Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[IDtenT]

I'm sorry, but in my adventures I don't want to kill many a thing.

Contrast.

Adventuring - you know - running around killing things?

As in Todd's retarded definition of fantasy?

So running around and killing random things is supposed to be more satisfying than working yourself up the ranks of a faction? Or finding the evil bitch who paralyzed the Nord and took all his clothes? In Morrowind quests added variety and flavor to the game world. I did them because often the backstory was interesting and I wanted to see how things pan out. That's why Skyrim's bland and generic quests just help make the game even worse.

I dunno, Draq. Normally you've got pretty alright opinions, but implying that quests are somehow unimportant in an (action) RPG is a very silly thing to say.

Exactly.

 

[DraQ]

So running around and killing random things is supposed to be more satisfying than working yourself up the ranks of a faction? Or finding the evil bitch who paralyzed the Nord and took all his clothes? In Morrowind quests added variety and flavor to the game world. I did them because often the backstory was interesting and I wanted to see how things pan out. That's why Skyrim's bland and generic quests just help make the game even worse.

I dunno, Draq. Normally you've got pretty alright opinions, but implying that quests are somehow unimportant in an (action) RPG is a very silly thing to say.

I never said that they are unimportant. I said that they have never been the main draw of TES.

People don't piss themselves with joy when expecting that they will be asked to get a particular piece of mummy wrappings from particular dungeon because any other sample won't do for no specific reason.

And now let me blow your mind - what if your naked nord and witch was in but wouldn't form a quest?

 

[Zewp]

Then it becomes an unmarked quest? Just because it doesn't have a journal entry that says 'hey this is a quest' doesn't mean it's not a quest. There's not really much difference between an unmarked and a marked quests and it doesn't really change the fact that quests are pretty important in an RPG.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Then it becomes an unmarked quest? Just because it doesn't have a journal entry that says 'hey this is a quest' doesn't mean it's not a quest. There's not really much difference between an unmarked and a marked quests and it doesn't really change the fact that quests are pretty important in an RPG.

Arguably the best aspects of Morrowind were the 'unmarked quests'.

Turn into a vampire and you think you've hit a dead end - but even putting the game's 'backdoor path to victory' (killing Vivec) aside, if you find the clan home of the vampire that turned you you've got another chain of quests open to you - which also seem to hit a dead end. You've been told by the game and by its developers in interviews that vampirism can't be cured in Morrowind after you complete the transition, so...game over right? Hang on - if you've been paying attention to the various libraries, you'll have noticed that there's a couple of books on vampires, one of which suggests that a 3rd volume contains a way of curing vampiricism post-turning. The first 2 books are relatively common, but the 3rd is rare as fuck (I think it's a once off, from memory) - so you have to either stealth or massacre your way through the libraries of Vivec and the various Houses to find the 3rd book, which then tells you the location of the one place in the game where you can cure vampiricism post-turning (you've got basically no chance of stumbling across it by accident - and if you did without having found the book, you won't know what it is anyway).

Nothing in the 'marked quests' tells you about the books, or that you should look for the 3rd volume, or that you should find the place it descrives - it's all just there in-game. And it beats most of the marked quests hands-down.

 

[hakuroshi]

Quests in TES provide in-game reasons for going to the dungeon and killing things. They are very rarely interesting in themselves apart of some vignettes and, arguably, MQ. In Morrowind they sometimes gave player background info on the world which as often as not fitted together and created an impression of a consistent and complex setting. In Daggerfall they sometimes provided C&C and changed how world view the PC. They are important part of gameplay, but they are instruments, not the goal.

 

[hakuroshi]

Eh, I kind of feel like the mods (while often excellent) would be kind of weird and patchworky if you hadn't played the game before to understand the distinction between modded and unmodded gameplay. I have yet to play a mod for an Elder Scrolls game that doesn't have its own flaws and idiosyncrasies that would possibly detract from the game if you didn't already understand/were really tired of the base game.

The base game game is usually broken, so mods rarely make it worse. Still there is a difference between mods which change game mechanics (like combat, crafting, social interactions, levelling and loot) and which change game world (like quests, land and people). As long as some thought put in them and bugs are not too numerous the former are usually worth trying even at your first playthrough. The latter may be best put up for later, true. I found that most modders are even more horrible writers and storymakers then Bethesda ones (however improbable that may sound) and rarely care for the world consistence where it present. "Anything goes" may be an ok approach for Oblivion, but seriosly fuck up Morrowind and even somewhat hurts Skyrim. Even cosmetic mods can hurt the game - all retexturing for Morrowind are failures and even MGE should be used with care.

Anyway, if I ever to play new TES, I'd probably wait for quality game mechanics mods to appear, but ignore all "better npcs", texture packs and prostitution mods for the fist game.

