Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[ArchAngel]

105 pages...

Remind me again, what is the appeal of Bethesda games? Shit combat, shit graphics, shit writing, shit character development, shit C&C, shit world-building, shit exploration.

Lets go through this list

Lets include Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 & Fallout 4

What game does combat, graphics, writing, character development, c&c, world building, exploration all in one package better?

Define world building

List five games that you have played with better world building.

What makes for good exploration?

List five games with better exploration

Baldur's Gate 1, PoE2: Deadfire, both Pathfinder games. Sorry I got nothing for 5th.

 

[Gargaune]

I don't think he actually believes this and is just bullshitting, dramatizing the story so he can sell baseball bats as weapons. From what I've heard of his voice clips, he has that "dramatic street hawker" tone which strongly suggests not everything he says is something he believes to be truthful.

Not buying the other two, but this one maybe, if you tell him what baseball was really like he says "I like my version better." And he has a point.

I completely forgot this exist, when it would be out?

Soon, I hope. I want to roll Gargaune of Cosmomacedon and litter the galaxy with colonies that will all be called some variation of Gargaunia.

 

[NecroLord]

Been playing Morrowind recently(Tribunal expansion to be more precise) and, man, how did Bethesda fall so badly?
I miss the character creation of the early Elder Scrolls games, the ability to jack up your strength attribute to insane levels and tear assholes with impunity.
My level 59 Nord barbarian/restoration master(mostly for buffs) really loves his Daedric Battle Axe and the carnage it produces.

 

[__scribbles__]

how did Bethesda fall so badly?

Mostly a lack of mainstream competition, at least before Kingdom Come: Deliverance came out.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

KCD is not a competition to Bethesda lol, not even close

Bethesda has this universal appeal and their openworld design is unique, this has been pointed out multiple time, pages ago. It has depth of puddle yeah, but it is as wide as the ocean and modding it is always fun

Bethesda games are popular not because they are muh deep mechanics or someshit, it is the pseudo freedom and very big world with a bit of simulation here and there to keep it running and feels alive that makes it popular

 

[Caim]

How are the porn mods for KCD compared to Skyrim? That might be a reason why Skyrim did better as well.

 

[NecroLord]

How are the porn mods for KCD compared to Skyrim

 

[random_name]

The success of Breath of the Wild proves that all you need is a pretty open world and some minigames here and there and most people will be happy.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Breath of the Wild has excellent design, something no Bethesda game has ever had.

 

[Robotigan]

It has depth of puddle yeah

I suppose I can see where this critique comes from, but I don't it's a thorough description of the game structure. When I think of depth, I think of how a game could be modeled as a graph.

Virtually all games are some kind of hybrid with various sub-patterns to flesh out individual game elements, but you can usually pick out an overarching topology that characterizes the whole. Many if not most roleplaying games emulate a tree-like structure. As you progress, the path will periodically diverge into separate nodes that are inaccessible from each other without resetting to a previous node. Each time you make a decision, you can tell you're in a totally different part of the network because you have a different set of decision nodes before you. The game feels deep because each time you make a decision, you're moving into deeper layers of the network. By contrast, a Bethesda game is more like a mesh. The nodes are so interconnected, you can pretty much bounce from anywhere to anywhere. While this makes the game feel much more open, it also means the set of decision nodes you can travel to never changes which is why some people describe the world as static. If you want, you can move from state to state in a line ignoring any decision-making. A mesh is really just a superset of a more linear network. But, a mesh is also a superset of a tree. You can also model it with parent/child path divergences and iteratively deepening layers. A mesh can be anything, it's all a matter of perspective.

This is exactly why I prefer quests being free-form (as opposed to narrowly pre-determined). This changes "bring item X" from a simple fetch-quest ("Item X is in location Y") to something more exploratory in nature. You can find it in a ruin. Or steal it from someone. Or buy it. Or receive it as reward/payment for doing another quest, etc.

And you can spread this approach to more than just quest. It's really sad that more cRPGs don't take this route and we're stuck mostly with heavily narrative-driven ones.

