Preview Avowed early build impressions at Windows Central

[Lexx]

Well yes, it sells a fuckton on console, but I am of the opinion that word of mouth from a loud "minority" is what is driving this.

That said, mods are also on console nowadays. Skyrim has 500+ shits that were made by community people and can be bought and played for little money. Enough to keep people dive back into the game.

 

[Gargaune]

Well yes, it sells a fuckton on console, but I am of the opinion that word of mouth from a loud "minority" is what is driving this.

Very likely. Consoles sold more than PC, yes, but it's the PC and the modding scene in particular that gave Skyrim its marketplace longevity. I actually just discovered that "Skyrim modding" has its own distinct Wikipedia entry. People who keep playing it on PC (due to mods) also keep the game visible for new customers across platforms even ten years down the line.

 

[Decado]

Will it have modding tools? Otherwise why even bother with an open worlder, honestly.

Agreed. I still think the only reason Skyrim and shit is so popular is because autists keep making mods for it, which makes people keep talking about them. If Obsidian's Skyrim clone cannot into modding in a simple-stupid way as Bethsoft games, then it will be forgotten as quickly as Outer Worlds.

Skyrim is popular because it is a legitimately good game. It might not be the RPG Codex's cup of tea, but you can't deny it has widespread appeal. The mods certainly help, but I'd venture to guess that most players of Skyrim then (and now) are probably not very mod-conscious. They just like riding their horse around video game land and picking up cabbages.

 

[Poseidon00]

Skyrim is popular because it is a legitimately good game. It might not be the RPG Codex's cup of tea, but you can't deny it has widespread appeal. The mods certainly help, but I'd venture to guess that most players of Skyrim then (and now) are probably not very mod-conscious. They just like riding their horse around video game land and picking up cabbages.

There are over a billion mod downloads for Skyrim on the Nexus. Skyrim and SE combined reach nearly 3 billion.

 

[Decado]

Skyrim is popular because it is a legitimately good game. It might not be the RPG Codex's cup of tea, but you can't deny it has widespread appeal. The mods certainly help, but I'd venture to guess that most players of Skyrim then (and now) are probably not very mod-conscious. They just like riding their horse around video game land and picking up cabbages.

There are over a billion mod downloads for Skyrim on the Nexus. Skyrim and SE combined reach nearly 3 billion.

So?

 

[Gargaune]

Skyrim is popular because it is a legitimately good game. It might not be the RPG Codex's cup of tea, but you can't deny it has widespread appeal. The mods certainly help, but I'd venture to guess that most players of Skyrim then (and now) are probably not very mod-conscious.

They aren't, I think the percentage of overall Skyrim players who've ever downloaded a mod is in the single digits, though I don't recall where I saw that stat. That's not the argument here, though, what he's suggesting (and I agree) is that the enduring modding community is what's given the game such an unusual longevity in the single-player scene. Skyrim's good for what it is, sure, but it's the mod scene that's kept it in the public consciousness over so many years and therefore enabled it to keep acquiring new players.

 

[Poseidon00]

So?

So if every person who mods downloaded 100 mods (they don't) there would be a little less than 30 million people modding.

That would be nearly 100% of the people who bought it on release date.

I think you underestimate the importance and sheer size of the modding scene.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Skyrim had 5 million pre-orders off the first trailer alone. It's a popular game, and its "longevity" has to do with them going around porting it to anything with a transistor. No different from RE4 in that regard.

Mods somewhat help the marketing/clickbait aspect by giving paid marketing shill journalists an excuse to write about the game, but casuals aren't buying skyrim on switch because of mods.

 

[jungl]

If it is anything like outerworlds Its going to be too themepark and casual difficulty/gameplay wise. Therefore a simple game. The player is going to feel less like a adventurer immersed in this fantasy world and more like a murderhobo jumping around clearing out quest chains for phatz loot. Obsidian is going to fail to deliver.

I'm sick of these brainlet double and triple A games where you are presented this massive world but the only thing you have to do is kill stuff and worry about is your personal reflexes. There is literally more stuff to do in spyro and all those old adventure games 20+ years ago then shit games like outerworlds and others now SAD!

 

[Mortmal]

What's the point writing such impressions without providing gameplay video or screenshots?

And more importantly, what's the point of reporting such impression here at Codex?