 

[Dreaad]

Quests you say =DDDDD

 

[Sul]

Then again, who in their right mind plays TES for quests?

turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable adventurer simulator. Felt like a nice mix of Morrowind-like exploration and Daggerfal random quest hunting.

Agreed.

Impression lasted for 20 hours maybe and eventually got sour by numerous defects, mostly minor by themselves, but together... meh. Replaying is very questionable, after I got familiar with land, main attraction for playing has gone.

(duel), requiem, morrowloot mod stack?

What do you think about SkyRe?

 

[DeepOcean]

The quests can be very simplistic, yes, but it isn't every day when you see two almost naked barbarians that were cheated by arguably the same witch, thinking they would get easy pussy and end up humiliated without even the clothes they were wearing, one of them was even paralyzed on the road to everybody to see and the dialog is just hilarious butthurt that can be translated to:" I'm a powerful warrior that don't believe in magic but I'm going to accept your potion anyway because I don't have many options here". Women can be really nasty when they want and they discovered the hard way....

Many quests offer optional ways of completion that aren't obvious and some are there to just add flavor like one in which you have to convince a trader to only deal with Hlaalu guar hides instead of buying Redoran guar hides, the gameplay is just let's click intimidate button a few times with my high personality character most of time on those types of quests, not exactly exciting stuff but is nice to see the houses backstabbing each other. Killing stuff is the least interesting aspect of it because it is rare for you to find a really challenging combat situation like here have "5 Dwarven Spheres to you to play with while level 5" and enemies have the annoying tendecy of getting stuck on scenery, if there is something Skyrim improved is the AI, they still can't jump but, at least, don't get stuck in doors anymore.

 

[Horus]

There are romances in Skyrim? Besides mods?

DraQ: "Running around and killing things" is too generic to be an actual activity in of itself.

You can choose to marry with a soulless npc and lock him/her in your house.She/he will repeat same lines over and over again no matter what happens in world so it's pretty realistic.

 

[DraQ]

Then it becomes an unmarked quest? Just because it doesn't have a journal entry that says 'hey this is a quest' doesn't mean it's not a quest. There's not really much difference between an unmarked and a marked quests and it doesn't really change the fact that quests are pretty important in an RPG.

So, what does it have to have to still be a quest? What if it has no solution, nor reward?

Quests are generally an artificial construct. They are merely an aspect of broader world design and reactivity, and should be viewed in the context of those first and foremost.
While Skyrim's guild questlines are arguably bad (mainly due to length, but also some severe logic problems), individual quests aren't really below par. There is also decent amount of integration present - for example two bandits involved in pale lady quest were originally running with a group of bandits from another hideout and had to flee following failed mutiny - you know, details, crumb trails, that sort of thing.
It may not be Morrowind, but even in Morrowind quests only really worked as a part of broader context - most would be pretty awful in isolation.
Also, faction questlines may be derpy in Skyrim, but they do a better job providing tangible rewards than in Morrowind:
College of Winterhold? Be able to unlock access to top tier spells via respective rituals.
Companions? Be a werewolf.

Morrowind factions definitely had better pacing, more internal logic, and were more down to earth, without obligatory epic story arcs, but lack of membership benefits was effectively a running joke with them.

Turn into a vampire and you think you've hit a dead end - but even putting the game's 'backdoor path to victory' (killing Vivec) aside, if you find the clan home of the vampire that turned you you've got another chain of quests open to you - which also seem to hit a dead end. You've been told by the game and by its developers in interviews that vampirism can't be cured in Morrowind after you complete the transition, so...game over right? Hang on - if you've been paying attention to the various libraries, you'll have noticed that there's a couple of books on vampires, one of which suggests that a 3rd volume contains a way of curing vampiricism post-turning. The first 2 books are relatively common, but the 3rd is rare as fuck (I think it's a once off, from memory) - so you have to either stealth or massacre your way through the libraries of Vivec and the various Houses to find the 3rd book, which then tells you the location of the one place in the game where you can cure vampiricism post-turning (you've got basically no chance of stumbling across it by accident - and if you did without having found the book, you won't know what it is anyway).

Nothing in the 'marked quests' tells you about the books, or that you should look for the 3rd volume, or that you should find the place it descrives - it's all just there in-game. And it beats most of the marked quests hands-down.

One of Skyrim's problems is that this kind of stuff would be marked in it and divided into quest stages and whatnot.

Also, it's two books and there is a quest leading to them - one for MG.
One thing that was good about MW is that quests often intertwinned or had multiple entry points.

Still, the quests have always paled in comparison with other aspects of the game.

What do you think about SkyRe?

