Preview Oblivion daily update

[Balor]

LOTR?
Why, I hate LotR in general, and hobbits in particular.
But since POOPER is an obvious loopy...
And may be royalty to boot, but it does not somehow negate his first achetype, though.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

POOPERSCOOPER is my lover, you stay away from him!

 

[Balor]

And gay too?
How interesting.

 

[truekaiser]

Frankly, I'm surprised at your reaction, VD. In the past, I thought that this was just the type of information that you were hoping to hear. I know that you don't have examples and haven't played the game yet, but can we give Beth some credit for talking about more in-depth things about the game? You can't really cry "soil erosion and Stewart" on this one...

By saying "WE HAVE THE BEST STORY EVER!"???

You ever notice that every game does that?

even quake 4 says it has the best story ever

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

LOTR?
Why, I hate LotR in general, and hobbits in particular.
But since POOPER is an obvious loopy...
And may be royalty to boot, but it does not somehow negate his first achetype, though.

U are a faggot and a wadda wadda bing bang


<3 naked lunch

edit: gangolf owned ur ass in LOTR

 

[Balor]

Ok, ok, you win by your opponent tactically withdrawing from the field.
Like it's rightfully mentioned, loopies cannot be defeated with conventional means, and I don't have ICBM handy.

 

[kingcomrade]

that chick better be pregnant, not even my belly is anywhere near that big.

 

[voodoo1man]

Pete: You can build off our game world in any direction. More importantly, you can have the game generate whatever terrain you want in that location for you. So it’s not just about having elbow room, but having the world generated with the click of a button so you can spend more time creating things and less time dragging the landscape around and placing trees/rocks/etc.

Finally, he knows something! That sounds promising to the modding community, but I am totally unfamiliar with modding. Perhaps someone else can comment.

Terrain generation, and more so population with plants and rocks etc. was very time consuming in MW. Look at Tamriel Rebuilt, they spent way over a year just doing that, with a lot of people. That is why the much maligned "soil erosion" is really a very worthwhile feature - it frees a lot of time for the designers. It should be a very important factor in seeing more "content" instead of "feature" mods for Oblivion, or that's my hope, at least.

So Oblivion will now end up as a bunch of "procedurally generated garbage"?! Say it ain't so!

He's fucking DAC mafia.

Like, all at once, or on a rotating basis?

 

[jiujitsu]

He's fucking DAC mafia.

Like, all at once, or on a rotating basis?

Nice try, but to put that spin on it you would have to interpret the sentence in a grammatically incorrect way.

So, unless you want to declare how much of an illiterate you are to everyone, I suggest just waving the "I lose" flag.

At DAC we ain't just mobsters, we're family.

Faggot.

 

[Percolator Fish]

Goddamnit Vault Dweller you are the worst news poster on any website.

 

[Claw]

You really love to do those one-line responses to paragraphs.

!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Goddamnit Vault Dweller you are the worst news poster on any website.

I'm sure you would have done a much better job. Btw, do you have any other one-liners? This one is getting boring. May I recommend: "Vault Dweller, you suck!" or "Vault Dweller, quit your job!" Or use all of them and rotate randomly.

 

[Section8]

I'm going to guess it's both. Boromir/006/the character in National Treasure doublecrosses you, turns evil, and then you have to kill him.

Don't forget Ronin, where once again, he was the incompetent soldier whose insecurities lead him to turn against the "good guys." Although, let's not forget that he occasionally mixes it up, like in Equilibrium, where he's traitor first and good guy second!

One major step we’ve taken is providing the player with higher level economic goals – things like houses and horses and high level weapons and armor in shops. These are meant to be goals to save your money towards over the course of the game.

High end monetary goals are pretty pointless if there's no real gameplay associated with them. Increased movement speed is a minor bonus, and I've yet to see a worthwhile implementation of real-estate in a CRPG, aside from DAoC's consignment merchants. Daggerfall's houses were pointless fluff, although a boat was pretty handy, since it could be accessed anywhere within the world and used for storage.

High end weapons and armour is a good start, but the biggest fault in Morrowind's economy was not the lack of high priced items to spend on. Certain enchantments required ridiculous amounts of money if you weren't skilled enough to do them yourself, and high end equipment had hefty price tags, that were rarely worth paying, since you could usually explore some ruins and find comparable or superior items just lying around.

The biggest flaw in Morrowind's economy was the fact that it was quite simple for a player to amass assets of incredible value, but the miserly artificial limits imposed on the purses of merchants required either the use of easter egg-ish merchants, or a carefully orchestrated series of trades spanning across the merchants of most major settlements.

