Game News Oblivion mage quests (highly intricate stuff)

[Claw]

Ah, I think I see. For each quest then there should be multiple ways of solving it for each class using that class' strengths. Would this just be for the major classes, thief, mage and warrior or should it be for many of the custom classes too? I imagine that could get quite complicated if you go beyond the major classes.

VD used Fallout as example, yet there are no classes in Fallout. Weird, isn't it?

I guess you consider it unacceptable that it appears Bethesda handles this by having multiple class specific quest lines

So, a fed-ex quest in the mage's guild is equal to having a mage-specific solution for a quest? I guess when my quest involves killing someone, it's fitting my character because I am in the mage guild and probably use spells! And if it's persuasion, ... I think you can fill in the rest.

I can see it would be more fun to have that diversity for each and every quest, but that it would take an awful lot of time to do so on the scale of a game like Morrowind.

Quality over quantity. Just my personal preference, though.

VD, you can't see someone who is invisible. It's impossible.

You can "detect" someone who is invisible, though. Stop splitting hairs.

Also, the guildmaster had no way to know the guy was trying to fool him. He believed that the wizard had really disappeared, so there would have been no reason for him to cast detect life spells.

How did he expect the player to find the lost wizard? He has a whole guild at his disposal, and asks an outsider? That's not a convincing scenario.
There are many questions that could be asked here, and it's technically possible that Oblivion can answer them. I don't consider it imaginable though. Everything points at Morrowind 2 with quests without depth and characters without character.

 

[Rendelius]

@ Rendelius

Not really. I liked Arena, was really impressed with Daggerfall, disappointed with Morrowind (without ever calling it trash or anything overly dramatic), and not excited about Oblivion, but I'll give it a try.

I was just trying to pull your leg .

Funny thing is that I liked Arena as well, was extremely impressed by Daggerfall for some time, then completely lost interest because the insane amount of randomness and vastness in this game. I really loved Morrowind despite its flaws, played it for years just because I liked the setting and the fact that I stumbled across something new time after time. And I am VERY excited about Oblivion. As GamerAndy said in his preview (one of the best out there) or one of his forum remarks: They did everything right they did wrong in Morrowind and then some. But I know that tastes are different.

 

[Proweler]

@VD

I think that completely depends on the caster and the spell effect. It's magic so in basis only limited by the casters skill, knowledge and imagination. (Magic gameplay is a whole different animal, rigid, boring and strict)

Like I said, first time for everything but hell people still fall even though they know about gravity all their life.

I think it's worth more commenting on the repetiveness of an idea then the logics of a summarized hearsay story. Although some stories never get old.

 

[Rendelius]

How did he expect the player to find the lost wizard? He has a whole guild at his disposal, and asks an outsider? That's not a convincing scenario.

Oh, c'mon, that's easy, use your fantasy.

Player: "Good day, I'd like to join the Mage Academy and would ask you for your approval for this".

Guild master thinks for a while. These requests aren't uncommon, since the Mage academy is also open to non-members if they are worthy. The guild master got used to them, but he thinks that you get nothing for nothing, so he asks the aspirants for little favors. Normally, he would send you out to fetch him some needed ingredients (like flowers and mushrooms *g*), but there is this little incident with this missing mage. Not that he cares a lot about it, this mage was some kind of pest most of the time, and he isn't too sad that he is missing, but it would be nice to be in the know. Let's give it a try, he thinks, at least it will keep this aspirant busy for some time and away from him.

Guild master: "Sure, sure, but you know, I will ask you for a favor, of course - since you don't get a recommendation for nothing. Now see, I have a little problem with a missing mage, and I wonder if you could help me..."

 

[Claw]

Having to use my fantasy just reinforces my point. Make as much effort as you want justifying some silly quest, the greater your effort, the less convincing it is.
It would be different if it was just one small aspect, but everything about this quest from premise to resolution strikes me as weak, and the other quests are of similar quality.
I can tolerate the occasional weakness, but so far weakness is nearly all I see.