I used it briefly, but it was always too restrictive (lol, can raise only humanoids with necromancy) and convoluted for my taste, and then it started doing deep arbitrary changes to various aspects - illusion, trying to make restoration into image of divine magic from D&D and I jay Wilson'd it.

 

[DeepOcean]

The quests in Morrowind work as ways to show samples of NPCs simulated behaviours so to the players have the illusion of a funtional society, through them the players have a taste of how the NPCs do business and relate with each other in the simulated world. If the factions were something you only hear about but don't really participate and rise through their ranks, the factions become too abstracted and disconnected from the player experience. In Morrowind , your ascencion is slow, while in Skyrim there are only two ranks: Beginner and master of the faction, with very few quests between. The civil war feel the same because it is rescuing legendary crown, lost ages ago that happens to be nearby Witherun all this time in the second mission, you feel dragged along without really knowing the personalities of the factions and their inner workings because there wasn't time for that "boring stuff", and in the end it is the red shirts against the blue shirts. There are attempts at stabilishing faction personality (showing that the Stormcloacks as racists) but everything is hastely done and not properly explored.

How it is the hierarchical structure of the College of Winterhold? You don't know because each quest isn't well interconected with each other and they waste too much time with a silly super powerful macguffin that the player have to save humanity from (You saving the world from the super bad Dragon isn't enough I guess...) instead on focusing how the College survives and interact with its enviroment (something that is hastly explained without any detail) they choose the epic instead of simulating an organized institution with ranks, rules, ways to finance itself, with internal and external conflicts , creating the illusion of a real social space. World building is more than pretty scenery, it is necessary to simulate the relationships between the cities, factions, NPCs, NPCs inside the factions, conflicts between factions and Skyrim is better at that than Oblivion but still far away from Morrowind.The Companions, for example, they have the Silver Hand as enemies that is a non-playable faction which motivations are never explained and as abruptely they are introduced in the first mission they are defeated 5 missions later. You watch the death of the only companion with traces of personality on the mission n° 2 and participate on the cremation ceremony for another one you really don't know well enough to care, 2 missions later, then become the master of the companions and don't feel anything about it. There is an interesting potential conflict between different views about licantrophy that is never explored.

They decided with Skyrim to make all the minor quests, Radiant quests which takes them out of their context and makes them just useless busywork, if some context was given to them, they could accomplish their job of fleshing out the world. There are certain themes that Bethesda introduced in Skyrim that could be better explored and have potential, but they just don't care, because they know that people are easily distracted by graphics to pay attention to such details, most people are going: OMG dragons! Ohhh...Pretty tomb or make inane jokes about arrow in the knee to their friends and how they LARPED so hard that the lacking of a good world building was actually a good thing because they could use their imaginations and create their own story, most people don't care about world building as schizophrenic abominations like Oblivion and Fallout 3 are proof.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

What do you think about SkyRe?

I used it briefly, but it was always too restrictive (lol, can raise only humanoids with necromancy) and convoluted for my taste, and then it started doing deep arbitrary changes to various aspects - illusion, trying to make restoration into image of divine magic from D&D and I jay Wilson'd it.

The biggest problem with SkyRe is that the guy completely and randomly changes his mind 180 degrees about some aspects, even several times during the development, which leads to randomly added/removed spells in game world at best and more severe conflicts with existing PC at worst.

Other than that, it's great IMO.

 

[LESS T_T]

So...this thing has sold over...

Skyrim earned hundreds of ‘Game of the Year’ awards and has sold over 20 million copies.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/press...g_ONLINE_COMING_TO_NEXTGENERATIONCONSOLES.php

o_O

 

[DalekFlay]

So...this thing has sold over...

Skyrim earned hundreds of ‘Game of the Year’ awards and has sold over 20 million copies.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/press...g_ONLINE_COMING_TO_NEXTGENERATIONCONSOLES.php

o_O

People fucking love the TES series. You have to take some deep breaths and just accept it.

 

[DarthBehemoth]

People mostly fucking love it because there isn't anything like it on the market. I mean, how many open-world games did we get in the past 10 years? With Witcher 3 and (possibly) Dragon Age 3 coming up, TES finally has some competition.

 

[DalekFlay]

People mostly fucking love it because there isn't anything like it on the market. I mean, how many open-world games did we get in the past 10 years? With Witcher 3 and (possibly) Dragon Age 3 coming up, TES finally has some competition.

Eh... I doubt those games will capture the same massive audience. TES has a formula those games are aping a bit but not copying enough (sad as that might sound). They won't have the playground aspect, the putting pots on people's heads and making a youtube video out of it aspect. The putting 100 land mines at a dude's feet and watching him fly into the sun aspect. Also mod tools, despite being PC only, add to the amount of mentions, news stories and videos of the game permeating game culture.

It will take more than Gothic with better production values to topple Bethesda.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

People are retards. You have to take some deep breaths and just accept it.