Also, we’ve introduced the concept of investing as a skill perk. Once you achieve a high enough mercantile skill, you can invest in a store and permanently raise the maximum amount of money the merchant has to purchase items from you. Over time you can use his increased wealth to your selling advantage because he’ll have more money to buy your loot.

That's crap. How about something like:

Investing in a merchant increases their abilities in their particular field, and the range of equipment available, but also the equipment they're willing to buy. So for example, investing in a blacksmith permits him to train to work with rarer metals, allowing creation and repair of better items, and an increased interest in the player's rarer weapons and armour.

Or another example. Investing in an alchemist increases the quality of potions available, and the range of ingredients that can be bought or sold. So, if I went to some backwoods alchemy lab, and tried to sell frost salts, the alchemist might say "Bah, that could be gravedust for all I know. Go sell it to some fucking la-di-da city educated alchemist." or "Why would I want an ingedient that drains speed?"

Uncharted Waters is one of the best games I've ever played, and it provides investment as a worthwhile money sink for the player. First of all, all ports have a measure of allegiance to three factions, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Turks. Investing in a port increases the standing of Portugal, which pleases the king, increases the strength of the Portuguese fleet, and influences the friendliness of individual ports. A hostile port is likely to require bribery to enter, and prices are adjusted accordingly.

On top of that, investing in a marketplace increased the range of available trade goods, and investing in the shipyards increased the availability of certain ship types and ship equipment. In fact, high end ships like the Heavy Galleon were only available if you'd wisely invested.

I really hope that Oblivion factors in some ideas like this, and isn't limited to the pissant bonus of being able to offload your overpriced junk. If there was a specific armour set that was only available if I'd invested a great deal of money and trust in my local blacksmith, that goes a long way toward providing an effective money sink for someone who is going to be seeing a bigger purse than most (high mercantile) and it also provides a pretty compelling reason to have mercantile as a highly rated skill.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I really hope that Oblivion factors in some ideas like this, and isn't limited to the pissant bonus of being able to offload your overpriced junk.

Let's be realistic here. As Todd Howard once said "Investing, for us, is a being able to sell more loot to a shopkeeper".

Good ideas though. The best part about them is that they make sense: put more money into a store -> the store can now afford better merchandise, pay for rare items delivered from far away towns/lands, hire better craftsmen, etc

 

[ExMonk]

Goddamnit Vault Dweller you are the worst news poster on any website.

I'm sure you would have done a much better job. Btw, do you have any other one-liners? This one is getting boring. May I recommend: "Vault Dweller, you suck!" or "Vault Dweller, quit your job!" Or use all of them and rotate randomly.

I don't agree that VD is a bad news poster. If you are looking for a neutral or objective take on the news, rpgcodex is not the place to come. In this place, biting sarcasm is the coin of the realm. However...

VD, if it ever comes out that you actually purchase and play Oblivion, you will be the laughing stock of rpgdom everywhere in aeternum.

 

[Balor]

Why, I bet he'll buy and play it.
If just to see how much it suck for himself, and then tell everyone about it :D.
Stands to reason.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Goddamnit Vault Dweller you are the worst news poster on any website.

I'm sure you would have done a much better job. Btw, do you have any other one-liners? This one is getting boring. May I recommend: "Vault Dweller, you suck!" or "Vault Dweller, quit your job!" Or use all of them and rotate randomly.

I don't agree that VD is a bad news poster. If you are looking for a neutral or objective take on the news, rpgcodex is not the place to come. In this place, biting sarcasm is the coin of the realm. However...

VD, if it ever comes out that you actually purchase and play Oblivion, you will be the laughing stock of rpgdom everywhere in aeternum.

Why is that? Of course, I'm going to buy it and play it. Maybe I'll even enjoy it as an exploration game much like I enjoyed BG2 as an adventure game. Maybe it will even be a decent RPG, despite the weak character system, who knows?

My criticism so far has been directed at the known changes, the focus of the coverage (PATRIC STEWART!!! & soil erosion combo), and idiotic previewers who tend to present promises and polished screens as facts. I have never ever said that Oblivion sucks as an RPG, so what's your point?

Also, since I'm kinda a journalist here (I use the term loosely), and since we discuss RPGs frequently, I would buy and play most RPGs to write reviews and/or post some thoughts. Nothing wrong with that either.

