Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

Skyrim needed more Songs of the Return. Kirkbride got lazy and write 51 volumes too few.

 

Merely measuring other parameters.

 

I've been wondering what sort of person would actually like Oblivion. Now I have my answer: someone who isn't even smart enough to spell the word "you".

 

LOL, the sort of person who likes Skyrim over Oblivion is a consoletard who finds simple file replacement on the computer beyond his skill level and has nothing interesting to say on forum posts so resorts to nickpicking the obvious. Seriously, learn some basic skills and get your Oblivion modded.

Back on topic, I don't see anything wrong with Cyrodiil or the fact that the protagonist is Martin's sidekick. Much better than the washed out colors of Skyrim and the stupid drah-gun-borne plotline, the former most likely coming from another consolism; that all modern games must have this washed out look, they must all make the user feel special by giving them plenty of handholding and telling them they're Gods for doing the most banal of tasks... on easymode.

Both games are pretty shit sans modding, they both suffer from consolitis, one obviously at a more advanced stage than the other. The only redeeming feature is the moddability. Here are some facts about Skyrim and its mods:

1. Most of the new Skyrim features are just rehashes of Oblivion mods, but with the configurability of said mods stripped out for the convenience of consoletards.

2. There's almost no empty space in Skyrim for modders to put their stuff in and the little available is contested by various mods.

3. For some reason, if you stack a bunch of script heavy mods, the game becomes prone to CTDs. And apparantly, the CTDs depend on multiple interactions between scripts, textures, animations... lol good luck debugging and fixing that.

4. The stupid game saves mod info in the savegame file, you can no longer insert and remove mods at a whim like you could in Oblivion -- you need a new savegame that starts from the beginning.

5. The idiots at Bethesda made modding much harder making simple things like adding weapons and items a grindfest for modders.

6. Many things in Skyrim are hardcoded or are created with tools not available to modders. ex) you can only make animation replacers, but can't make new animations for existing NPCs.

Given all the script problems, hardcoded engine variables, limitations on modding, and the general entitlement laden attitude of mod end-users whose incessant bitching actively chase mod creators away, I don't see a bright future for Skyrim modding. Where are all the great quest mods? Where are the new lands, new environments, new NPC behavior? All you have now is a bunch of replacers with varying degrees of bouncing tits.

 

thanks,drog

 

So any good total conversions done?

 

Todd_the_Liar

1. true

2. false. Tho making something different and original takes a vast knowledge in scripting. Just to prove you wrong

3. This is too true, they fucked up because of selling out to consoles, the game wasnt designed to be so heavily loaded by scripts, so it simply breaks when it is.

4. True.

5. Maybe true, but there is a big variety of mods avaible for download, no just weapon reeskins.

6. wouldnt know.

False statement. Skyrim modding is shinning bright, there is a stupid amount of people wasting a stupid amount of time modding fixing this shit game. This will not change, because people are stupid. Great quests mods? Falkassar, moongate and 3 or 4 more i guess. True quest mods are on the companion tab, were the most important companions have epic quests that take you to a ton of new locations, fully voiced and huge.

 

Whoa nice.... maybe i'll reinstall Assrim just to play Tycoon.

wait... after reading about the mod further, it seems it's a meta-game with scripts. Still sounds interesting but doesn't invalidate my point #2 about lack of empty space.

Anyway, my rule of thumb for Bethesda games is play vanilla once, wait a few yrs for mods to mature for a proper playthrough. Hopefully by that time, Assrim will be playable through mods.

 

Start with Arena, on to Daggerfall, and then move to Morrowind (don't bother with the gimmick releases like Redguard/Battlespire as they were just fad gimmicks trying to ride the FPS multiplayer deathmatch craze). It will give you a very good perspective on how the game has slowly degraded over time. The problems from Morrowind to Oblivion (and on to Skyrim) aren't "new", only more drastic in change than that of the previous iterations. Skills were still removed, consolidated, features removed/streamlined (as well as new risks in design direction), etc... from the beginning. I think everyone who plays the entire series has their favorite (there are pros and cons between them), but most who have played them all and don't have the console "taint" to their perception tend to see the severe problems with the later releases (Oblivion-unmodded/Skyrim).

