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Skyrim - Bethesda, you should be very, very proud.

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
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Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
FeelTheRads said:
Are you retarded, SCO? I was under the impression that you weren't, but maybe I was wrong.

Oh, right, must be that new thing about not being cool anymore to rage. Now it's cool to cocksuck BLOBERT and such.

I won't play the game simply because it's on steam, but i don't have to be offended because people like it.

Plus it was funny.

"Zenimax suits keeping the flame!"

There is such a thing as taking sarcasm too far. Either that, or you're being trolled like King Graham crossing the bridge.
 

Gregz

Arcane
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Messages
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The Desert Wasteland
DraQ said:
The Wizard said:
DraQ said:
Crooked Bee said:
What? Lol.
As for linear dungeons with shortcuts at the end they are a pet peeve of mine. Not necessarily if they are used sparingly, but when it becomes a rule it's fucking retarded.
:x
so you'd rather walk through the empty dungeon again? remember, "no recall or intervention can work in this place".
No, I'd rather have dungeons that are designed as actual places, not as linear roller-coasters with separate entrances and exits that only miss a ticket booth and some fuck selling baloons at the entrance.
:rpgcodex:

Yes, because backtracking across 4 reload zones to review all the corpses and chests you've already looted really boosts the enjoyment factor. :roll:
 

SCO

Arcane
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Messages
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Gregz said:
Yes, because backtracking across 4 reload zones to review all the corpses and chests you've already looted really boosts the enjoyment factor. :roll:

That's what mark & recall is for.

Mods will fix it.
 
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Germoney
Crispy said:
The inns are all the same. The quests eventually reveal their blandness. The creatures are one after the other, all ragdolly stupidity. The voices eventually start to sound the same (because they are), the items, the locations, all the "special effects" they worked so hard on.

This describes Daggerfall down to a T. A game which wowed you at first with its scope until you eventually discovered that you didn't really get anywere but the same places made of the same tiles by a random number generator. The same eventually happened to me in every TES game (of which Daggerfall and Morrowind I liked the most). Never finished one at all. However, whilst I fully acknowledge and appreciate that neither TES game was made to be finished first and foremost, I can actually see myself witnessing the end of the main story arc in a not so distant future.

I'm close to 30 hours in and I'm still perfectly enjoying Skyrim. At least as much as New Vegas, perhaps even moreso. Whereas Oblivions maps and travelling were comparably stale in comparison, there are many random events spicing up even walking around the landscape, and the dragons appearance is just one of them. Often times you'd meet people telling side-stories related to quests in the game, such as two guards looking for a specific woman and chatting up on one... furthermore I really like how Bethesda have gradually increased the believabilty of NPCs and their world.

The daily routines are nothing new, but that following around specific characters can lead you to gain further relevations about their relationship to others shows how far Bethesda have come from the early days of Arena, in which NPCs were barely anything but signposts pretending to be characters inhabiting a make-believe fantasy world. Even NPCs that would suddenly pop up as nothing but random quest givers on your travels you'd expect to disappear after you don't accept the quest they have on offer don't just disappear - they go to their long place of destination (often long travels that take minutes long) and perform their actions regardless if you've said "Yes." or "No." This way I was able to plunder a camp distrcated by the NPC in question, and I didn't "hop on" the quest at all. I also like that at night in Rifton there are actually attacks by thiefs - the scripted coupled with the unscripted in a world this open-ended can be good fun. Dismissing Skyrim as a single-player MMORPG is a little daft. Eventually, as history shows, Skyrim will wear off as did any TES game, but really, every game does at some point.

A couple of days ago there was a guy posting in here who got all hung up upon a perceived level of elitism, but I cannot find his posts anymore. If he's still reading I advice him to hop over to the adventure game section of these boards and go take a look at what he is being recommended there, occasionally for just looking cool and being oldschool, if at all. Should put things into perspective a little.
 

hoopy

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Twinfalls said:
I've played around 35 hours of Skyrim thus far. It's clearly a small fraction of what's there.

I'll say this in full admission that I was one of the loudest screechers about Oblivion (and at times Morrowind, though I recognised later Morrowind was a very fine achievement in fantasy world-making and story-telling).