What I've neglected to mention up until now is that the order you travel to nodes matters because of the skills, equipment, knowledge, etc. you'll have gained throughout your journey. One detriment of a tree is that gameplay narrative is dependent on the story narrative. The nodes closer to the root will always be encountered early game, whereas the nodes near the leaves will always be encountered endgame. This makes it easier to craft a more elaborate narrative where the story and gameplay always agree since the devs are safe to make some assumptions about when the player will encounter content, but it can feel a bit limited. Sure, maybe a local glass-blowing tutorial is intended for beginners but nothing's actually stopping me from power-leveling at a nearby kiln before enrolling. A mesh-like game structure restores that mischievous thrill even if it ruins the story.

 

[Sunsetspawn]

Yeah, it also has a few other things that Skyrim doesn't: great writing and lore, great characters, great graphics, serviceable combat, great C&C, etc.

Damn right! Penile cancer doesn't hurt as much as testicle cancer!

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Base building will be one of the sexy elements Bethesda is going to offer the players!

if no man's shite can, anyone can. hell, even skyrim does, in a dlc, and iirc there're mods for morrowind. it's mostly the same engine, after all.

Lets go through this list

Lets include Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 & Fallout 4

What game does combat, graphics, writing, character development, c&c, world building, exploration all in one package better?

Define world building

List five games that you have played with better world building.

What makes for good exploration?

List five games with better exploration

sorry man, it's the same logic behind muricans crowning themselves "world championzzz!!1!" at every retarded game they made up and the rest of the world would feel too ashamed to play along.
being the only one who does something doesn't make you good at it, just the only one.

 

[Harthwain]

Many if not most roleplaying games emulate a tree-like structure.

They do that because that's how dialogues work. However, the end result is unlike a tree - it's more akin to a knot: no matter what you do, you arrive at the same "critical moments" and most of your choices end up being irrelevant or cosmetic, because the outcomes are already pre-determined and most RPGs don't have enough hands to flesh out a proper tree for players to navigate at their leisure. So I am arguing it isn't really deep at all.

Whereas in a less narrative game you can create emergent narrative by having proper systems in place to do that for you. You kill a minor trader X to obtain item Y, instead of doing something else? You succeed at completing your quest, but it so happens that trader X was part of group/faction Z and they aren't happy with you killing one of their own (not mentioning a lot of places usually have a law against murder, too.). This naturally creates some complications the player has to deal with. Unless your kill was stealthy and nobody finds out.

I'd argue this makes the world more dynamic. Especially if NPCs are also acting like agents in the world and aren't just actors waiting for the player to show up before saying their set piece.

 

[Latelistener]

Because I have to say that as far as "behaviors" and "quest resolutions" go you are limited - at best - to two (three if we assume failing a quest is an option) outcomes. At least this was my experience and I played with three different builds.

"Behaviors" is my own thing, based on not only what I built each character to do but what I wanted them to do. This is all predicated on my axiom that the purpose of a game is to enjoy it, not to get xp. For example, I wanted a character who never engaged in combat, which is obviously suboptimal but it was fun as hell; whereas in most RPGs it would have been utterly impossible. I think that character actually got more gameplay hours than any of the rest. Anyway that early decision affected the character build obviously, but also changed my behavior as a player substantially when approaching problems.

Quest resolutions, you may be right that there were two outcomes per quest at most, although I'd be surprised if some of the main quests at least didn't have a few more. Except for some of the early mainline forced stuff, I doubt I ever played the same quest more than twice.

The problem is that the game never acknowledges you as a "non-combat" character (or any other in fact). That's the real tragedy. With all your freedom and available content you are essentially bound to one role of a dragonborn savior. All your characters are the same unless the game world acknowledges they aren't and everything else is just "roleplay in your head". At the very least Morrowind (and Daggerfall I assume) had reputation system that could somehow define your character in the world.

Essentially it only affects how you go through the game, but it's also quite sad because the combat system doesn't hold a candle compared to Dark Messiah, stealth is just a gimmick that adds 100 hours to your walkthrough, stats have little to no effect on dialogues and all of the guild quests can be completed without actually knowing anything about required skills. You can get a title of Archmage without knowing much about magic (Morrowind didn't allow that). And if all that wasn't devastating enough, enemies grow as you level up hindering almost any sense of progression.