4.5 millions for resetera...4.5 millions for dumb shit like that without any effort whatsoever. The closer and more mainstream you get the higher value codex may have . Covering microsoft products and shilling for them makes complete sense. Right now codex is only worth like 11650$, my own estimation .Imagine devs coming again to the new policed non hate speech codex.

 

[Morality Games]

Why does Microsoft need a Skyrim clone? Didn't they already buy Bethesda?

... I would assume the same reason why Zenimax let Obsidian make Fallout: New Vegas, big open world first-person exploration RPGs take too long to make.

fnv was made in like a year and a half though
It doesn't take long at all if you remind them that they'll be fired and homeless if they don't stop slacking

consider the following: A single piece of DLC for Outer Worlds took nearly as long to make as the entirety of FNV.

Sure, but all the stuff that takes time to make (systems, engine, art assets, etc) was already finished. All Obsidian needed to create was content.

Generally, content is easy to make if everything else is ready to go (and you have the old design notes for Van Buren).

I guess they could tell Bethesda to hurry it up, but Bethesda is the golden goose. Executives are an out of touch bunch as a rule but usually the one thing they know for sure is that you shouldn't fuck too hard or too fast with the golden goose. You don't need to understand something to understand that it makes money.

That's why it took Disney awhile before they finally started fucking with Marvel.

seems more likely that the people working at obsidian now are just much more incompetent

Lol, well, I'm sure that's a factor. They aren't the company they were 10 years ago and even that company was hit and miss.

Will it have modding tools? Otherwise why even bother with an open worlder, honestly.

Agreed. I still think the only reason Skyrim and shit is so popular is because autists keep making mods for it, which makes people keep talking about them. If Obsidian's Skyrim clone cannot into modding in a simple-stupid way as Bethsoft games, then it will be forgotten as quickly as Outer Worlds.

Mods are why Skyrim is popular even with core PC and cRPG players (numbering in the few millions to the hundreds of thousands respectively) and also why some general audiences play continue to play it obsessively years later.

Skyrim is popular in general terms because it indulges the attention deficit disorder that became rampant after the widespread use of the Internet and especially mobile Internet devices. People who work 8-hour days can come home, fire up the Xbox, and just wander around and have adventures. Neither the systems or the combat require any critical thought (but succeed at making you like a fighter or a wizard at the most superficial level), and you are bound to encounter adventure sooner or later no matter what (thanks to random event generation) so it's a cool way to zone out and have some LOTR-style fun.

 

[Decado]

So?

So if every person who mods downloaded 100 mods (they don't) there would be a little less than 30 million people modding.

That would be nearly 100% of the people who bought it on release date.

I think you underestimate the importance and sheer size of the modding scene.

Well there's a few assumptions buried in what you're suggesting.

First, unless you're going count each one manually you have no idea how many mods have actually been DL'd how many times. I'm sure, for example, that there are thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) of mods that have never been downloaded once.

Second, a person can download the same mod multiple times; for example, if they are doing a reinstall. Or, if they click the download button twice by accident. And I have no idea if this would include bots.

Third, you have no idea how many mods actually get installed after download.

Back in April of 2015, Bethesda said that 8% of players had used a mod. There's no reason to believe they're lying about that number. But that was six years ago. Do you think that number has gone up, or down? Let's be charitable and suggest it hasn't changed at all. That 8% of Skyrim players using a mod, which is still a tiny number of the multiple 30 million unit sales. In other words, I don't think the 8% of players who use mods are driving the popularity of the game, if we're measuring popularity in sales. Especially when you consider that modding really only exists on the PC, with the console modding community much smaller.

And in fact, knowing what I know about PC gamers, you can make the argument that PC Skyrim modders are actually the least likely to re-purchase the game, as they're the group most likely to not need it for technical reasons (why would they buy upgraded textures when they can mod it, and so on?).

 

[agris]

Decado you're doing it wrong. you're supposed to go: ethnic slur, culture war, incoherent attempt at an argument, delusion of grandeur, unintended self-parody and then ethnic slur combined with culture war (COMBOx2).

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Avowed seems to be a far more colorful game

Here we go.

Not even coomer mods wills save this fucking wreck.

 

[Poseidon00]

Well there's a few assumptions buried in what you're suggesting.

First, unless you're going count each one manually you have no idea how many mods have actually been DL'd how many times. I'm sure, for example, that there are thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) of mods that have never been downloaded once.

