one huge level with not much content than create many small levels with content like it was used to, hence the dumbing down of FPSes from doom and quake which required actual skill and knowledge to create intricate levels where you could or sometimes it was imperative to backtrack in order to finish a level to corridan shootans and rpgs like baldur's gate 1 which had many small levels where you could travel to and there was always something to do in each and one of them

to 'open world games'.

Seeing that map makes me want to play BG 1+TotSC again.

 

[imweasel]

I consider Baldur's Gate to be an open world game. You can really go anywhere and do anything just like in these shitty modern open world RPGs games like Skyrim. The only difference is that BG actually has a character progression system unlike Shitrim, i.e. you could get your ass handed to you in certain areas if your level is too low.

Anyway, this thread is retarded. Fuck off Bethesdatards.

Spoiler

 

[Sykar]

I never cared much about "open world" stuff. Game can be good either way, but tendency is that open world theme parks tend to be less good. Gosh I got so burned out by 6 years of WoW that I do not enjoy "open world" that much anymore anyway. Last 2 years I played only for some friends and my GF, not because I enjoyed it much anymore...

 

[Perkel]

Ok I want to know, which cRPGS had massively better written NPCs? Just curious because from the couple of cRPGS I had played at the time, MW had decent writing for a game made in 2001.

You do realize that in 2001 last 5-6 years were filled with superb RPGs ?

Morrowind writting was ok. I said it in comparison to other RPGs. Now morrowind writting compared to modern "RPGs" would have good writing.

 

[Sykar]

You do realize that in 2001 last 5-6 years were filled with superb RPGs ?

Morrowind writting was ok. I said it in comparison to other RPGs. Now morrowind writting compared to modern "RPGs" would have good writing.

Filled? Fallout 1+2, BG 1+TotSC, PS:Torment, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 would be the only cRPGS I really remember from that time frame as being good to superb.

 

[Perkel]

I consider Baldur's Gate to be an open world game. You can really go anywhere and do anything just like in these shitty modern open world RPGs games like Skyrim. The only difference is that BG actually has a character progression system unlike Shitrim, i.e. you could get your ass handed to you in certain areas if your level is too low.

Anyway, this thread is retarded. Fuck off Bethesdatards.

Spoiler

BG2 isn't really any different. Difference is that you need to first find out about place instead of randomly going to edge of map which is imho superior as it allows for very distinct maps instead of continuous samey maps like in BG1.

Open world just means you can go anywhere. It doesn't need to have continuous land.

Fallout1/2 were open world games.
BG1/2 were open word games. Though BG2 had bit more focusing and longer "missions" that felt linear in some sense.
Arcanum was open world game
Fallout Tactics was weird mix of open world map and linear mission progression.

 

[Perkel]

Filled? Fallout 1+2, BG 1+TotSC, PS:Torment, Deus Ex, System Shock 2 would be the only cRPGS I really remember from that time frame as being good to superb.

you forgot Gothic and few other games.

 

[Sykar]

you forgot Gothic and few other games.

Thought Gothic 1 was released later than 2001. Considering quality of writing though, I am not even sure that besides PS:T any of the listed games are really that much better than MW.

 

[Perkel]

Thought Gothic 1 was released later than 2001. Considering quality of writing though, I am not even sure that besides PS:T any of the listed games are really that much better than MW.

Morrowind was released in 2002
Gothic was released first in germany 2001 march then in English fall 2001.

And i remember how i ended up Gothic 1 and started Morrowind and how those different games were so much different to each other (Gothic 1 being superior in almost every way).

Gothic 1 showed how to create open world in which nothing is lost to game being continous 3d open world. Awesome characters, amazing design of world, cool story, awesome setting.

Then there was Morrowind which had cool magic and beside that everything was inferior in almost every way (but it looked a bit better thanks to water shaders)

 

[Gremius]

Age of Incline on Codex- today Bethesda, tomorrow Bioware and Mass Effect.