 

[BruceVC]

How are the porn mods for KCD compared to Skyrim? That might be a reason why Skyrim did better as well.

I didnt even know you got adult mods for KCD? I did a quick search now and there just seems to a few around nudity

 

[Zombra]

The problem is that [Skyrim] never acknowledges you as a "non-combat" character (or any other in fact). That's the real tragedy. With all your freedom and available content you are essentially bound to one role of a dragonborn savior. All your characters are the same unless the game world acknowledges they aren't and everything else is just "roleplay in your head".

Absolutely disagree. The game doesn't have to "flag" me as anything and that's the point. It's true that 'you are the Dragonborn' is baked into the main quest structure but ........... it's not written in stone that you have to follow the main quest. Fun fact, in all my hours of Skyrim I never finished the main quest, don't think I ever came close. I was too busy telling my stories with my characters. Skyrim provides a very good foundation for that type of play, and I hope that Starfield will give me the same kind of tools, not to get dragged down the railroad tracks of some cool story someone else wrote but to find my own way(s) to the fun.

I mean yes, all the fun I had in the game happened in my head. Everything in my life happens in my head. And yes, as I was talking about to Porky above, in order for this to work, my personality and my imagination must be ingredients in the experience .... but that's true for every second of every day throughout my life. This idea that there is some platonic game out there that requires no human involvement to be fun is ridiculous on its face. "For a game to be good, I must bring nothing of myself to the experience" is a really weird criteria to me. To bring these abstract ideas into the real world a little more, if 10 people on YouTube play the same game and all 10 videos look exactly the same because the game doesn't have anything to do with the player, in my opinion that game sucks ass and I'm not interested. Particularly if it's an RPG.

 

[NecroLord]

Yes!
It makes absolute sense that my fucking beefcake Nord barbarian wielding a huge battle axe becomes master of the Thieves guild! And an archmage...
Aaaand an assassin...
In Daggerfall and Morrowind you had to, at least, invest in skills associated with the factions you want to join and to do quests in order to advance in rank.

 

[Late Bloomer]

It makes absolute sense that my fucking beefcake Nord barbarian wielding a huge battle axe becomes master of the Thieves guild! And an archmage...
Aaaand an assassin...

Nobody is forcing your Beefcake Nord (queer) Barbarian into joining the thieves guild or become the archmage.

With all your freedom and available content you are essentially bound to one role of a dragonborn savior.

You can avoid going to Whiterun (Bleak Falls Barrow / Western Watchtower) and do every other hold, every faction, explore most every location, and do most every quest in the game without once becoming the Dragonborn. You are the one treating it like a Mario game with a clear path to an ending. You can even do a huge portion of the "Dragonborn" expansion without becoming the Dragonborn.

If you actually want to give Skryim another go and need some help with how to approach it I would be happy to help.

 

[NecroLord]

Yeah, but you have to invest in other skills in Skyrim if you want to be able to level up at higher levels.
Legendary edition allows you to make a skill "legendary" , that is the skill reverts back to 15 and you regain all the perks spent on that skill.

I dislike that bullshit argument
"nO oNe iS fOrCiNg yOu tO pLaY or do whatever". You HAVE to play in order to level up and access all areas in the game.

 

[Latelistener]

The problem is that [Skyrim] never acknowledges you as a "non-combat" character (or any other in fact). That's the real tragedy. With all your freedom and available content you are essentially bound to one role of a dragonborn savior. All your characters are the same unless the game world acknowledges they aren't and everything else is just "roleplay in your head".

Absolutely disagree. The game doesn't have to "flag" me as anything and that's the point. It's true that 'you are the Dragonborn' is baked into the main quest structure but ........... it's not written in stone that you have to follow the main quest. Fun fact, in all my hours of Skyrim I never finished the main quest, don't think I ever came close. I was too busy telling my stories with my characters. Skyrim provides a very good foundation for that type of play, and I hope that Starfield will give me the same kind of tools, not to get dragged down the railroad tracks of some cool story someone else wrote but to find my own way(s) to the fun.