An ignored/forgotten mod is irrelevant to the importance and size of the modding scene for the game as a whole.

Second, a person can download the same mod multiple times; for example, if they are doing a reinstall. Or, if they click the download button twice by accident. And I have no idea if this would include bots.

Third, you have no idea how many mods actually get installed after download.

Accidentaly clicking on a mod twice isn't the cause of nearly 3 billion downloads and nor are reinstalls. These are the margins, and not more of a problem for Skyrim than any other modded game with far less impressive numbers.

Back in April of 2015, Bethesda said that 8% of players had used a mod.

So, the majority of PC players.

Anyway what's up with Avowed?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

mod download numbers aren't a reliable estimate of anything except how many times a game has been pirated

 

[Poseidon00]

I think mod download numbers are as good a metric as any to determine the popularity or size of a mod scene, I dunno

Why am I talking about this, I don't even like Skyrim

 

[Lexx]

It's not just about Skyrim, though. The modding scene started building extensively already with Morrowind. Thanks to the easy moddability of Bethsoft's engine, that hasn't changed in over a decade, they were able to build up a huge, dedicated modding community. Every time the game gets forgotten, some big or crazy mod comes around that brings it back into the picture, even if it's just "dragons are thomas the tank engine now."

Games like Outer Worlds or Pillars, etc. can't keep up with that. You can't just quickly open some editor and shit out a house-mod without ever having done anything game-dev in your life. IMO if Obsidian really wants to set their games in stone, they need easy to use modding tools like that.

 

[Roguey]

None of the tens of millions of people who bought Skyrim on a platform other than PC give a damn about mods.

 

[Gargaune]

None of the tens of millions of people who bought Skyrim on a platform other than PC give a damn about mods.

I don't know how you lot keep missing the fucking point here - it's not that a billion players care or even know about Skyrim mods, they don't, it's that a tiny minority of the Skyrim player base keeps playing the game because of mods, so they keep talking about the damn thing and that keeps it relevant in the marketplace well past its due. It's become a living meme that new gamers keep hearing about, so some end up buying it even if they couldn't "mod" their Playstation colour scheme.

Basically, that iterative mod scene that Bethesda's built hit critical mass around Skyrim and now acts as a viral marketing instrument, because most core gamers are within Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Someone Who's Still Playing Skyrim For the Mods.

 

[Roguey]

I don't know how you lot keep missing the fucking point here - it's not that a billion players care or even know about Skyrim mods, they don't, it's that a tiny minority of the Skyrim player base keeps playing the game because of mods, so they keep talking about the damn thing and that keeps it relevant in the marketplace well past its due. It's become a living meme that new gamers keep hearing about, so some end up buying it even if they couldn't "mod" their Playstation colour scheme.

You think a bunch of normies are buying a game because of autistic conversations about mod load orders they don't actually see?

 

[Gargaune]

You think a bunch of normies are buying a game because of autistic conversations about mod load orders they don't actually see?

No, I think a bunch of normies are buying a game because they each know that one guy who's still playing Skyrim and keeps taking about it. They don't need to know or understand that he's playing it for the mods, they just know that every once in a while he brings up this old game they've heard about before, so eventually they get curious. Most of 'em will never touch a mod, but one will and he'll turn into "that guy" for another bunch of normies down the line, and so it goes.

 

[luj1]

Skyrim is popular because it is a legitimately good game.

It's literally half finished industrial algorithmic garbage

 

[Inveigh]

This game could be great, but I don't have faith Obsidian will do what they need to in order to make it so.

 

[Zibniyat]

Obsidian's Skyrim clone Avowed

You should stop using this word, "clone". Skyrim isn't some unique video game done never before or later. I could just as well say Skyrim is a clone of Oblivion, only much worse. Other developers have the right to make similar games without their games being described as "clones". And whilst it appears that most gaming journalists strongly compare it to Skyrim, you don't have to. Otherwise I don't know why we wouldn't call every game a clone of something. Speaking of which, the occurrence of "souls-like", "rogue-like" and other "something-like" labels for games over the past 5 years points to developers (and the newspapers) being uncreative, timid and at the same time craving for attention, which I find pathetic. Normal developers and their games don't need to attach such pitiful labels (which also genuinely sound retarded) to their games, they can however say what inspired them.

Regardless, you really ought to stop using this word, and this is a good intentioned advice.