When you get to Morrowind, you can play it vanilla, or... if you like... mod it heavily. I enjoyed Morrowind vanilla, but it really shines with mods (make sure you pick mods that enhance systems and UI, fix bugs, repair imbalanced mechanics, add quests/story lines, etc... and avoid the overpowered ones. It blows vanilla Oblivion out of the water. Then, go back and try Oblivion again modded to the hilt (look for FCOM mod) and you will see it makes skyrim look like it is a gimmick arcade game.

The problem is, while there are some attempts to improve skyrim through mods, as some have already discussed, there is a cap on what it possible. Look how long the game has been out and what they have actually been able to do with it. Oblivion and Morrowind had complete overhauls (changing everything in the game) in the same amount of time. Skyrim is limited in what can be done, so you will likely not see it progress much past what you see now. I am not saying it is impossible, but few are going to waste their time trying to work against Skyrims limitations when they could achieve more with the same effort in the past games.

 

I've already decided to give Arena a go after I finish fuuus-RODAAAAAAAH'ing everything. Been looking at some gameplay videos and I'm pretty amazed at how different things were, setting-wise. Looking at Winterhold or the Imperial City there, compared to the Imperial Farmstead in Oblivion - LOL. I never thought Oblivion was a good game but I didn't really get the massive hate it got here either, probably because I didn't play the earlier ones. I think I understand now, it's basically how insulted I was the first time I played that other Bethesda turd, Fallout 3 after having loved the first two.

 

Screw you man Battlespire was great.

 

I think you mean it was the "bestest eva!"

 

You've clearly never gotten within a 100-mile radius of a copy of Battlespire.

You are wrong. There is no Codex consensus on Morrowind. It's probably one of the most polarizing games on here actually. If we had to reach a consensus (Masterderp doesn't count) then DF would probably come out on top.

Anywho, Arena's not a very good game but it may be fun to play, and some of the MQ dungeon design is really pretty good. It also allows you to do things with Spellmaker that no future game allowed (Passwall!). Worth playing anyway IMO. It's the one that started it all, though it didn't have most of the features that made the following games great. Speaking of which, both Daggerfall and Morrowind are great for very different (and mostly exclusive) reasons. Both are not to be missed. DF has one of the most complex and interesting character and faction systems to grace a CRPG, a very nonlinear MQ that is possible to mess up and not be able to finish if you don't pay attention to what you're told, and a pretty complex political intrigue underlying its plot. MW is unique in terms of both quality and quantity of hand placed content and has an extremely detailed lore and backstory where the interpretation of what ultimately happened and how some of the main players relate to each other is mostly in your hands as a player. Unfortunately MW sacrificed some of the complexity of the character and factions systems on the way. Battlespire is awesome, it's a dungeon crawler a bit a la Ultima Underworld except it has a variant of Daggerfall's character system and some very, very nice level design. Redguard is an action/adventure (almost no RPG to speak of) but is not a bad game for what it is and has a lot of implicit lore that connects with Daggerfall's and Morrowind's. Battlespire's definitely worth playing, Redguard may depend on your tolerance for action/adventure games.

 

Battlespire's definitely one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played. Nothing gimmicky about it, just hardcore dungeon crawling.

 

Is there an anagram in this or something?

 

This was DU and Trash fault warping Codex dimensions and scattering Commissar posts to wrong threads. Damn Tzeench cultists.

 

Oh please, it was a hack and slash gimmick stripped from it original expansion concept to market the multiplayer angle. It was terrible.

 

That is part of its problem. During that time, the whole FPS hack/slash fad was in full force. Making it a limited action oriented (the objectives are basically hack and slash objectives over and over), narrow scope crawler was disappointing when you were expecting a continuation of the series. Rather than integrate it into the original game as an expansion (what they initially planned), they stripped it and made it a one trick pony game. To be fair, on those grounds if that is what you are seeking, fine... but it can't reasonably be considered a part of the series in terms of its play direction. As you said, it was a crawler, but that isn't the point of an ES game and so it sticks out like a sore thumb, just like Redguard did. The natural progression of the series is Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, etc... Those two games were... "gimmicks", "experimentation", etc... and I know that it may piss people off that I refer to them that way, but the fact remains they are not of the same design focus, rather "specialty" in their direction. Good or bad, that makes them gimmicky when you compare them to the original direction and focus of the series.