 

[Zufuriin]

Thats were illusion comes in to play again. Hide the outline, make it apear as if the dust goes through.

Illusion doesn't do that.

Even then Levitate or feather (so you are weightless)

No levitate, and feather still has you walk on the ground, which would leave prints.

There still is that whole idea of needing a counter for invisibility. There must be a detect invisibility/enchantment that would reveal the person. You would think that in a society where anyone can become invisible (spell/potion/item) they would have countermeasures against it, much like spy/cloak/subterrianian detection in C&C games. What happened to Bethesda 'balancing and reworking' the gameplay? Did they skip over the magic parts?

Actually, invisibility only lasts until the NPC/player does an action. Why would the prankster not do anything, not speak, not eat, not pick up a book, all the while in the same building as the person they are hiding from? The moment they enter/exit the guild hall, they will be visible. Even if the head mage does not notice, surely somebody would and report it to the master? And footsteps make noise, too.

But this is a stupid thing to focus on. The entire quest is, doubtless, idiotic. The writers are garbage. It fits in with the rest of the game, from what I've seen.

*If there were shadows, would an invisible person cast one?

 

[bryce777]

Well, honestly the quests are fine for what they are. The real problem is that they are complete busywork with nothing to tie them in to the game itself in any way.

All you do is progress to the next rank, to get the next benefit of that guild. Can it be any more boring than that?

If you got some of these benefits along the way and they were not tied to such a stilted and formulaic grind then it might be fun. Such as in BG II where you have several quests that are not obviously quests to give you a fortress, but which end up doing just that. These quests also provide a lot of story and background into what's going on such as the way the cowled wizards work etc.

I am not saying these are amazing examples, and ideally you would not get it all in one lump, but these are all just one off quests you could almost write a robot to carry out for you and the ultimate goal is clear from the beginning - well I better get the next mage quest done so I can finally teleport around and enchant items....

How much better if you defeated an archmage and learned about item creation in his laboratory and got to take it over for yourself?

 

[Vault Dweller]

As GamerAndy said in his preview (one of the best out there) or one of his forum remarks: They did everything right they did wrong in Morrowind and then some. But I know that tastes are different.

Well, I would be happy if that's the case, but at the moment I have my doubts.

 

[bryce777]

The problem with morrowind was not so much bad stuff, but a lack of good stuff.

They have also taken out a lot of the few things people here might deem to be 'good' stuff completely.

 

[Proweler]

Magic, not standard game play convenient spell effects. But I supose this isn'tt your game, perhaps you should try a roll playing game.

As GamerAndy said in his preview (one of the best out there) or one of his forum remarks: They did everything right they did wrong in Morrowind and then some. But I know that tastes are different.

Well, I would be happy if that's the case, but at the moment I have my doubts.

You gonna review Oblivion quikly or play it for a long time when you get it?

I'd imagine the invisible mage would be easy to detect, since he'd be giggling like Beavis and Butthead the whole time.

"huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh...This is so cool...huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh."

 

[Section8]

I'd imagine the invisible mage would be easy to detect, since he'd be giggling like Beavis and Butthead the whole time.

"huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh...This is so cool...huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh."

 

[Thrawn05]

I'd imagine the invisible mage would be easy to detect, since he'd be giggling like Beavis and Butthead the whole time.

"huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh...This is so cool...huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh."

Yeah.. eheheheheheheheh

(Pulls shirt up)

I AM THE GREAT CORN-HOWARD-LIO!!! NEED COOL FEATURE FOR MY BONGHOLE!!!!

 

[NeVeRLiFt]

Some good posts here, I have to say I agree with what Claw's saying about the quests.

When will developer's now a day realize eye candy and shiny bloom festering graphic's don't make a good game.
Don't they play test these games and see whats wrong or listen to the feedback from their testers?
Beth thinks shiny graphics will sale the game to the kids and die hard fans, this all they care about.