Who said that in order for you to have a sense of agenda it has to be a linear experience? New Vegas has all the same stuff as Skyrim, except the world actually reacts to you, your deeds, accomplishments and failures. Skyrim's world is dead and static and nothing you do matters. This is the exact opposite of how RPG should be done.

You can avoid going to Whiterun (Bleak Falls Barrow / Western Watchtower) and do every other hold, every faction, explore most every location, and do most every quest in the game without once becoming the Dragonborn. You are the one treating it like a Mario game with a clear path to an ending. You can even do a huge portion of the "Dragonborn" expansion without becoming the Dragonborn.

What will it change? Absolutely nothing. Ignoring the main quest will not make the world reactive and the game will never acknowledge your character.

 

[Ryzer]

Avoid Skyrim, play Enderal instead, this is what Skyrim should have been to begin with.

 

[Zombra]

Who said that in order for you to have a sense of agenda it has to be a linear experience? New Vegas has all the same stuff as Skyrim, except the world actually reacts to you, your deeds, accomplishments and failures. Skyrim's world is dead and static and nothing you do matters. This is the exact opposite of how RPG should be done.

I certainly don't disagree that Skyrim could be way more reactive, but I do disagree that you can essentially only make one character and that "nothing matters" if you play differently. The freedom to play differently is the reward and I don't need a cookie for taking advantage of it.

 

[Crispy]

Avoid Skyrim, play Enderal instead, this is what Skyrim should have been to begin with.

If you combined the superior creativity of Enderal SE along with the technical and grand nature of Wildlander you'd have something p. special.

 

[Harthwain]

I certainly don't disagree that Skyrim could be way more reactive, but I do disagree that you can essentially only make one character and that "nothing matters" if you play differently. The freedom to play differently is the reward and I don't need a cookie for taking advantage of it.

The point is, I think, that due to the nature of the game you can have a character who can do literally anything and everything. All things being equal, in Morrowind at least you had to have certain skills high enough in order to advance in hierarchy, which meant you needed either to work harder for it or pay trainers to bring your skills up. In Skyrim aside from the initial "test" you can literally become a leader of the Mage Guild as a warrior, which is laughable. Skill points/specializations are nice, but most of them focus on effectiveness and don't change how the system work in general.

In my opinion having some sort of limit would make this kind of system more interesting, because you'd have to pick what kind of character you would like to be, thereby shaping your playstyle, while still keeping most of "you can define your class" approach that I enjoy.

 

[Zombra]

The point is, I think, that due to the nature of the game you can have a character who can do literally anything and everything. All things being equal, in Morrowind at least you had to have certain skills high enough in order to advance in hierarchy, which meant you needed either to work harder for it or pay trainers to bring your skills up. In Skyrim aside from the initial "test" you can literally become a leader of the Mage Guild as a warrior, which is laughable. Skill points/specializations are nice, but most of them focus on effectiveness and don't change how the system work in general. In my opinion having some sort of limit would make this kind of system more interesting, because you'd have to pick what kind of character you would like to be, thereby shaping your playstyle, while still keeping most of "you can define your class" approach that I enjoy.

Well .. now we're back to behavior. Could I have played my warrior character, done the Mage Guild quests, and become the 'Archmage'? Certainly I could have, if that was the asinine story I chose to tell. And people with no imagination will do that, because the quest is there and it never occurs to them not to, and then they blame the game for being so stupid. (Three guesses whose fault it really is.) I chose not to because I played my character not only by pressing W + M1, but through behavior and intention. And I maintain that the Elder Scrolls games are built remarkably well to support that, and to give the player the agency to make those decisions.

And for the record, the stats weren't meaningless. Could my wizard character pick up a sword and stab things? Sure he could, and he did pull a weapon once or twice. But he was indeed bad at it, not only from sheer low numbers but also in the lack of cool combat perks like my warrior had. Again: they played very differently based on what I chose for them to be good and bad at. Could I have built up his swordfighting stat and neglected magic? Certainly, if I chose to, but I wasn't required to and I played for dozens of hours without feeling any pressure to.

I do agree that Skyrim made it feel a little too easy to be good at a lot of things. I would have loved for skill decay to be much more harsh after hitting a certain point of specializations.