That said, personally I disliked it. That is not to say I don't like that type of game play, but I was expecting pie when they released it and what I got was cake. I didn't want cake, I wanted pie. So in that respect my opinion on it being a good game or not should be disregarded. Maybe I will go back and play it again sometime from a different expectation. /shrug

All I know was that when it came out, I was pretty disgusted.

 

You keep saying that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

No.

Battlespire was not meant to be an expansion to Daggerfall. It's not even meant to be a "main series number" game. That's why they spun it off into its own series with a different name, and that's why they said that BATTLESPIRE IS EXTRA SPECIAL NOT LIKE DAGGERFALL (I think this was the actual quote). As for your expectation, well, RTFM and all the game's marketing. It very clearly explained why the game was not a continuation of the series and what the scope of the Elder Scrolls Legend spinoff series was supposed to be. Complaining that it doesn't match your expectation is like complaining that UW is a first person dungeon crawler and not like the main Ultima series. This analogy is pretty good, now that I think of it...

Well, some of us like dungeon crawlers. Also, this is exactly what it was marketed as. More importantly (very, very importantly), it was a GOOD dungeon crawler, pretty hardcore, with tough encounters, with very solid level design. That's what distinguishes Battlespire from Oblivion, and, to continue the analogy, UW1 from U9. The whole point of spinoffs is to experiment with a different kind of gameplay without alineating the core group, since it IS a spinoff and the series naming and numbering can allow you to keep clear track of what series does what. That was the point of the TES spinoffs: the main series can continue to be the open world CRPG a la Daggerfall, the Legend series can be for little experimental dungeon crawlers like Battlespire, and Adventures are for their action/adventure games. That all went away when Battlespire flopped and Redguard almost bankrupted them so the concept never really took off, but that was the idea.

... and that's why it is in fact NOT part of the main series! That's the whole point! It doesn't stick out because it is not there in the first place! It is its own spinoff. The reasons it DOES keep the "Elder Scrolls" moniker (but NOT the main numbering) are a) it shares the same world (and in fact expands on Daedra lore like no other game does), and b) it uses almost the same character system from DF, with some simplifications and some added complexity (the point buy system is the most glorious I have ever seen in a CRPG).

No. They were spinoffs. Or experimentations, but THAT is why spinoffs exist in the first place. Gimmick implies pulling a trick that is ultimately unproductive or counterproductive to the game, like Radiant AI for Oblivion, which adds nothing to the game but can be used as a marketing, well, gimmick. Battlespire was designed for a specific subset (notice, SUBset; the very opposite of what you use a gimmick for) of Daggerfall players, namely the ones that though the character system was great and loved to have huge dungeons, but wished these dungeons were more structured, more handplaced and less clusterfucky, but just as big. So Battlespire removed the outside world, removed the randomization, and tried for a linear series of eight hardcore, large, completely hand-built and extremely well designed dungeons. And BOY did it deliver on THAT! You could say it WAS a one-trick pony, as it took a single aspect out of Daggerfall (the dungeoneering), but Bethesda never hid that fact, and, very importantly for me, the trick was done very, very well.

At the risk of sounding pissy.... next time, buy the item labeled "pie" instead of the one next to it labeled "cake"...

I wish, for your own sake, that you can get over the disappointment of not having had the game you expect, because, if you do like what I described about the game above, and can get rid of the preconception born out of that disappointment, you're really going to like Battlespire.

 

Actually, that is incorrect. It was initially designed to be an expansion. It was previously called Dungeon of Daggerfall: Battlespire. I remember when they were making it, they changed focus and made it stand alone. Why? No idea, but if you look at the games of time (I was working at a game software store at the time), the big craze was 1) multiplayer 2) Action-combat. The ES series always was action combat, but it balanced that with a deep development system, open expansive world with quests and plots everywhere. My guess is that those "gimmicks" (1, 2) they thought would pull in a broader audience. Even Regard appeared to be an attempt to tap into the action/adventure market that was pretty popular at the time.