What we simply can not say any longer about Bethesda Softworks:

They can't make a great RPG.

They have.
A great RPG where you can't even fucking kill people because doing so would interfere with Bethesda's script.
 
Joined
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Bethesda has improved quite a bit after Oblivion but they still haven't made a single game I have considered replaying, and that's the personal division I hold between great RPG's and the rest.
 
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Just a slight change to what I've said on page 1 about enemies' interaction with the environment in combat. Though it's still lacking, I've just ran my ass through a passageway that had three Falmers dropping silently from the ceiling (I reloaded to check if it was a spawning oddity; it's not, they were clinging abovehead untill you are close beneath them).

Edit: Not exactly 'clinging'... they emerge from tunnel like protrusions in the rocks.

Edit: Those curious can check out Lost Echo Cave somewhere north in the map, west of Solitude.
 
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FeelTheRads said:
Tycn said:
He's keeping Fallout alive, too. Or at least lukewarm.

He's keeping shit. He's just yet another talentless hack along with all the other braindead monkeys at Bethesda who shouldn't ever be allowed to design a game.
If there's anyone who keeps anything alive it's the suits at Zenimax.

You're so edgy, FTS. What's your secret?
 

Rhalle

Magister
Joined
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Messages
2,192
Skyrim is majestic for what it is. It's less cartoony than Oblivion. It's a pretty entertaining ARPG open-world lootfest. It's admirably varied for its size.

The only thing improved mechanics-wise are the perks and the slightly increased combat complexity. The removal of base stats, the conflation of speech and mercantile, and the broken smithing and enchanting (and sneaking, too) are big-time fail, game-breaking dumbed-down shit for consoles. The voice acting is still hit and miss, even though there are a few more hits. (Why a game with the budget that presumably Skyrim has can't hire competent voice talent for every last NPC in the game still smacks of laziness-- or incompetence. Why 90% of the male Nord NPCs have a Hispanic voice actor, and all the Redguards are white guys is-- I don't know. Lazy? Incompetent?)

That it is fun to have a companion-- i.e. Lydia-- makes me wish that Obsidian would make the Skyrim expansions. They would be right at home in the fantasy genre, and they would have the FO:NV experience (which was great with its companions) to build on. They could make someting pretty special, I'd reckon. Bethesda wouldn't do as good a job.

Skyrim is entertaining, but I can't say that it's fundamentally better than NV. In terms of the tightness of its construction, it's not better than FO3. In other ways-- mostly in how it's improved over Oblivion-- it is far superior to both.
 

DraQ

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onemananadhisdroid said:
Crispy said:
The inns are all the same. The quests eventually reveal their blandness. The creatures are one after the other, all ragdolly stupidity. The voices eventually start to sound the same (because they are), the items, the locations, all the "special effects" they worked so hard on.

This describes Daggerfall down to a T. A game which wowed you at first with its scope until you eventually discovered that you didn't really get anywere but the same places made of the same tiles by a random number generator. The same eventually happened to me in every TES game (of which Daggerfall and Morrowind I liked the most).
I don't know about Skyrim, but in Morrowind all but small filler dungeons (like many tombs or particularly badly caved in ruins) were at least somewhat unique.

Whereas Oblivions maps and travelling were comparably stale in comparison
Well, you could put it like that, I guess.
Just like you could call the core of an O type star comparatively warm place.

Gregz said:
Yes, because backtracking across 4 reload zones to review all the corpses and chests you've already looted really boosts the enjoyment factor. :roll:
No, because having every cave or somesuch end with "lololol here's a convenient exit that was unreachable from the other side" murders believability with a fucking pickaxe.

Plus, if you make your dungeons nonlinear, with not just branches but many interconnected parts and passages, you can minimize backtracking by using different routes to return than you used for entry while also providing different experience depending on the path player takes (for example waltzing into the ambush versus surprising would-be-ambushers from above).
Make (preferably even) number of interconnecting paths greater than 2 and idiotic themepark feel quickly dissipates. Make them not only connect in the same plane but pass above or below while opening into each other and you have also made an environment that can confuse a would-be explorer and provide many opportunities to use different tactics or utilize non-combat skills and spells.