I might as well throw this in here also... System Shock 2 is a better FPS than Doom 3 or HL2 and them both being new games shows how lacking developers are.

There's no innovation in todays games all they want to do is push graphic's while game elements and game play take a back seat.

God damn Space Rangers 2 has better dialog and quests than Oblivion and its not even a true CRPG!!


eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh

 

[Vault Dweller]

You gonna review Oblivion quikly or play it for a long time when you get it?

I'll play it through at least once before I write a review, if that's what you are asking. If it's absolutely fucking horrible, which I doubt, to be honest, I will stop playing and inform people that I couldn't write a review and list reasons why.

 

[crufty]

But why go over board? Graphics for me is functional. Using ASCII graphics as a counterexample is just silly...

There is some truth there I guess...Ultima VII then at the minimum. Personally, the roguelike ascii graphics don't really cause me any heartburn so I didn't really think it was *that* ridiculous.

I'm assuming that testing new engines/systems take up the most testing time, how does one allocate QA time for winding, complicated quests? Say you have 400 side quests (4 guilds * 25 quests, + 30 towns * 10 quests) . Lets say that testing each one takes around 8 hours a quest. So you're looking at a year and a half of pure minor questing...after the content, engine, and even quests themselves have been created.

Does that make sense to do, given you still have the rest of the game to QA as well?

 

[kris]

The quests must be of really epic (tm) proportions for all of them taking 8 hours to test. I am sure many quests only take about 5 mins, which makes it possibly to test it in clearly less than an hour and then pretty extensivly. From what we see it seems questions are just A->B in form which means there is only one solution which in turn makes it even more easy to test.

 

[Section8]

Of course, if you have a system that generates quests, and you test that within acceptable parameters, then in theory you have no limit to how many you can include.

In fact, Oblivion's quests would become acceptable if they were generated procedurally. You can chalk up the idea of mages hiding each other the basement to a dodgy logic algorithm somewhere, instead of realising, holy fucking shit, a real person came up with this nonsense.

You know what would be fucking awesome? An emergent quest where a guildmaster wants you to find a missing guild member that has been generated, because the NPC AI has realised his mate is missing (or is undetectable). Then you as the player, with a single lead (ie "Ask the gate guards if they saw him leaving") have to figure it out, using non-combat methods such as various detection spells, or tracking skills.

 

[bryce777]

You should be able to make tools that create quests even if they are not actually generated. Taht way you can test the general case. It seems all the engines out there are pretty retarded and have separate scripting for quests, though, which is a pretty pathetic design.

 

[Seboss]

You know what would be fucking awesome? An emergent quest where a guildmaster wants you to find a missing guild member that has been generated, because the NPC AI has realised his mate is missing (or is undetectable).

Hey, that's exactly what TESF fanboys took for granted 2 weeks ago !

I have a question about Daggerfall, or rather about every TES games. Most of you seem to have some respect for Arena and Daggerfall and pretend that everything went downhill with Morrowind.
Personnaly, I like them all and played Morrowind for an extensive period of time - and feel like an idiot for that after lurking these boards for a few weeks.
I didn't play Daggerfall for quite some time (2, maybe 3 years) and I can't remember what makes it so great in comparison with Morrowind. You could join any guild, do any quest without restraining your future choices and the world didn't react to anything you did (except when you broke the law). The quests were the usual fedex/kill the bad guy for the most part.
Could point out for me where in Daggerfall is the 'RPG Goodness' that Morrowind lacks ? Because it's mostly the same stuff for me.

 

[bryce777]

You know what would be fucking awesome? An emergent quest where a guildmaster wants you to find a missing guild member that has been generated, because the NPC AI has realised his mate is missing (or is undetectable).

Hey, that's exactly what TESF fanboys took for granted 2 weeks ago !