 

[Rulion]

By the way, why POOPER-guy avoids his dumbfuck title so far?
At least illiterate wil fit him fine...
Or it's so obvious that you don't need a tag on him telling that?
Guess so. *shrugs*

Go back to your LOTR world and go masturbate to some hobbits or something faggot.

Thanks for standing up for me JIU

Pride, honor, Jiu

Whew. Life is back to normality. Good seeing you again, POOPER!

 

[Chefe]

I can't believe they fucked up Mercentile. Just when it sounded like the game had something good going for it.

What bad idea will we hear about next? Oooh I'm excited! Bring it on Bethesda!

 

[Twinfalls]

Its pretty dismal isn't it.

'We've expanded mercantile so that you can invest in shops'

<rpg fans> wait.... could there actually be more complexity and decisions this time around??

'Which just lets you sell more loot.'

<rpg fans> (sigh) Nope.

 

[Chefe]

Wait, it's actually worse than that.

If you're more of a merchant guy, and invest your skills more into speechcraft, stealth, etc...

... it's the warriors who need to sell the loads upon loads of expensive shit. There the ones that go into the ancient ruins and recover the expensive artifacts. They're the ones who fight hordes of demons and recover amazing weapons. The majority of them won't have the mercantile skill. So the people who get the perk are the ones who don't need it.

Bethesda's logic continues to astound me.

 

[Balor]

Well, you forgetting one simple fact:
Bethesda expect players to max out all of their skills, misc or not, by late midgame or something.
That's TEH FUNZOR, you know! Real RPG experience.
So, it's kinda logical.
You slay hordes of monsters with your sword (only weapon that matters), then go and sell it for $$$.
Rinse and repeat.
...
Btw, anyway, how do you expect "specialized" 'merchant' players to get their mercantile up?
By finding commodities at low price, buying them and selling for high price?
Somehow, I doubt that economy was upgraded THAT much. Especially given the ‘Investing gives you ability to sell more loot’ blurb...
And with, having 'fast travel' with no 'random encounters' you'll be easily able to rack up a lot of cash this way, in no 'player' time, so....
Anyway, if there would be a way to determine whether the shop is invested in, or not, I think that idea would be implemented in mods rather soon.
I mean, having exclusive offers and so on.

Would be a good way to add your l33t custom armor and weapons, too... not that I'm interested in that myself too much.
I prefer to tinker with gameplay as whole.

 

[Twinfalls]

If you're more of a merchant guy, and invest your skills more into speechcraft, stealth, etc...

... it's the warriors who need to sell the loads upon loads of expensive shit. There the ones that go into the ancient ruins and recover the expensive artifacts. They're the ones who fight hordes of demons and recover amazing weapons. The majority of them won't have the mercantile skill. So the people who get the perk are the ones who don't need it.

Good point.

Well, you forgetting one simple fact:
Bethesda expect players to max out all of their skills, misc or not, by late midgame or something.
That's TEH FUNZOR, you know! Real RPG experience.
So, it's kinda logical.
You slay hordes of monsters with your sword (only weapon that matters), then go and sell it for $$$.
Rinse and repeat.

Exactly. Security, sneak, mercantile, speechcraft - these are all frills to the warrior-mage experience that is TES.

When they said 'we've put in a penalty on casting magic if you are wearing armour', I thought - hang on, maybe there's some hope.

But now we know what happens. The more you use armour, the less the penalty on casting is.

It's all about ubering.

 

[Chefe]

Btw, anyway, how do you expect "specialized" 'merchant' players to get their mercantile up?
By finding commodities at low price, buying them and selling for high price?

I was thinking they'd fix it up a bit. Like, for example, you could take jobs for a merchant or store who's trying to broker a deal with another. You could deliver the item and barter for a price/item, then you could take the money or item back to the original owner and either accept your reward or try and barter for something better (i.e. "I did this for you, and it was tough, so how about another 50 gold?" or "I'm working for you now, so why don't you give me discounts intead?"). Something like that. You'd do jobs for stores and other merchants, trading between places such as stores, temples, government facilities, nobles, etc.

Then, when you get a high enough level, you'd be able to invest money in a store that would automatically generate money for you. To increase the amount of money, you'd have to broker your own deals with other merchants/temples/nobles/etc. You could even hire out other people to do these dealings for you (like you did in the beginning), which would create an actual gameplay reason for radiant AI.

Something more complex than stealing/looting shit, talking to a merchant, and messing around with the price buttons... and then "investing" in a store just to sell your stuff.