 

[Sykar]

Age of Incline on Codex- today Bethesda, tomorrow Bioware and Mass Effect.

Now now, do not lump all of us together, plenty of people argue against incline here.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

Morrowind was released in 2002
Gothic was released first in germany 2001 march then in English fall 2001.

And i remember how i ended up Gothic 1 and started Morrowind and how those different games were so much different to each other (Gothic 1 being superior in almost every way).

Gothic 1 showed how to create open world in which nothing is lost to game being continous 3d open world. Awesome characters, amazing design of world, cool story, awesome setting.

Then there was Morrowind which had cool magic and beside that everything was inferior in almost every way (but it looked a bit better thanks to water shaders)

please stop with this bullshit. gothic 1 had only better combat system and daily activities for npcs. Everything else was inferior to Morrowind. From lore and factions through graphix and mods to controls and UI.

 

[APGunner]

And i remember how i ended up Gothic 1 and started Morrowind and how those different games were so much different to each other (Gothic 1 being superior in almost every way).

Gothic 1 showed how to create open world in which nothing is lost to game being continous 3d open world. Awesome characters, amazing design of world, cool story, awesome setting.

Then there was Morrowind which had cool magic and beside that everything was inferior in almost every way (but it looked a bit better thanks to water shaders)

Same here, started Morrowind shortly after finishing Gothic 1.
Gothic is more of a story-driven game. Access to better gear and some areas of the game is only possible through progression of the main quest. In Morrowind completely ignoring the main quest will not hinder your experience.
Characters have much more defined and memorable personalities in Gothic, but I'd say that world design, story, lore, setting is better/more detailed in Morrowind.
Combat is hands down better in Gothic, yes.

When it comes to comparing Skyrim to Morrowind...well the quest compass is fucking cancer.
In Morrowind NPC tells you in detail where to go and HOW TO GET THERE, you then follow his instructions to get to the place. Then you clear a cave/crypt/whatever of mindless enemies and return to NPC.
In Skyrim NPC tells you the name of the place you need to go, a flag magically appears on your map, and you run to it mindlessly in a straight line. Well what if you don't want to use quest compass? Good luck finding the place, this time NPC didn't tell you how to get there. Once you do find the cave/crypt/whatever you clear it of enemies and return to the NPC, just like in good times.

The "process" of doing quests in these two games is similar, it's just that the fun part is completely killed by quests compass(you simply can't not use it because the journal/NPC doesn't tell you HOW to get to the quest's target location).

Many posters have pointed out all the obvious simplified stuff in Skyrim compared to Morrowind, so I won't repeat it all.
Some of the biggest things are:
1) Ability to join every fucking faction and become the grandmaster is retarded.
2) No skill requirement for rank promotion in a faction.
3) I actually liked the wiki-like dialogues with NPCs.
Ninjaedit:
4) And no levitation.

PS
Dear Glaurung, this whole thread you have been wrong.

 

[Lemming42]

Bethesda are incline purely because they make games the type of which nobody else is making. They actually set out to do everything they aim for, too - they obviously want to make dungeon-filled sandboxes with huge amounts of freedom, and they objectively succeed at that (the quality is another matter, though).

Compared to Bioware, though, they're the messiahs of RPGs.

Also I've always said that, even though I wouldn't call myself a fan of Fallout 3 or Skyrim, when you're playing them you can tell that Bethesda actually put a lot of effort into the games. They don't feel like something that was shat out in 5 seconds to make some quick money, which is a nice change from most AAA games.

 

[Glaurung]

please stop with this bullshit. gothic 1 had only better combat system and daily activities for npcs. Everything else was inferior to Morrowind. From lore and factions through graphix and mods to controls and UI.

Gothic 1 was more focused and had little to no filler content, like Morrowind's endless pointless caverns with nothing in them. As a result, Gothic's open world felt more interesting to explore on a consistent basis, whereas Morrowind had long stretches of boredom in-between something entrancing.