I have a question about Daggerfall, or rather about every TES games. Most of you seem to have some respect for Arena and Daggerfall and pretend that everything went downhill with Morrowind.
Personnaly, I like them all and played Morrowind for an extensive period of time - and feel like an idiot for that after lurking these boards for a few weeks.
I didn't play Daggerfall for quite some time (2, maybe 3 years) and I can't remember what makes it so great in comparison with Morrowind. You could join any guild, do any quest without restraining your future choices and the world didn't react to anything you did (except when you broke the law). The quests were the usual fedex/kill the bad guy for the most part.
Could point out for me where in Daggerfall is the 'RPG Goodness' that Morrowind lacks ? Because it's mostly the same stuff for me.

Well, I never thought daggerfall was the best thing ever by any means.

But, it did have a lot going for it. It had a much larger world (which is shrinking still in oblivion). It had many more options of what guilds to join. You could (and probably would) become a vampire or werewolf. Its lore and summoning of the daedra lords could only be described as Wicked Boss Awesome.

It didn't have the fucked up wikipedia crap, either. It did not have real dialog for the player, though.

I actually didn't finish morrowind, because I got so enraged playing it for a couple hours....

 

[Lumpy]

You could become a vampire or werewolf in Morrowind too. And Morrowind also had great lore.
Oblivion's world is three times bigger than Morrowind's.

 

[pseudo intellectual]

Don't they [ed: Bethesda] play test these games and see whats wrong or listen to the feedback from their testers?

Bethesda Softworks is a hierarchical organization and as such it rewards political cunning over skills that actually support the goals of the organization.

In this sort of climate survival and promotion depend on towing the line. Speaking out contrary to design decisions is construed as a poltical attack and rewarded accordingly.

This dynamic is doubly the case for the lowly betatester who is, arguably, the most expendible asset of the company. Testers who speak the truth (in the case of OB: "the design sucks") would most likely be thrown into the woodchipper thereby serving a dual purpose:

1) to silence dissent; and
2) to serve as an example of capricious managment and employee expendibility which translates into greater subserviance and productivity by surviving workers.

This is why small studios IMHO do the best creative work as they generally lack a bureacratic power structure that hinders the free flow of ideas.

 

[Seboss]

It had many more options of what guilds to join.

Thus, more fedex/kill quests goodness

You could (and probably would) become a vampire or werewolf.

Morrowind allowed that too, although you had to fork out $30 for that (bloodmoon).

It didn't have the fucked up wikipedia crap, either. It did not have real dialog for the player, though.

Wikipedia did not exist back then (nor that I had any mean of connecting to the internet btw) but it's basically a list of topics. Sure it had several layers but I don't think you can call it a dialog tree.

You could have mentioned seasons, different holidays depending on the province, shop closing hours/days but these are matters of realism and not roleplaying.

Basically Daggerfall and Morrowind look very similar to me if you don't consider the ludicrous amount of hype there was about Morrowind.
And that's nothing compared to Oblivion.

 

[elander_]

Oh, c'mon, that's easy, use your fantasy.

Whats up with all this use your fantasy arguments when someone is criticising a quest?

http://www.cad-comic.com/comic.php

 

[Section8]

I think the biggest factor in Daggerfall being seen as a superior game is partly the ambition, and partly the time it was released. There really was nothing quite like Daggerfall in terms of scope. It was like a first person Roguelike and even if it was buggy as hell it was easy to ignore the shortcomings, because for its day, it was still a fucking amazing achievement.

Morrowind on the other hand, offered less of the same, and for its day, should have been so much more. Even graphically - its major selling point, it was fucking ugly (despite having a lot of polygons being thrown around) and ran like a dog.

I think the bottom line is, that Daggerfall's shortcomings were forgivable. It was an immense world with tons of procedural content, and it was pushing in directions the industry hadn't really taken on such a massive scale. Morrowind took that basic potential, and scrapped it in favour of taking the same fucking direction every other game takes - high-end graphics.