I've fixed your post.

 

[Gord]

Eh... I doubt those games will capture the same massive audience. TES has a formula those games are aping a bit but not copying enough (sad as that might sound). They won't have the playground aspect, the putting pots on people's heads and making a youtube video out of it aspect. The putting 100 land mines at a dude's feet and watching him fly into the sun aspect. Also mod tools, despite being PC only, add to the amount of mentions, news stories and videos of the game permeating game culture.

It will take more than Gothic with better production values to topple Bethesda.

TES games don't have that much of it either. At least Oblivion didn't and in Skyrim it seems to be more by accident than by design.
I mean, stuff like that (emergent gameplay) is cool, but actually I think that Bethesda tries to prevent it most of the time.

 

[villain of the story]

The point is they are still unrivaled. Stuff that makes Bethesda sandbox:

Big open world
Freedom of movement
Free character system
Shallow easy to follow story
Lots of shit to kill
Lots of shit to collect
Lots of places to explore
Lots of quests
Extensive modding

Neither TW3 or DA3 will match the recipe because TW series have a predefined protagonist, retarded combat and a rather closed system without room for useless shit and DA series, well, is just really fucking boring. Plus consolitis design.

I'm actually anxious to see how EA/Biowhore will screw up the "open world" formula by not really making an open world and instead make just a big but not-really-open world full of open-air corridors. The same goes for TW3 as well. Both series rely on constricted set pieces. TW does far better, obviously and had some areas with liberating glimpses of openness but I doubt they could maintain that kind of scale across the entire game with their approach to narrative design (tight grip on plot vs. unpredictability of player actions without limiting access to plot critical content by location).

Gothic series had something special going on in that area up until Gothic 3. Environment design in Gothic and Gothic 2 were very open and the presence of climbing made it far more rewarding and interesting. Alas, they dumbed that shit down with Gothic 3 with increasingly more restricted world design and less freedom of movement with each game afterwards, even though they experimented with quest design in Gothic 3. Had they maintained the design philosophy of Gothic and Gothic 2 in Gothic 3 and turned it into a "design culture" the way Bethesda did over the years, they could have become big without the Bethesda level of stupid.

 

[Grunker]

I was following your logic till you said

Neither TW3 or DA3 will match the recipe because TW series have a predefined protagonist, retarded combat

implying that TES combat isn't completely retarded. Then you wrote

Plus consolitis design.

implying that Skyrim wasn't the ultimate form of consolitis, and I knew you'd lost your mind.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I was following your logic till you said

Neither TW3 or DA3 will match the recipe because TW series have a predefined protagonist, retarded combat

implying that TES combat isn't completely retarded. Then you wrote

Plus consolitis design.

implying that Skyrim wasn't the ultimate form of consolitis, and I knew you'd lost your mind.

The problem with Skyrim is that it isn't horribad... it's just that it's so bland and banal shit boring that it has no deeming factors.

Exploration? New Vegas is better.
Story? Any game.
Combat? Dark Souls / Demon's Souls / Dragon's Dogma are infinitely more fun.
Graphics? Better game exist.

It's just a giant pile of mediocre.

 

[DalekFlay]

TES games don't have that much of it either. At least Oblivion didn't and in Skyrim it seems to be more by accident than by design.
I mean, stuff like that (emergent gameplay) is cool, but actually I think that Bethesda tries to prevent it most of the time.

They have an abundance of it, and yes I think Bethesda know that fuels their sales. I'm not sure why you would say they don't. The possibilities for "fucking around" in those games are nearly endless. I'm not saying that makes them great RPGs, it just obviously appeals to the mass market more than Witcher's moral choices and Dragon Age's tactical combat.

 

[Akratus]

On predefined protagonists versus a creatable character. When I am making a character in such an rpg, that has character creation, I am trying to make a character I can give a bit of a story, one that fits into the world, and one I would like to be. Then I realize the game is worse off because it can't know what character you made so why the fuck can't the developers just make one so it can fit into the story and world?

Skills, stats, dialogue. That's important, not being able to make a cat man with a moustache.

 

[Gord]

What I mean is that everything that really affects "the game", i.e. quests, story, etc. is done in a way that doesn't actually allow much freedom (in Morrowind you had more freedom in many quests, including MQ than in Skyrim) .
Of course you can rob some random house or kill some random NPC (unless he's essential for some reason or other), but it won't affect much.

OTOH, while Bethesda with every iteration promises to provide that great AI that will finally get rid of essential NPCs or make them react somewhat plausible to the player screwing up stuff, it in the end never happens.
I agree that Bethesda is doing something we don't see on that scale from other devs, but I think that they stay far below what could be or what they could do, instead preferring to "play it safe".