Point is, they did initially plan it as such, but changed focus. So while the game could be fun (I actually respect most types of games, even some tardsole types) as a crawler, it was irritating because rather than filling in the gap between Morrowind with two more expansions to daggerfall, they decided to experiment with mainstream gimmicks. /shrug

 

I checked and you're right, I do not remember this. However, reading about Dungeon of Daggerfall: Battlespire, it WAS going to be exactly what Battlespire is now, ie focused purely on the dungeon crawling and excluding most everything else. In this respect, them changing it to a stand alone should be a good thing for you; as an expansion you would be justified in expecting "more Daggerfall" and would have every right to be pissed if it turns out to be something different. And it may very well be that this is the reason they turned it into a standalone spinoff, because they didn't want to alienate the Daggerfall fanbase, since at their cores the games are quite different.

I'm not sure I agree with the action-combat part. The combat system is IDENTICAL to Daggerfall's. And their marketing and switching to a stand-alone spinoff game, and their claims to focus on a single aspect of Daggerfall to the exclusion of all else, make it seem more like they were targeting a subset of Daggerfall's audience - maybe not as small as what they eventually got, but "Did you like Daggerfall dungeons? Well here's more, except they're HARDCORE!" really doesn't strike me like it's what they would say if they were trying to broaden the audience.

I wanted to mention this in my previous post but forgot. I've been ignoring your arguments regarding the multiplayer because I've never tried it, nor do I know anyone who's actually played it, so I don't feel I can comment on how much of a "gimmick" it was. Besides the single-player stands out on its own to justify the game's existence. You may be right that they included it because it was the big fad (what with Quake) but IDK.

My guess is that it tried riding on the popularity of Tomb Raider. It did introduce some nice elements that you wouldn't expect in an action/adventure and that are more in line with what you'd expect from TES, like a LOT of NPC interaction and an open-world (not a very big one, but still) that you can explore from the get-go, and a relatively non-linear main quest for the first half or so.

No, that's the point. As far as I can tell they changed nothing about the game, other than not making it need Daggerfall installed. The focus was always going to be on the action and dungeon crawling rather than the open world and the faction system. That didn't change when they switched it to stand-alone; on the contrary, the focus being different justifies making it stand-alone and a spinoff.

Redguard was certainly riding the mainstream action/adventure bandwagon, even if they made a pretty good one IMO. But I'm still not convinced that Battlespire was. And seriously, just get over the disappointment and play the game with a fresh mind already! Everything you say that isn't your expectation of 20 years ago make it sound like you'd love the game.

 

I honestly wouldn't have been as upset if they had made it an expansion and tied it in with the original game. That way, battlespire would have been a specific component of the game rather than a focus to a standalone gimmick. Heck, every game has moments of focus, a grindy action based multi-level dungeon in daggerfall as a component of the overall game would have been fine. A standalone merely alienated all the aspects of daggerfall and turned it into a gimmick focus.

The issue is not with action-combat, as I said Daggerfall has always been action-combat, but it balanced it with other aspects. It has been a while, but the development system in Battlespire is limited to that same focus. The quests are limited to that focus, everything is about "action" and while daggerfall had "action-combat", it wasn't an "action-combat" game if you understand what I mean? It had more than that, but battlespire was primarily an "action-combat" game, which is the point I was making. That action based play was extremely popular at that time. It was a sell point and if they made Battlespire an integrated "expansion" to daggerfall, it might give audiences the perception that the game was simply "daggerfall" and that would not have achieved the result they were intending, which is to obtain the action junky audience craze of the time. Also, the multiplayer aspects fits nicely in with that theory. All I know is what I saw during that time, and honestly, it felt like a sell out. Considering the actions of the company over the years after that, I would say I wasn't too far off from that "feeling" I had about it.