And finally:
SCO said:
That's what mark & recall is for.
A TES game in particular has no excuse.
 

Gord

Arcane
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Messages
7,049
Rhalle said:
broken smithing and enchanting (and sneaking, too) are big-time fail, game-breaking dumbed-down shit for consoles.

Exploitable does not mean broken, imho.

Sneak is very erratic, though. I think something either about how light in dungeons factors into the chance for detection or how light levels are translated into brightness is off.
 

.Sigurd

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huahuahua
It's funny to see how much most of you feel guilty for liking the game. "the game is good but WOWWOW CAUTION MANG YOU'LL STOP LIKING WHEN YOU HIT 30 HOURS YOU'LL HIT THE WALL MANG YOU WILL HIT THE WALL!"
I mean, it's not like that in almost all games? The moment you see almost everything the game has to offer you start to become bored. It's like most of you are afraid of losing KKKodex points by admitting the game isn't the worst thing since Oblivion and Fallout 3.

Rhalle said:
Skyrim is majestic for what it is. It's less cartoony than Oblivion. It's a pretty entertaining ARPG open-world lootfest. It's admirably varied for its size.

The only thing improved mechanics-wise are the perks and the slightly increased combat complexity. The removal of base stats, the conflation of speech and mercantile, and the broken smithing and enchanting (and sneaking, too) are big-time fail, game-breaking dumbed-down shit for consoles. The voice acting is still hit and miss, even though there are a few more hits. (Why a game with the budget that presumably Skyrim has can't hire competent voice talent for every last NPC in the game still smacks of laziness-- or incompetence. Why 90% of the male Nord NPCs have a Hispanic voice actor, and all the Redguards are white guys is-- I don't know. Lazy? Incompetent?)

That it is fun to have a companion-- i.e. Lydia-- makes me wish that Obsidian would make the Skyrim expansions. They would be right at home in the fantasy genre, and they would have the FO:NV experience (which was great with its companions) to build on. They could make someting pretty special, I'd reckon. Bethesda wouldn't do as good a job.

Skyrim is entertaining, but I can't say that it's fundamentally better than NV. In terms of the tightness of its construction, it's not better than FO3. In other ways-- mostly in how it's improved over Oblivion-- it is far superior to both.
This.
 

fizzelopeguss

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"Powergaming aspie roleplayers" that bizarrely exist in the codex are utterly doomed in this game. They can't but help themselves to abusing blacksmithing to it's full potential. buying iron+strips and crafting daggers to 100 blacksmithy and going straight for dragonplate.(+ 10 lvl's for the perks)

But that's a typical fuck up design wise on bethesda's part.

You'd think they'd love it because you can make utter god tier exploding sun weapnry with the tradeskills...apparently not.
 
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fizzelopeguss said:
"Powergaming aspie roleplayers" that bizarrely exist in the codex are utterly doomed in this game. They can't but help themselves to abusing blacksmithing to it's full potential. buying iron+strips and crafting daggers to 100 blacksmithy and going straight for dragonplate.(+ 10 lvl's for the perks)

But that's a typical fuck up design wise on bethesda's part.

You'd think they'd love it because you can make utter god tier exploding sun weapnry with the tradeskills...apparently not.

This is very well put. And I feel this is the main reason there's a rift between those that find Skyrim gameplay decent and those that think it's broken everywhere. And it's very much the fault of Bethesda, and has been apparent since Morrowind up through FO:NV (same/similar engines, conception of challenge).

But I also think it's quite an unavoidable flaw with any system that focuses on variety and scope, because having a large number of variables that may be used for character advancement, human ingenuity somehow always finds the best synergies. Limiting variety and scope of character development makes things boring, but easier to balance, while offering more requires proportionate effort to balance. And Bethesda apparently can't balance shit. So I think the bandaid in enjoying their imbalanced systems is to play it 'naturally', aka LARP (as many would call it), so that the brokenness doesn't set in as fast.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
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Darth Roxor said:
Did VD mention somewhere that Skyrim was good or something? Because that drone Twinfalls never crawls out of its hole without the overlord first stating an opinion that could be instantly delivered to the masses.
From another post:

My impressions:

Action RPGs are about leveling up and looking for better loot. Bethesda managed to dumb the character system even further, so Skyrim is pretty much about looking for better loot, which may or may not be your cup of tea.