But, alas, I guess Bethesda just really doesn't give any thought to anything besides forests. I wouldn't be surprised if they just started implementing actual gameplay last year. It doesn't sound like they spent any time on these ideas AT ALL.

 

[ExMonk]

Goddamnit Vault Dweller you are the worst news poster on any website.

I'm sure you would have done a much better job. Btw, do you have any other one-liners? This one is getting boring. May I recommend: "Vault Dweller, you suck!" or "Vault Dweller, quit your job!" Or use all of them and rotate randomly.

I don't agree that VD is a bad news poster. If you are looking for a neutral or objective take on the news, rpgcodex is not the place to come. In this place, biting sarcasm is the coin of the realm. However...

VD, if it ever comes out that you actually purchase and play Oblivion, you will be the laughing stock of rpgdom everywhere in aeternum.

Why is that? Of course, I'm going to buy it and play it. Maybe I'll even enjoy it as an exploration game much like I enjoyed BG2 as an adventure game. Maybe it will even be a decent RPG, despite the weak character system, who knows?

My criticism so far has been directed at the known changes, the focus of the coverage (PATRIC STEWART!!! & soil erosion combo), and idiotic previewers who tend to present promises and polished screens as facts. I have never ever said that Oblivion sucks as an RPG, so what's your point?

Also, since I'm kinda a journalist here (I use the term loosely), and since we discuss RPGs frequently, I would buy and play most RPGs to write reviews and/or post some thoughts. Nothing wrong with that either.

There. I knew I could get you to say something positive about Oblivion for the masses.

But come one, your posts about Oblivion have typically oozed negativity. Have you not been arguing vociferously that Oblivion is not a true rpg for a variety of reasons (e.g., that it depends too much on player and not character skills?) Is there another Vault Dweller on rpgcodex? Doesn't VD stand for "Vitriol Dude"?

For starters, how about this as an example of negativity ooze.?

I went word by word through the interview and can't say that I see anything exciting:

One major step we’ve taken is providing the player with higher level economic goals – things like houses and horses and high level weapons and armor in shops. These are meant to be goals to save your money towards over the course of the game.

Meh. How many houses do you need? A better horse? What for? Ride faster, carry more loot? I'd understand if it was a rare combat horse, but... The best weapons/armors are usually found, not bought, otherwise it makes exploring less rewarding.

Also, we’ve introduced the concept of investing as a skill perk. Once you achieve a high enough mercantile skill, you can invest in a store and permanently raise the maximum amount of money the merchant has to purchase items from you. Over time you can use his increased wealth to your selling advantage because he’ll have more money to buy your loot.

So, that's what investing in stores is all about? Lame. Makes selling overpriced loot easier. Hardly impressive.

For characters, we have worked our system of facial animation into the Speechcraft skill. Whereas in Morrowind persuasion was simply an invisible die roll against your skill, we’ve created a persuasion system where you look carefully at an NPC’s expression to determine how they’ll react to certain forms of persuasion.

Has already been commented on.

Stealth got a big upgrade from Morrowind. The formulas for whether or not you’re detected now take into account light and sound, so marching around in those heavy iron armored boots probably isn’t your best option for sleuthing. Also, we’ve included special sneak attacks as skill perks. They aren’t instant kills all the time, but depending on your skills, a successful sneak attack can put a big multiplier on your damage.

Nice if works well.

The guilds are definitely aware of one another and you’ll hear them refer to each other as part of the plot. Since the whole “Oblivion gates opening everywhere and spewing monsters” theme is a global crisis, you get some overlap between them. We like to keep guilds largely separated though, both to keep the plotlines more coherent and to allow the player to better wander from one to another at will.

Sounds awesome. Can't wait to unite all guilds under my leadership and lead them to victary!!!

It really boils down to having the proper tools for the job, and the tools we have this time around for tracking and maintaining dialog are a quantum leap over Morrowind. We have much more control and changes are far easier to make and track. The writing for the game, much like the dungeon design, follows a very iterative process of drafting, review, and redrafting. The writers had most of the plots drafted out and most of the dialogue written before even putting them into the game.

The writing on those "Russian" screens was amazing! You can tell that much drafting, reviewing, and redrafting took place.

What did I miss?

Not that I have scoured rpgcodex, but in my short time here, I've seen numerous posts like this from you.

In any event, I'm teasing you. If you do buy Oblivion, you will certainly not be a laughingstock. You will just be showing good sense.