Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Clockwork Knight]

Bugs? In Elder Scrolls? I find that very unlikely.

-

Speaking of LARPing

 

[balmorar]

Bethesda Might Have Gone Out Of Business If Not For Morrowind

http://kotaku.com/bethesda-might-have-gone-out-of-business-if-not-for-mor-1587098880

Todd Howard: "The company went through some very hard times. We were very very close to going out of business in the late nineties."

Reporter: "Daggerfall didn't sell well?"

Todd Howard: "Daggerfall did fine, then we spread ourselves thin. We started doing a lot of games, and they just weren't good enough. And they weren't the kind of games we should've been making at the time.

We did Battlespire, I did Redguard—a game I love, but it didn't do well for the company—and we have been working on the Tenth Planet, and there were other projects no one had heard about. So there was this period... Daggerfall was '96, maybe to 2000, we went through some very rough times. And that was when Bethesda became part of Zenimax, and that gave us kind of a new lease on life, really. And we went into Morrowind.

There were six of us at the time, right? The studio had gotten that small, and I was in charge of Morrowind, but by that time, once you get to that point, there was this element of no fear. What's the worst that's gonna happen? We could go out of business. Well, let's go all in. This is the game. Let's put all our chips on the table. This is the game people want from us, this is the game we wanna do. You know, a lot of times when you make a game you're kind of... maybe you're afraid how people are gonna like this, let's only do this, maybe it'll make money, but we were... 'Alright. We're gonna do it all.'

And that was kind of the new genesis of Bethesda. You can trace back to that, the stuff we're doing now—there's still bits of code in what we do now that was in Morrowind. So that game is special from that standpoint for all of us."

 

[DalekFlay]

30 seconds until "I tried Morrowind after loving Oblivion and it was so shitty. Why do people like it?"

P.S. Wrong thread.

 

[Akratus]

It's strange to see how Bethesda looks positively on morrowind whilst shitting on it's legacy. They actually have an old computer that still plays daggerfall and such, and it just baffles my how the people who made Oblivion or Fallout 3 could play that whilst making those games. It's so freaking bizarre.

 

[Crooked Bee]

If he really loved Redguard, he would re-release it for modern PCs. A GOG release would be fine.


Same for Battlespire.

 

[Turisas]

If he really loved Redguard, he would re-release it for modern PCs. A GOG release would be fine.

But having their own digital distribution service a la Origin and Uplay would be even better.

 

[DalekFlay]

I doubt that's the issue, they love Steam. I would assume they don't want to deal with Redguard tech issue complaints. Probably give it away for free their next anniversary, like they did Arena and Daggerfall before.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It's strange to see how Bethesda looks positively on morrowind whilst shitting on it's legacy. They actually have an old computer that still plays daggerfall and such, and it just baffles my how the people who made Oblivion or Fallout 3 could play that whilst making those games. It's so freaking bizarre.

It's simple, they want to make money so they don't design the games solely for themselves.

btw:

https://bytebucket.org/ogerboss/requiem-manual-and-documentation/wiki/Requiem-Changelog_preview.pdf

Requiem 1.8.0 - "Requiem for the Indifferent" is the first step in harmonizing leveling and combat rules for player and NPCs.

GET HYPE

 

[DalekFlay]

It's simple, they want to make money so they don't design the games solely for themselves.

Codex cannot into capitalism.

 

[Lemming42]

It's simple, they want to make money so they don't design the games solely for themselves.

I get that Skyrim and Fallout 3 use Oblivion as a basis because Oblivion was so successful, but I can't tell why they made Oblivion as simple and watered down as it was in the first place. If you asked most dev teams to make a sequel to Morrowind, Oblivion is pretty much the last thing you'd get.

I don't think the average intelligence/patience/skill/whatever of "gamers" had fallen so drastically between 2002 and 2006 that removing most of the good points of Morrowind was the only way they could get Oblivion to appeal to a mass audience.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Morrowind was a mainstream financial and critical success, too.

 

[DalekFlay]

I get that Skyrim and Fallout 3 use Oblivion as a basis because Oblivion was so successful, but I can't tell why they made Oblivion as simple and watered down as it was in the first place. If you asked most dev teams to make a sequel to Morrowind, Oblivion is pretty much the last thing you'd get.

I don't think the average intelligence/patience/skill/whatever of "gamers" had fallen so drastically between 2002 and 2006 that removing most of the good points of Morrowind was the only way they could get Oblivion to appeal to a mass audience.