Well, it is just a perception I had being that I was working in games/software/computers at the time. One of the companies I worked for started out as a hub for multiplayer gaming (Warcraft/Doom/etc...) and I watched the craze evolve. I even remember getting my first copy of Daggerfall back then. I was working for a game store at the time all of this was going on. It was an insult to most of the RPG gamers at the time because we expected (and were initially told) that it was an expansion. The multiplayer aspect was major at that time. Heck, game companies were trying to work in multiplayer any possible way they could. It was a major gimmick. My point is, Battlespire... while on a certain evaluation may have good merits, it was a major let down from its existing focus. While I can respect the "dungeon crawler" games, ES never was that, and it was kind of a downgrade of them to revert to it after all they achieved with previous games. Something had a bad smell with that release. It didn't do well, and they pissed off most of their loyal following at the time. That is why you don't hear that game being touted as one of the greats in their genre.

Which is the point I am making. Both Battlespire and Reguard were initially meant to be progressions of Daggerfall, but... well... someone... something... etc... stepped in and drove them to gimmicks, chasing the fads, etc... While you may have liked Battlespire, it was a gimmick, it was designed to fit an action focused style of play, it was shallow in its design and its "style" to be honest, can be seen through numerous games today (ie the action focused grind kill based game). Take away some of the functional aspects of Battlespire and it really is just DOOM with quest stops.

But they did...

Here is what I think happened. I think they were working on building the thing as a true expansion. That it would be a full on major dungeon story, etc... progression of daggerfall, added into the game with the same development and complexity that Daggerfall had. What I think happened is that their funders said "hey, this multiplayer thing is booming!" and... "Hey, FPS games are booming!" and they decided to package an action packed dungeon stomping game with limited development, limited focus on choice, and simply a "DOOM" style fantasy game where player could "multiplay" through the game "tearing shit up".

Happens more than you think. Gaming is politics, it suffers the same manipulating stupidity. It is about building the next boy band, the next "market" to filch off of. Battlespire and Redguard were some of the first sellouts, regardless if they were entertaining or had some merit. I think anything positive these games provided to the market was simply dumb luck as they chased after the fad. Don't mind me though, I am cynical.

My point is that they both were. Mainstream isn't always bad. Mainstream is just some fad expectation of what people want. They get some aspects right at times, but... Battlespire was an upset at the time, while you and others think it is a good hack and slash dungeon crawler, it isn't and never was ES, but... it should have been if they didn't sell out to mainstream.

The problem with the industry is that they don't understand, everything has its place and when they try to chase fads, we miss what could have been if they would have held true. People remember what is true, the real talent, not the boy band crap pushed out in mass. Battlespire, while good to some, for most is garbage boy band crap because it was "some of something else" being pushed off as another.

 

You have a pretty weird definition of a "gimmicky" game, imho. Battlespire was just as "action-ey" as Daggerfall had been. I did play both, and did enjoy both, and I just don't see the huge difference between their respective playstyles that you seem to advocate. Both are first-person action games, their only difference being the "open world" aspect. You could as well have argued that both Arena and Daggerfal tried to cash in on the FP action game fad -- it seems to me that you failed to make a convincing argument about Battlespire specifically in that regard.

In my view, Battlespire built on what Daggerfall did best -- namely, the dungeons. And it did an awesome job of that. That's why Daggerfall and Battlespire are my two favorite Elder Scrolls games. Imo Battlespire was just a natural extension of Daggerfall, doing away with the bad and focusing on the good. As you can see, I am the kind of RPG player that Battlespire was meant for. Which doesn't make it "gimmicky" at all.

I can see why many fans like yourself would regard taking away the open world aspect as a travesty -- but in my opinion the Elder Scrolls games with the exception of Morrowind were never any good in the exploration deparment. That's why Battlespire was so good: it did away with the awful and repetitive "open world" aspect of Daggerfall and actually focused on what made Daggerfall good: dungeon crawling.

My thesis is that Daggerfall was all about dungeon crawling in the first place. Its "open world" aspect wasn't any good at all. Its dungeons were what made the game, and what makes it worth playing to this day -- and also makes it the best game of the main series.