The world looks huge, but caves and dungeons lack Daggerfall's complexity, interactivity, and non-linearity. You run through linear corridors slaying everything in your path, looting bodies, quickly becoming encumbered and losing some (or all) of the interest.

The character development aspect is too weak to carry the game. Increasing weapon skills increases damage, etc. Instead of stats you get to choose where to put 10 points (can't split them): mana, health, stamina. Perks are kinda lame.

For example, most two-handed perks are about doing more damage. Put 5 points into the very first perk and you can double the damage (um, balance issues?). Other two-handed perks offer more damage and criticals on power attacks.

The heavy armor perks increase the armor rating. 25% bonus on any heavy armor piece, 25% if all pieces are heavy armor, 25% if it's a set. Other armor perks unlock crafting metals, which goes against exploring and looking for that armor. Unlocking steel allows you to make any steel item, if you have enough ingots. You can buy them in stores, so it doesn't seem to be an issue.

The world is better, the lore is better, the writing is better, the quests are better (compared to Oblivion), the level scaling is better (dying is easy on the hardest level and even a single mage can be a threat), but without a decent character system it's just a dumb action game - the longer you play the more boring it gets.

Sure, some visuals are incredible, but they are not enough. So, overall:

+ HUGE world
+ great visual design
+ runs well on a 5 year old PC
+ writing doesn't suck
+ some quests have options

- poorly designed character system
- dumb combat, gets boring FAST
- the most god-fucking-awful interface in the history of video games
- poor balance and system design

In the end, it's simply not an RPG, no more than Dark Messiah was, so bitching about it is kind of pointless. Whereas Oblivion came after glorious Daggerfall and pretty good Morrowind, Skyrim comes after shitty Oblivion and good-for-what-is Fallout 3. I'd say the game is better than I expected and leave it at that.

Enjoy your hiking, gentlemen."

villain of the story said:
Darth Roxor said:
Did VD mention somewhere that Skyrim was good or something? Because that drone Twinfalls never crawls out of its hole without the overlord first stating an opinion that could be instantly delivered to the masses.

VD said Skyrim isn't an RPG. Why? Because the character system is poor and there are no attributes. LOL.
Is that what I said?

That and he had a generally poor understanding of what perks do and don't, probably because he wasn't interested.
Yeah, the perks are really fucking complicated.
 

fizzelopeguss

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halflingbarbarian said:
fizzelopeguss said:
"Powergaming aspie roleplayers" that bizarrely exist in the codex are utterly doomed in this game. They can't but help themselves to abusing blacksmithing to it's full potential. buying iron+strips and crafting daggers to 100 blacksmithy and going straight for dragonplate.(+ 10 lvl's for the perks)

But that's a typical fuck up design wise on bethesda's part.

You'd think they'd love it because you can make utter god tier exploding sun weapnry with the tradeskills...apparently not.

This is very well put. And I feel this is the main reason there's a rift between those that find Skyrim gameplay decent and those that think it's broken everywhere. And it's very much the fault of Bethesda, and has been apparent since Morrowind up through FO:NV (same/similar engines, conception of challenge).

But I also think it's quite an unavoidable flaw with any system that focuses on variety and scope, because having a large number of variables that may be used for character advancement, human ingenuity somehow always finds the best synergies. Limiting variety and scope of character development makes things boring, but easier to balance, while offering more requires proportionate effort to balance. And Bethesda apparently can't balance shit. So I think the bandaid in enjoying their imbalanced systems is to play it 'naturally', aka LARP (as many would call it), so that the brokenness doesn't set in as fast.

Play a bethesda title and you soon see what a brilliant piece of design and pacing the first two gothic games were. I feel that's because of how tightly integrated the chapters and story were, when you were ready to "unlock" the next stage of the map you were given/found an armour or weapon that visualised it for you that all that levelling and all those quests have made it possible for your character to move on. (outside of cheesing/glitching the mobs, or surviving tooth and nail every creature battle)

This game supposedly has a hundred and fifty PoI's, a carriage right at the start of your "adventure" that'll take you 8 different towns...good luck trying to balance all that shit if your aiming for a truly freeform, sandboxy world.