Todd Howard and others have actually talked pretty frankly about this shit. Morrowind sold more on Xbox than they ever dreamed it would, so they saw an opening for an even larger success that would truly bring Western RPGs to consoles in a big way. They aimed for the launch of the 360 (missed it by a few months) and made the game more accessible for a larger, more mainstream audience. It was hugely, astronomically successful, so every game since has been made in that same vein.

In short: they wanted to make lots of money.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MpuiYJkuI&feature=youtu.be&t=5m8s

Post op confirmed.

 

[circ]

Since this seems to now be the active Skyramrod modding goto thread.

Wall. Six months of SkyRe is enough. Or rather, six months of SkyRe bugs and samey combat is enough. I was gonna do a SkyRe removal and throw in some mods, but I think I'll just start clean because I've got shitloads of orphan meshes and textures I need to clean anyway and have no idea about the source.

I'm also going to be replacing Better Vampires with Vampiric Thirst. Have not tried VT, but it's progression of time spent playing instead of number of cocks necks sucked seems more natural and less gamey. And I never use 90% of the spells/skills that BV offers. Maybe VT will change that. One of the main reasons I'm getting rid of SkyRe is because I'm fucking tired of a bug that gives my imperial vampire Ancestor's Fury with no way of getting rid of it - making every large combat encounter easy as fuck.
Oh and reproccer. At one point I had DSR installed too... OH FUCK. TWO SKYPROC FUCKS? HAHHAHAHA YEAH FUCK YOU.

No, fuck Requiem with shovel. I am not installing that.

I'd like some combat and spell recs though. Just quick little blurbs. Duel, ASIS, Apocalypse spell package whatever.

I don't want SkyRe combat that ended up turning into - NPCs block more (all the time). How is that AI? I also want spellcasting expanded and be viable at every level with new spells like really mage-y stuff like picking locks with a spell. And easy on the scripts nao. Oh and sneak not to be press sneak to win too.

Packs that do everything is fine. Less .esp's the better.

 

[Machocruz]

I get that Skyrim and Fallout 3 use Oblivion as a basis because Oblivion was so successful, but I can't tell why they made Oblivion as simple and watered down as it was in the first place. If you asked most dev teams to make a sequel to Morrowind, Oblivion is pretty much the last thing you'd get.

I don't think the average intelligence/patience/skill/whatever of "gamers" had fallen so drastically between 2002 and 2006 that removing most of the good points of Morrowind was the only way they could get Oblivion to appeal to a mass audience.

This article may hold a clue:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/30/dark-futures-part-2-emil-pagliarulo/#more-32947

Emil Pagliarulo: A reason you haven’t seen a lot of those games recently is because there’s the big concentration on console gaming, and the boom of the console markets… well, games like that are very hard to do on the console. A game like Oblivion or Fallout 3 on the console is difficult. It’s only because we have experience in doing it that we can conceive of doing it. When you’re making a game on the PC, your Hard-drive is however many gigs. Everyone has 80Gb at least! Those aren’t luxuries you have on the console. For Oblivion, we came close to running out of space on the disc for just the audio. So when you want to have that many people to talk to, with this giant open world with all these people there are technical limitations which present themselves which other studios have tried to handle and have had problem with – and for good reason, because it’s hard.

Maybe this explains why there are only 3 dungeon types, fewer guilds, why they made cities the way the did (and why no more Levitate spell). Of course, this pertains to breadth of content, and not major boners like level scaling.

 

[Lemming42]

Todd Howard and others have actually talked pretty frankly about this shit. Morrowind sold more on Xbox than they ever dreamed it would, so they saw an opening for an even larger success that would truly bring Western RPGs to consoles in a big way. They aimed for the launch of the 360 (missed it by a few months) and made the game more accessible for a larger, more mainstream audience. It was hugely, astronomically successful, so every game since has been made in that same vein.

In short: they wanted to make lots of money.

That doesn't explain the bizarre writing/main quest plot, the decision to ignore or change most of the lore and all of the other non-gameplay criticisms people have.

Also I still think that if they wanted to dumb Morrowind's mechanics down to be more accessible for a wider audience, they went way overboard with Oblivion. Morrowind wasn't really that complex, I'm sure most of the Console Kiddies™ of 2006 would have been able to understand and appreciate a lot of the stuff they dropped from Morrowind.

I don't believe that Bethesda ever half-ass their games - Fallout 3, regardless of it's overall quality, was one of those games where you can tell the devs enjoyed making it and put a ton of effort in - so I'm mystified as to why so many things in Oblivion are as bad as they are and the explanation that it was being dumbed down for a console audience only goes so far.