I think that's the downfall of gothic 3, the game is just too fucking big and it lost the virgin tight balance.

The blacksmithing in this is at often times brilliant (allowing you to level up your absolute favourite weapons and armour) and shit (abuse, making loot finding obsolete.)
 

Crooked Bee

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Black Cat said:
- the most god-fucking-awful interface in the history of video games

Second most god-fucking-awful interface in the history of video games, actually. Gothic's still the king.

Both aren't that bad after having to deal with Space 1889's and Whale Voyage's.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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wcjsdi.jpg


^ Wins by default.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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fizzelopeguss said:
The blacksmithing in this is at often times brilliant (allowing you to level up your absolute favourite weapons and armour) and shit (abuse, making loot finding obsolete.)
Which is a huge design flaw in a game that's mostly about finding loot.
 

fizzelopeguss

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Messages
808
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Equality Street.
Absolutely, i don't even bother with the dwarven/ elf, ebony/glass shit. i think at this point those are relegated to the scale/chain/plate vendor pap in other RPG's. My loot is the TES artefacts and quest rewards.
 

The Wizard

Educated
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Apr 1, 2009
Messages
606
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Vault Dweller said:
^ Wins by default.
i guess she was talking about the first one. were the inventory was atrocious.

The world is better, the lore is better, the writing is better
i guess kirkbride did write more this time around than just 4 books and a small monologue for the bad guy.

i liked the part were you talk to the dragons, the fantasy language thing is kinda lame, but ey.
 

MetalCraze

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Messages
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Urkanistan
torpid said:
So despite sharing so many elements with the much-hated (and rightly so) Oblivion, it's an "excellent TES game and a return to form." Proving my point that many of the complaints about Oblivion were misplaced, since a very similar game is now being lauded :lol: Better atmosphere and a few in-game books are apparently enough to forgive Oblivion's many, many flaws.

That's because most people here never played Oblivion and only heard how bad it was or just were getting kodex kool kredits by hating it along with everyone else which is widespread here (see how DAO was best RPG ever in 2009 but hated the next year)

Apart from the atmosphere and lame design with one-shot monsters I never noticed any difference from Oblivion even with max difficulty (in Oblivion minotaurs were killing you easily on early levels).

Vault Dweller said:
+ writing doesn't suck

How "this $item_name$ is extremely important to me, can you - a complete stranger who may have inferior equipment - deliver it to my father/mother/sister 50m away" is not Fallout 3 dumb-grade?

How "you are the Chosen One, you have a dragon blood in you!! SAVE US!" doesn't suck? How "terrible DRAGONS they will kill us all!" even though a party of 3-4 NPC archers has no problem wiping them out without a single loss doesn't suck?

In Morrowind all that Nerevarin bullshit was at least somewhere on the same level with Troika's Arcanum where main character was lied to in order to get manipulated. Here every NPC tries to suck your cock from day one.
 
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Vault Dweller said:
That and he had a generally poor understanding of what perks do and don't, probably because he wasn't interested.
Yeah, the perks are really fucking complicated.

It is completely possible to get even the simplest things wrong or not get them at all because you just don't care. And people explained why you were wrong in that IT thread. And they are right. That's what matters. Nothing wrong or horrid about it.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
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Messages
28,024
MetalCraze said:
How "this $item_name$ is extremely important to me, can you - a complete stranger who may have inferior equipment - deliver it to my father/mother/sister 50m away" is not Fallout 3 dumb-grade?

How "you are the Chosen One, you have a dragon blood in you!! SAVE US!" doesn't suck? How "terrible DRAGONS they will kill us all!" even though a party of 3-4 NPC archers has no problem wiping them out without a single loss doesn't suck?
You're confusing design with writing.
 

MetalCraze

Arcane
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Urkanistan
So if a generic story about a Chosen One and NPCs being ready to die for you because you delivered a simple letter across the road is 'design' - then what is 'writing'?

I'm genuinely interested in knowing the difference between "have you seen my father, a middle aged guy"-writing and "oh you've just went and delivered my love letter, I will now owe you my life!"-design
 

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