 

[Metro]

They make hundreds of millions without putting forth the effort so why start now?

 

[Machocruz]

I've always thought Oblivion was rushed to fit the early Xbox 360 release schedule. I'm almost comfortable with Skyrim's level of "streamlining," (leveled loot is still unforgivable) and they had more time and money to work on that game. I don't think they just had a change of heart between Oblivion and Skyirm and decided that, yes, dummies can now handle pay travel, more dungeon variety, more than 4 joinable factions, enemies that can kill you at low levels (i.e. saber cats), etc. When you combine that with the fact that many of the features that MW had that were missing in Oblivion did not make the former any harder or more confusing -like all the different means of travel, the different weapons and armor- I have to think that OB was rushed out the door by Zenimax and they didn't have a good enough grasp of the Xbox 360 hardware at the time.

What I'm saying is that I don't think all of the changes for the worse were because they wanted to attract the dum-dums/Morrowind was too complex. When you start getting past 5 million units sold, you're selling to a lot of people who don't read game news and wouldn't even know if a game is more or less complex than the previous game. They could have made Skyrim more 'hardcore' than Morrowind and it would have still sold between 10 and 20 million copies.

Still, too many people have shit taste in games and/or don't know how high the bar for WRPGs is . I mean, Oblivion is objectively dumb and rudimentary. It's Fisher Price - My First Open World RPG.

 

[DalekFlay]

That doesn't explain the bizarre writing/main quest plot, the decision to ignore or change most of the lore and all of the other non-gameplay criticisms people have.

Also I still think that if they wanted to dumb Morrowind's mechanics down to be more accessible for a wider audience, they went way overboard with Oblivion. Morrowind wasn't really that complex, I'm sure most of the Console Kiddies™ of 2006 would have been able to understand and appreciate a lot of the stuff they dropped from Morrowind.

I don't believe that Bethesda ever half-ass their games - Fallout 3, regardless of it's overall quality, was one of those games where you can tell the devs enjoyed making it and put a ton of effort in - so I'm mystified as to why so many things in Oblivion are as bad as they are and the explanation that it was being dumbed down for a console audience only goes so far.

Well assuming the lore change you're referencing is Cyrodiil they changed it to have a generic fantasy setting, which they said themselves appeals to a broader audience. A lot of the other issues were about rushing to market for the Xbox 360 launch, pushing full voice before it was ready and various other things. No one is saying they're half-assing the games, we're saying they're targeting an extremely, extreeeeeemely, broad audience, and doing what they think that requires. Despite being a better game Skyrim is even more streamlined in some respects, like the removal of stats, the very FPS style magic system, etc. etc.

I think they're trying their best to find the balance that appeases both groups, and they're getting somewhat better at it. Bioware has been doing the same thing since KotOR, the first Dragon Age aside. Sometimes I can enjoy them as hybrid action games (Skyrim, Mass Effect 1) and sometimes I can't (Oblivion, Mass Effect 2 + 3).

 

[Turjan]

Well assuming the lore change you're referencing is Cyrodiil they changed it to have a generic fantasy setting, which they said themselves appeals to a broader audience.

Funny enough, I don't think they are even lying in this regard. It's surprising how often I heard the complaint that "Morrowind is too weird". People might say they love exotic stuff, but "exotic" often enough just means the world of our fairy tales or the latest fantasy blockbuster, not anything truly different.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I don't think the engine could handle jungle environment (trees and flora everywhere) without crashing.

 

[Turjan]

I don't think the engine could handle jungle environment (trees and flora everywhere) without crashing.

Heh. One reason I heard is that, as they used Speedtree, which was relatively new by then, they had to use the trees that were available at that point in time, which was mostly western US-type forests.

 

[DalekFlay]

Funny enough, I don't think they are even lying in this regard. It's surprising how often I heard the complaint that "Morrowind is too weird". People might say they love exotic stuff, but "exotic" often enough just means the world of our fairy tales or the latest fantasy blockbuster, not anything truly different.

I've even seen many similar comments on the Codex and RPG Watch, where people turn their noses up at a game if it strays too far from standard Tolkien masturbation.

 

[Turjan]

I've even seen many similar comments on the Codex and RPG Watch, where people turn their noses up at a game if it strays too far from standard Tolkien masturbation.

Fail of the hivemind . Then again, the hivemind already fails on mentioning Morrowind, so all is well.

 

[Luzur]